Religion's Sudden Decline: What's Causing it and What Comes Next, with Ronald Inglehart People's interest in Religion is massively declining. There are clear reasons for the decline. We discuss those reasons, how decreasing interest in religion is ...
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Religion is in extremis - on its deathbed; it's breathing its last.
That's the unmistakable conclusion reached by Dr. Ronald Inglehart, emeritus professor of political science at the University of Michigan. He was interviewed recently by OpEdNews (OEN) editor-in-chief, Rob Kall.
Over the last 40 years, Inglehart has overseen a study of the worldwide viability of religious belief and practice in every inhabited continent on the planet. The work of his international World Values Research Team has covered the beliefs of 90% of our globe's inhabitants.
The survey's results have been published in Inglehart's new book, Religion's Sudden Decline: What's Causing It and What Comes Next. And if Rob's interview is any indication, it shouldn't be missed.
I say that as a liberation theologian whose discipline has long anticipated the conclusions reached by the World Values Survey.
Let me explain.
Religion's Sudden Decline
Personal experience (even with our own children) tells most of us that despite the dominance of white evangelicals over the Republican party, and despite the claim of most Americans to "believe in God," religion has largely lost its power.
What's surprising about Inglehart's study, however, is its claim that the decline has reached a "tipping point" over the last ten years.
That is, after a post WWII surge in religious fervor from 1947 through the early 1950s, disaffection with religion has gradually increased not only within the U.S. population, but worldwide. Over the last decade, it has reached an epidemic point of no return. That's what "tipping point" means.
All of that raises the question of the meaning Inglehart assigns "religion," and (for me) that meaning's relationship to liberation theology.
For Inglehart, religion represents a cross-cultural survival mechanism found in every human community on the planet. In the face of their overwhelming insecurity in the face of wild animals, famine, wars, unpredictable weather patterns, and high infant mortality rates, humans have traditionally sought refuge in religion's moral order that ensured security and most prominently survival of the species. The resulting morality of survival mandated:
- Large families
- That women's bodies be controlled as "baby factories"
- That they stay at home and care for their offspring
- That human morality adopt a prohibition of birth control, abortion, divorce, and "unproductive" sexual behaviors such as homosexuality
However, with the advent of modern medicine, decline in infant mortality, and the emergence of the welfare state, such restrictions became unnecessary. The role of women changed.
And with that mutation, the door almost imperceptibly began to swing open towards a world without religion. That new context even showed signs of accepting non-binary sexuality.
Another factor contributing to that liberation has been the progressive decline of authoritarian government and the spread of democracy. Inglehart recalls that ancient hunter-gatherer tribal societies were more egalitarian. (For more than 50,000 years they typically worshipped female goddesses.)
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