During my ten years serving in the Colorado State Legislature, first as a State Representative and then as a State Senator, I was constantly faced with bills that directly usurped the traditional role of the church by providing functions that the religious community had done for two thousand years, and families before that.
Several years ago, a friend of mine sent me this article, by W. Bradford Wilcox which highlights this continuing and troubling trend. While I realize we will never get back to these past era, our awareness of the continual usurpation of church functions by government should be ever on our minds. -- Sen. Dave Schultheis
Secularism
seems to be on the march in America. This week, a new study from the Program on
Public Values at Trinity College found that the number of Americans claiming no
religion now stands at 15%, up from 8% in 1990 and 2% in 1962.
The
secular tide appears to be running strongest among young Americans. Religious
attendance among those 21 to 45 years old is at its lowest level in decades, according
to Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow. Only 25% of young adults now attend
services regularly, compared with about one-third in the early 1970s.
The
most powerful force driving religious participation down is the nation's recent
retreat from marriage, Mr. Wuthnow notes. Nothing brings women and especially
men into the pews like marriage and parenthood, as they seek out the religious,
moral and social support provided by a congregation upon starting a family of
their own. But because growing numbers of young adults are now postponing or
avoiding marriage and childbearing, they are also much less likely to end up in
church on any given Sunday. Mr. Wuthnow estimates that America's houses of
worship would have about six million more regularly attending young adults if
today's young men and women started families at the rate they did three decades
ago.
Now,
President Barack Obama seems poised to give secularism in America another
boost, however inadvertently. This may come as a surprise to some, given Mr.
Obama's outreach to religious voters last fall, his strong showing among them
in the election and his eagerness to cultivate the faithful since. The White
House has even been opening many of Mr. Obama's public appearances with a
prayer, sometimes surpassing presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in
displays of public piety.
Nevertheless,
the president's audacious plans for the expansion of the government -- from the
stimulus to health-care reform to a larger role in education -- are likely to
spell trouble for the vitality of American religion. His $3.6 trillion budget
for fiscal 2010 would bring federal, state and local spending to about 40% of
the gross domestic product -- within hailing distance of Europe, where state
spending runs about 46% of GDP. The European experience suggests that the
growth of the welfare state goes hand in hand with declines in personal
religiosity.
A
recent study of 33 countries by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde found an
inverse relationship between religious observance and welfare spending.
Countries with larger welfare states, such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark, had
markedly lower levels of religious attendance, affiliation and trust in God
than countries with a history of limited government, such as the U.S., the Philippines
and Brazil. Public spending amounts to more than one half of the GDP in Sweden,
where only 4% of the population regularly attends church. By contrast, public
spending amounts to 18% of the Philippines' GDP, and 68% of Filipinos regularly
attend church.
"For
many centuries, average citizens and local communities have often relied upon
the support of religious organizations to meet their various social needs,
including assistance for the poor, counseling in times of crisis and education
for the young," explains Mr. Gill, a political scientist at the University
of Washington. "But as the welfare state has expanded, many people have
found that they can get these same services from the government without having
to give a time commitment to the local church."
Other
research indicates that religious giving also falls when the welfare state
increases its spending. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber and Notre Dame economist
Daniel Hungerman found that charitable spending by churches declined 30% in the
wake of the New Deal and that nearly all of the decrease can be accounted for
by increases in public spending in the 1930s. They conclude that
"government spending does crowd out private charity, at least through
churches."
A
successful Obama revolution providing cradle-to-career education and
cradle-to-grave health care would reduce the odds that Americans would turn to
their local religious congregations and fellow believers for economic, social,
emotional and spiritual aid. Fewer Americans would also be likely to feel
obliged to help their fellow citizens through local churches and charities.
This
is not to say that the health of the American religious sector depends only on
some level of economic or social dislocation to attract people to
congregations. Many Americans are religious for reasons that have nothing to do
with the mutual aid found in churches and charities, such as the desire to be
in a personal relationship with God or to keep faith with important family
traditions. But the reasons for going to church are not so easily separated.
And many of those who initially turn to religious organizations for mutual aid
end up developing a faith that is as supernatural as it is material. But first
they need to enter the door.
Mr.
Wilcox is a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.
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