Gregory Smith, senior researcher for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, talks with Odyssey Networks about the rapid growth of the religiously unaffiliated.
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Making sense of the “nones”
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So what are we going to do about it? I’ve read innumerable studies and discussions about the rise of the ‘Nones’ but virtually nothing–and absolutely nothing from the Episcopal, or other mainline churches, addressed to getting those Nones back to church. I suspect that liberal, mainliners don’t think it’s important.
I do. The issue isn’t ‘worldview’ or politics. I agree with the None’s left-leaning politics and secular world view. The issue is promoting religiousity, promoting church going, maintaining buildings and keeping the services going. This issue is religion as such: churchiness, rituals, myths. When religion disappears, which it likely will, the world will be a poorer, duller, more prosaic place.
Won’t anyone try to promote religion? Won’t anyone try to get it across to the general public that religiousity–participation in religious rituals, and such–is pleasurable, interesting, a source of enjoyment?