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America Unchurched: A Sign of the Times

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Free photo from Pexels by Daniel Borges
Free photo from Pexels by Daniel Borges

For the first time in its more than eight decades of surveying Americans’ religious attitudes and practices, Gallup reports,  church members constituted only 47% of the US population in 2020 — down 23% since 1999, prior to which the percentage seldom dipped below 70%.

Why the precipitous drop, and what might it portend for the future?

“The decline in church membership,” the Gallup report says, “is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference.” In 2000, Americans who didn’t consider themselves religious at all comprised 8% of the population. Today, 21% answer to that description.

While there’s obviously an interrelationship there, I suspect it’s more complicated than the former being “primarily a function of” the latter.

For one thing, not being a believer may be as much effect as cause. The child who isn’t raised in church, or whose family isn’t as involved in that church as families used to be, is probably less prone to either religious belief or church affiliation as an adult.

Also, churches are far from the only community organizations struggling to maintain their membership numbers.

In 1973, America boasted more than 4 million Boy Scouts from a population of 215 million. Today, that number is 2.3 million from a population of 330 million.

Despite three decades of continuous war, creating millions of eligible members, veterans’ organizations like the American Legion are in decline as older members die and younger prospects pass on the affiliation.

We hear a lot about social fragmentation and political polarization these days, and these numbers are probably relevant to those problems.

As a libertarian, I’m inclined to see the hoary hand of the state behind all bad things, and I can a make a case for that here. The increased reach of the welfare state makes the charity functions of churches and other social organizations less urgent, while the grasp of the regulatory state makes operating physical establishments more expensive. One can almost hear Mussolini muttering from beyond the grave: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

But if that’s part of the cause, it’s far from the whole cause.

It’s no coincidence that the decline in physical group participation maps closely to the growth of fast and affordable Internet access.

Back in the old days (i.e., the childhoods of those over 50), meeting with others who shared our interests meant physically traveling to a central location. Today,  it is  (or at least can be, as a year of pandemic has shown) as simple as opening your laptop or picking up your phone.

That phenomenon comes with down sides. We’re self-segregating into echo chambers where our priors are affirmed and those who disagree are unwelcome.

But it also comes with up sides, such as instant, on-demand fellowship, across vast distances, with others who share our interests.

We’re in the midst of the most tumultuous social changes in decades, if not centuries.  Churches, and the rest of us, are going to have to ride this storm out and hope for sunnier weather on the other side.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Gender and Medicine: Two Questions for Arkansas Legislators

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As I write this column, Arkansas House Bill 1570 (the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act”) awaits the signature or veto of Governor Asa Hutchinson, having passed in the state House on March 10 and in the Senate on March 29.

If it became law, the bill would forbid physicians and other healthcare professionals to ” provide gender transition procedures to any individual under eighteen (18) years of age” or to refer such an individual to other healthcare providers for such procedures.

Rather than argue over the nature of gender, the validity of gender dysphoria and gender transition, and other complicated questions, I’d simply like to ask the legislators who passed this bill two questions.

Question Number One: Are  each of you medical doctors with expertise (preferably board certification) in any or all of the various specialties that relate to the matter?

Two such specialties that come to mind are psychiatry  and endocrinology.

My impression, based on a quick look at legislator pages, is that few, if any, of you can claim such expertise.

Yet you just passed legislation preemptively substituting your collective political judgment for the individual medical judgments of professionals who’ve put in many years of hard work — in school and in actual practice — to become qualified to make those judgments.

Question #2: Are the 135 members of the Arkansas General Assembly (100 representatives and 35 senators) the parents of all of the 800,000 Arkansans under the age of 18?

If so, congratulations on your remarkable prowess at going forth and multiplying.

If not, then you’re once again substituting your collective (and uninformed) political judgment for the individual (and, if not fully informed, at least more informed) judgments of those kids’ ACTUAL parents where the children’s needs are concerned.

Interestingly, I see that of the General Assembly’s 135 members, 103 are Republicans, and my impression is that most of you who are Republicans publicly style yourselves “conservatives.”

Whatever happened to the “conservative” Republican lines on business (best operated with minimal government interference or regulation — yes, medical practices are businesses) and family (e.g. the sanctity of parental authority in nearly every aspect of child-rearing)?

I’d ask what’s up with the 180-degree reversal where gender identity is concerned, but let’s be honest:  While “conservative” Republicans talk those two lines quite loudly, they seldom walk either line much at all.

I’d also say these legislators should be ashamed of themselves, but shame is obviously as absent from their makeup as respect for their constituents’ liberties.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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In Georgia, Republican Dumbness Whets Democrats’ Thirst for Victory

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Photo by Maurício Mascaro from Pexels.
Photo by Maurício Mascaro from Pexels.

On March 25, Republican governor Brian Kemp signed a bill overhauling various aspects of Georgia’s election laws. Within hours, voting rights groups challenged the bill in federal court, claiming it is “clearly intended to and will have the effect of making it harder for lawful Georgia voters to participate in the State’s elections.”

Among the bill’s dumbest provisions: Making it a crime to “give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of … food and drink” to someone waiting in line to vote.

How dumb is that?

Dumb enough that I have to wonder if Republican legislators  put in there as bait, hoping for a judge of “Solomon splitting the baby” temperament to quash it while allowing something else just as bad to stand in “compromise.”

Also, dumb enough to energize Democrats and cost Republicans future elections.

If you’ve ever voted in an urban center with heavy turnout, you may have spent hours waiting in line (I know I have). Under the new Georgia law, anyone offering you a bottle of water in the heat of the day risks arrest.

Strategically, the provision makes sense in an incredibly dumb (for the fifth time) kind of way.  The urban electorate, especially the black demographic, tends to break heavily Democratic. By making it harder for those voters to vote, Republicans think, they can make it harder for Democrats to beat Republicans in elections. Obvious, right?

Just because something is obvious that doesn’t mean it will work out in practice.

Republicans making it harder for Democratic voters to vote will just make Democrats work harder to get their voters to the polls.

Republicans making it illegal to hand nice, cool bottles of  water to voters will likely push a few thirsty undecided voters into the Democratic column. If those voters hadn’t heard about it before election day, they’ll hear about it in line when Democrats hand out water bottles as a form of civil disobedience and dare the cops to arrest them for it.

Even if the courts don’t strike down the water ban, the sheer meanness of it is already costing Republicans votes. And not just in Georgia.

I don’t care much for either of these two major parties. In terms of principle and policy, they’re hard to tell apart. But when one party loves and cuddles voters, while the other fears and threatens voters, the latter party is on its way out.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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