Chronic Murmuring

That's a fascinating interview. What do you think of Wolfe's analysis? For someone who is "non-religious" he seems to be very insightful. That's the way it often is, though, isn't it? The forest is only seen by those standing outside it.

Thanks for the link.

It's really interesting. Kelly's thesis was groundbreaking at the time, and is still considered a turning point in our "scientific" understanding of religion in a pluralistic environment. Kelly found that conservative churches were growing, not dying out like the secularization thesis predicted. You found, ironically, growth in those sectors where churches were the strictest - like Baptist, Pentecostal, etc. You saw a continual erosion of membership in the mainlines. I think under Bishop Spong's tenure - all while he was proclaiming that unless Christianity changed, it would die - he saw membership decline in the region he oversaw for the Episcopal church by as much as 40% per year over several years (interestingly, the Episocpal church was at that time only seeing a decline of around 12% per year. Spong's diocese seemed to suffer moreso under him).

But Wolfe says that yes, Kelly was right in a quantitative sense. We are becoming more religious in some aggregate sense. America's "separation of church and state" ideology has provided a "free market" for religious goods and services - one that is highly competitive. Pastors depend on the voluntary contributions of their parishioners to survive (compare this to Denmark, where the Lutheran church is a state monopoly and subsidized directly by tax revenue), and so they are forced to be responsive to their parishioners. Yet, they also impose high costs on membership - that was the paradox that is somewhat perplexing. The churches growing the most were the ones that were also the "most expensive" - requiring all sorts of sacrifices and stigmas. The economist, Laurence Iannaccone, and sociologists Finke and Stark, helped explain this by noting that churches are "collectives" which is partly why the high costs of memberhsip actually increase the value, rather than decrease the value. The collective action within a church body will lead to the benefits of participation spilling over to other, less committing members. You see, in other words, a lot of free riding. People who show up just for Easter and Christmas, or who show up every Sunday but don't tithe, don't give back to the church in any meaningful way, don't evangelize, etc. This drags down the average benefits, which makes it less valuable ultimately for those who do pay the high costs.

Still, Wolfe notes that when you look beyond the numbers and instead think ethnographically about what is going on, it's not the same story. There you see something dynamic happening. I don't know if I would say that American culture is shaping American religion in the way he is saying it. It may just be the pluralistic environment, and nothing really unique about "American culture." Transportion costs are very low in the United States, and churches are fragmented. So unfortunately, it's simply much easier to leave a church and attend a different church for petty, even sinful, reasons than it would've been a thousand years ago. You couldn't have done this in Europe in the 10th century because where would you have gone? I suppose you could start your own church like King Henry if you wanted a divorce, but that was apparently rare, and costly politically.

The trend is definitely towards fragmentation, though. That is one thing about religion today which is, I think, unique. A pluralistic environment seems to lead to growth and possibly even greater numbers of orthodox churches (or fundamentalistic at the least). It leads to even greater evangelism possibly. But it also makes organizational unity unstable. I think it is actually inherently unstable, and it has nothing to do with the individualism in America, but rather with something else. The tendency in religion seems to be, though, continually towards sectarianism. Catholicism actually seems to have avoided this for a few reasons, though. One way they manage to do this is to allow far more diversity within their body than is allowed by Protestant churches, which tend to specialize around a few core beliefs or practices. In Catholicism, you have your right-wing economic viewpoints or your Marxist liberation theology viewpoints. You have feminism theology, as well as charismatic movements. You Jesuits, who are more academic. In Protestantism, though, you tend to see very specific denominations or churches forming around one of these things. So, for instance, you'll have churches which are purely charismatic and that defines them. Or you'll have churches that are "TR" - almost myopically interested in theological minutiae to the exclusion of other important matters.

So Catholicism it seems like has been able to direct that tendency towards fragmentation inward, whereas Protestantism is more like an "orphaning of the virtues" like Chesterton described. I can't figure out whether that is good or bad thing, but depending on what you think, it leads me to believe that if you really do want organizational unity, then you can only get it by involving the state. When you think about periods in history where the church has been able to maintain some level of ecumenical unity, the most notable have been when emperors or Parliament demanded it. At least as far as when creeds and constituions were formed.

I'd like to read Wolfe's book. I didn't know he had anything out, but I really find him provacative and insightful.