Nones vs dones

 "Nones," as many of my readers likely know, is the common current sociology of religion term to agglomerate all people who are not religious, from "spiritual but not religious" through agnostic and on to atheist.

But, this PsyPost piece says we should probably distinguish between "nones" and "dones."

What it's getting at is that there's a difference between people who, whatever their metaphysical beliefs are, have rejected a religious system they were raised with  and those who never were raised with such a system in the first place, the former being "dones" and the later being "nones."

I get the idea, but reworking the idea of "nones" seems open to confusion.

Rather, maybe call the former the "never at alls" and the latter the "not nows."

That said, the piece IS interesting for social psychology differences between the two groups, including being open about their non-religiousness, or not. I can certainly agree with the general idea from personal experience. The Gnu Atheist types should take thoughts like this into account, even though they surely won't.

Handwaving about the Nones?

 Tis true that Christianity, in both fundagelical and more liberal versions within Protestantism (and parallels within Catholicism) in the United States has shown itself more resilient than might be expected, but Joseph Slaughter and others, in this CNN piece, appear to be engaging in handwaving.

As for the "browning" of America saving Christianity? Perhaps (and it's true about Latino evangelical Protestants) but, it won't be the same as White fundagelical Christianity. Latino and Korean immigrants don't have the same take on issues like guns as do White conservative Christians. And, to the degree that at least some of those White conservative Christians are anti-immigrant, conservative Christianity will fracture more. White Christian nationalism is indeed referenced in the piece.

Citing recent SCOTUS rulings is a mug's game. Other than Barrett, the wingnut justices are all older. And, fundagelicals are indeed losing steam among younger White voters. 

In addition, while Latinos and sub-Saharan Africans may be fundagelical Christians, along with South Koreans? Indians, Chinese and other immigrants most certainly are not. That "browning" is itself not monolithic.

As for Nones and spirituality? I know that. But, spirituality doesn't translate into support for Christianity as an organized religion, especially if "tax the churches" gets more support. Beyond that, Hans Gustafson, by melding the two metaphysically, is engaged in an Overton Window play.

As for a churchgoing rebound recently? Yes, I blogged about that myself. It's most likely COVID-related and will thus fade again.

And, trumping that resurgence? Gallup reported last year that belief in a god had plunged. That's metaphysics, not "organized religion."

Christianity won't be extinguished. But, slowly and unevenly, its political and societal influences will both fade.

Pastors worried about ChatGPT doth protest too much

Yeah, religious leaders are freaking their heads out, per the AP, about ChatGPT writing AI sermons.

In part, maybe they're worried it's better than them:

Todd Brewer, a New Testament scholar and managing editor of the Christian website Mockingbird, wrote in December about an experiment of his own -- asking ChatGPT to write a Christmas sermon for him. 

He was specific, requesting a sermon “based upon Luke’s birth narrative, with quotations from Karl Barth, Martin Luther, Irenaeus of Lyon, and Barack Obama.” 

Brewer wrote that he was “not prepared” when ChatGPT responded with a creation that met his criteria and “is better than several Christmas sermons I’ve heard over the years.” 

“The A.I. even seems to understand what makes the birth of Jesus genuinely good news,” Brewer added.

There you go.

On the other hand, Brewer went on to voice what many other people claimed in the piece:

Yet the ChatGPT sermon “lacks any human warmth,” he wrote. “The preaching of Artificial Intelligence can’t convincingly sympathize with the human plight.”

Problem?

Yes, and not with ChatGPT.

This is social science 101 problem; There's no double-blinded study on the AI sermons lacking a heart, soul, emotions or whatever.

Riffing on Tales of Whoa, who I saw post this a couple of weeks ago (and from whence the idea for last Saturday's post came), this is exactly NOT a Turing test, for exactly that reason.

Let's go next to Mike Glenn:

In Brentwood, Tennessee, Mike Glenn, senior pastor for 32 years at Brentwood Baptist Church, wrote a blog post in January after a computer-savvy assistant joked that Glenn could be replaced by an AI machine. “I’m not buying it,” Glenn wrote. “AI will never be able to preach a decent sermon. Why? Because the gospel is more than words. It’s the evidence of a changed life.”

And, the well-known Russell Moore:

Also weighing in with an online essay was the Rev. Russell Moore, formerly head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy division and now editor-in-chief of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today. He confided to his readers that his first sermon, delivered at age 12, was a well-intentioned mess. 

“Preaching needs someone who knows the text and can convey that to the people — but it’s not just about transmitting information,” Moore wrote. “When we listen to the Word preached, we are hearing not just a word about God but a word from God.” 

“Such life-altering news needs to be delivered by a human, in person,” he added. “A chatbot can research. A chatbot can write. Perhaps a chatbot can even orate. But a chatbot can’t preach.”

Well, a chatbot can't preach, but a humanoid robot could, especially with a megachurch with satellite campuses seeing a video sermon.

As I told Tales, first of all, pastors, priests and rabbis have been preaching out of sermon books for decades if not centuries. And, whether canned sermons or their own, despite homiletic delivery training, many of them can't preach that well, either. Per Moore, they either write or deliver well-intentioned messes at 52. Beyond that, per Brewer, if I heard a pastor cite Irenaeus in a sermon outside a collegiate or divinity school campus chapel, I'd think him clueless for other reasons.

What I really see this worry covering is a follow-on to COVID slashing church attendance. With the rise of the "nones" being accelerated by that, these pastors are worried that, instead of the old time cable channels like Trinity Broadcasting, per what I said above about video sermons, you're going to get chatbot-robot sermons streaming on YouTube.

Beyond that, metaphysics aside, if you're worried enough to claim a ChatGPT doesn't have "soul," maybe your own sermons don't? And, besides, sermons aren't the only part of pastoral ministry. Maybe you're not doing good counseling? Not making hospital and homebound visits? Of course, at megachurches, the grifting chief pastor doesn't do that anyway.

Belief in God plunges

 This is NOT the rise of the "Nones," which seems to have plateaued during COVID, anyway.

And, this is just a Gallup poll, not a full Pew Research study. 

BUT?

It's definitely interesting to see that belief in god in America has reportedly PLUNGED in the last few years, down to just 81 percent.

And, as noted, this isn't about the Nones, who aren't necessarily disbelievers in god. They're just people who reject organized religion and related religious sociology ideas.

And, that's not all.

Interestingly, the drop in belief in god, by percentage points, is twice as great among women as among men. Whites are still more likely to be non-believers than non-Whites. The drop is much bigger among Democrats than Republicans. The "independents" is surely almost all people who think Democrats are leftists; it's not Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Greens, Socialists, etc.

The other facet I find interesting is that unbelief is statistically at the same level in central cities, suburban areas, and independent small towns and rural areas.

Belief in an interventionist theistic god is not high, even among believers in a god in general. This:

A follow-up question in the survey probed further into what Americans' belief in God entails. Specifically, the question asked whether God hears prayers and whether God intervenes when people pray. 

About half of those who believe in God -- equal to 42% of all Americans -- say God hears prayers and can intervene on a person's behalf. Meanwhile, 28% of all Americans say God hears prayers but cannot intervene, while 11% think God does neither.

Is also quite interesting.

The more religious, as well as the more Republican, are more likely among believers to believe in an interventionist god. No surprise there. Liberal Protestantism has long believed in a "mush god," so to speak, and as a metaphysical atheist as well as a sociological secularist, I get to say that.

This will surely have longer-term political ramifications, but not exactly as everybody may think. Not all atheists are secular humanists, to riff further on the distinctions at the end of the above paragraph. Many are libertarian not only on social issues but economic ones. In short, they could support an even more economically cruel America in decades ahead.

Top blogging of October-December

Blogging no more than twice a week, I don't do enough here, versus my main blog, to do a monthly top 10 recap.

But quarterly? Earlier this year, I said yes.

So, here we go.

No. 1? My decade-ago calling out of the likes of Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer for engaging in libertarian pseudoscience pseudoskepticism.

No. 2? I pretty thoroughly deconstructed David Graeber's posthumously coauthored new book. (I even more thoroughly deconstructed its political angles at my main blog.)

No. 3? An oldie but a goodie — when I told Tim O'Neill of "History for Atheists" to go fuck off. Many Gnu Atheists have felt that, but from what I've seen, so have a number of other non-Gnus. He's an atheist who strikes me as a Samual Huntington "cultural Christianist," specifically, Catholic division. 

No. 4? What happens when biblical archaeology meets Zionism? Overblown claims that Edom existed, accompanied by hypocritical lies about the chief archaeologists alleged neutrality on historicity of biblical narratives.

No. 5? Something interesting to see trending from more than a decade ago. Is the question of whether or not we have free will (and calling determinism the only alternative is a false dilemma and a poor one to boot) even discussible?

No. 6? John Drinkwater's recent bio of Nero was highly touted for his revisionistic take. My take on Drinkwater is that his take is right ... up to the Great Fire, where he gets Tacitus, Nero vs. Christians, the presence or not of Christians in numbers in early Rome, and related issues massively wrong.

No. 7? This one started trending more after I posted it as a response to a Medium post, and then to Massimo Pigliucci. From 2019, I wondered if the seeming rise of the Nones (though, now, seemingly, that rise has been put on hold by COVID, and other factors show that Pew's religious demographics research seems to have some accuracy issues) said that America would take a path like that of post-WWII Europe.

No. 8? Speaking of? The Nones have slipped, too! My thoughts.

No. 9? A counter to "Tippling Philosopher" Jonathan M.S. Pearce, who seems to, more than once, extend himself too far on critical exegesis, enough to exhibit moderate, though not (yet?) huge, Dunning-Krueger tendencies. This was to counter his claims about Paul's 1 Corinthians resurrection body implying that Paul believed a physical body of Jesus was still in the ground, and related nonsensicalities. 

No. 10? My blunt destruction of the bullshit surrounding the so-called "Beethoven 10th."

Unmaking the myth of the "white Christian worldview"

 Robert P. Jones, an ex-fundagelical of some sort, talks at Time about escaping the "white Christian worldview."

But, as two Tweets of mine say to him, to avoid typing twice, the piece is problematic and simplistic.

First, the reality of American Christianity today is more complex than his Mississippi birthland:

.@robertpjones .. several things in your piece are mix of fallacy & overstatement. Reality?
1. Not all white Xns are Protestant
2. Not all white Xn Protestants are conserv. evangelical or fundamentalist.
3. And, more and more whites are "nones" not Xn. 1/xhttps://t.co/ZWyJI9Bic2

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

My midwestern Lutheranism, while socially and religiously conservative, was nothing like his religious childhood. (I've been to white and black Baptist services, I'll add.)

Within the piece, he mentions the recent sharp decline of Southern Baptists. Yes, and mainline Protestants declined before that. And Catholics are declining as well. And, as time and motion studies have shown, Americans have long lied about frequency of church attendance, even before the rise of the "nones." (That said, the rise of the nones is NOT all it's sometimes cracked up to be.)

Second, the reality of American Christianity when he was a young'un and St. Ronald of Reagan was running for president was more complicated outside the South than he notes, which leads to this.

Even if dead weight of tradition makes point three nugatory? Especially outside the South, points 1 and 2 were in effect when you and I grew up. A better piece would separate out regional and cultural politics being fused with religion and nationalized.

— Crushes Xi Jinping Thought Kool-Aid peddlers 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) September 30, 2021

It's true that Reagan (maybe told so by his horoscope, and yes, he believed them, as he turned Nancy on to astrology, not the other way around) pandered to the Religious Right and helped fuel this fusion, but that helps make the point of my second tweet! Especially when you tie this to the lying about church attendance. It's cultural Christianism, a fundagelical version of Samuel Huntington's angle.

That said, in some way, shape or form, that's been the case in much of the Christian world since Roman emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion of the empire nearly 1,650 years ago. Political types (and, yes, politics exists outside democracies) have long grifted on cultural Christianism. It hasn't had racism attached to it; "racism" as we know it today didn't really exist in antiquity, after all.

But, if he wants to talk about real Christian sins, he should deal with that.

Since I'm a secularist, I've written enough about another rescue attempt for American Christianity.

Note: This is part one of a three-part series. The second will expand on the decline of evangelical Christians. The third will note that the rise of the Nones has itself hit a speed bump. Both will rely on new polling and analysis from this summer by Jones' outfit, PRRI.

Is post-Great Recession America going to be like post-World War II Europe on religious participation?

Per the latest Pew Research Center data on religion and American life, it sure looks that way.

The biggest takeaway from all this latest data? Millennials (yeah, those slackers, despite adults calling the younger generation slackers as far back as Aristotle) are a LOT less religious than their parents. A LOT less.

"Nones," the common word for those with no religious affiliation or identity, plus non-Christians, have as great an identity among Millennials as all Christian groups combined. No, really.

Now, this is a lot broader group than atheists or agnostics, despite Gnu Atheists talk of an "atheist surge," which has been going on for a decade or more now. (The talk, not any surge.) That said, self-identified atheists and agnostics have more than doubled over the 12-year range of the data, from 4 percent in 2007 to 9 percent in 2019.

It should be noted that "nones" may well have metaphysical beliefs. That's another reason for Gnus to stop poaching and crowing. Looking back 15 years or so, a woman on Match.com who originally wanted to meet me said "no" when she found out that "atheist" meant just that and NOT "spiritual but not religious" or Wiccan light or whatever. (It should also be noted, which Gnus don't, that millions of Buddhists around the world, mainly in the Theravada tradition, are both atheist and religious — and believe in metaphysical ideas, just not a personal god.)

That said, Nones are voting with their feet, not just their brains. In 2014, people who attend religious services just a few times a year first exceeded those who worship monthly or more. Among Millennials, it's just one-third who go to services once a month or more.

Among Americans overall, that growth is driven by a surge in those who NEVER attend, by self reporting. That's up to 17 percent.

Yes, one-sixth of Americans, even if they have some metaphysical beliefs (astrology, luck, Kabbalah or whatever) lurking somewhere, say they NEVER attend religious services. Related? Among those who say they attend once a month or more, the most ardent, the weekly attenders (or more) lost six percentage points, down to 31 percent. (If even that is correct; time and motion studies have shown that decades-old self-reported religious attendance surveys were consistently too high.)

Pew notes that the National Opinion Research Center, with different questions and framing, shows a similar number of Nones. It's at 22 percent for all ages vs 26 percent from Pew, even with somewhat different framing and questioning.

At the same time, Christian denominations seemed to have plugged the gap among the self-identified faithful. Worship rates among them have held pretty much steady over the past decade. But, with more and more of this being among the older generation, not just the Baby Boomers but the Silent Generation behind it, absolute numbers of Christians are declining due to death if nothing else.

That said, there are other takeaways. Despite the "give me that old time Christianity" (which type? Catholic? Lutheran? Reformed? Arminian? Anabaptist? Eastern Orthodox? Jacobite/Nestorian?) claim that it's those liberal Protestants (and cafeteria Catholics) who are all running away.

Not really.

Conservative mainline Protestants and conservative newer-line denominational Protestants (Southern Baptists, Disciples of Christ, etc.) are declining at almost the same rate as mainline Protestants (UMC, PCA, ELCA, Episcopaleans, UCC). I have theories on why.

They relate to the header.

It's true that the decline started before the Great Recession. It started with the slow recovery after the tech bubble burst in the early years of the George W. Bush presidency. But that recovery was anemic by historic standards, and the recovery from it and the post-9/11 slump (along with late-Clinton era and Bush era deliberately blind regulatory eyes) directly lead to the Great Recession.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:19, said:

If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.

But I think the flip side holds true.

If you tell Millennials, just like Southern massas told slaves who weren't in a position to challenge them, that their hope should only be in and for the next life, they'll laugh at you.

And, it's not just today. It's like the claim in Isaiah 7:14, the famously mistranslated almah passage:

Therefore Yahweh Himself shall give you a sign: behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

No "virgin" was involved, of course, nor was any metaphysically divine Messiah being predicted. King Ahaz of Judah, worried about being invaded by Rezim of Syria and Pekah of Judah, would take cold comfort in being told to wait 700 years for a Metatron or whomever.

Instead, Isaiah was proclaiming in all likelihood that the new wife of Ahaz's son Hezekiah was going to give birth within a year, and per the rest of Isalah 7, before the child got much past the terrible twos, Rezin and Pekah would be smashed. Ironically, that baby would be King Manasseh, deemed the worst of Judah's rulers by biblical chroniclers.

I digressed a bit, but for a point. Contra Christians proof-texting the Old Testament, proclamations ("prophecies") were made for the people to whom they were directed.

So, today, with Millennials almost certain to have it worse off than not just smug Baby Boomers, but also Gen X, any church that can't address the here and now will get tuned out.

And, that's more than a soup kitchen or food bank. It's a job bank. It's sobriety support that may not be explicitly AA. It's church-based yoga and other exercise programs and more. Also, as America gets more ethnically diverse and it hits more than 50 percent non-white babies being born now, if that old church not only doesn't offer this support network, it's a bunch of old white people, the Millennials will tune out. Related to that? Unless they're conservative white Millennials, if they don't see social justice being addressed at that church (or synagogue, Orthodox and Conservative Jews), they'll tune out. 

And obviously already are.

And, given that they're young and debt-burdened in an era where income inequality continues to grow, they won't even be at success Gospel churches.


After all, per what I said about warning Christians about proof-texting the Tanakh, the preachers ("prophets") of the prophetic books were about preaching social justice, not "making predictions." And much of that social justice preaching was about wealth that was unearned, unshared, or both.

The situation is not directly parallel to World War II in Europe (and maybe in Japan?) where destruction was massive, and where deprivation lasted more deeply, not to mention pre-war and wartime political fissures that make America's look mild. But I think there are parallels.

For fundamentalist-type Christians who consider Europeans who aren't godless Communists to be mostly godless mostly Socialist, you're wrong to a degree today on belief (and way wrong on politics) and of short time sensibility.

European religious involvement closely tracked America's until the Great Depression started. It diverged some degree during then and the rearmament period, stayed about the same degree of difference during the war, then diverged more yet after World War II. But that shows it was a process. Jews lost god in the camps. Many Protestant and Catholic young German males, and their anxious families, lost god in Russian prison camps. Yet others on the Western side of the Iron Curtain lost god in postwar capitalism. (OK, the parallel fails there.)

But, it is happening, and unlikely to change. That's my analytical notes, including to my conservative Lutheran family.

Beyond that? I welcome it.

It's probably kind of like cigarette smoking. If the Nones who truly don't go to church at all continue that through age 30, they'll likely never be there. And, with that, contra the fakery of Supreme Court backtracking in rulings like Town of Greece, at some point, the First Amendment's freedom of religion meaning true freedom from government propping up religion in any way will maybe start to be realized. Beyond totally banning pre-meetings prayers, etc., I'm talking about things like churches not getting any tax breaks beyond those extended to nonprofit entities in general and things like that.

==

Update, with some related stats? In 2019, 23 percent of Americans went to church every week. Sounds fairly devoted, right, every week? But 29 percent never went once. Texas, Bible Belt stereotypes aside, is no exception. This site says that it was less than 20 percent, and they're a religious website.