Weekly Digest: How the Pandemic Changed American Religion
Welcome to my weekly digest for January 13, 2023.
For new subscribers, this contains a roundup of my recent writings and podcasts, as well as links to the best articles from around the web this week. You can control what emails you get from me by visiting your account page.
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My next monthly newsletter comes out on Monday.
How the Pandemic Changed American Religion
New research from the American Enterprise Institute looks at how the pandemic changed the religious landscape in America. While few people changed their religious affiliation, you won’t be surprised to hear there was a decline in attendance.
This seems to have mostly affected younger people, again unsurprisingly.
Conservatives, older Americans, married adults, and college-educated Americans reported less of a decline in regular worship attendance than other Americans did. In fact, their frequency of attendance at religious services was largely similar before and after the pandemic. In contrast, young adults (age 18 to 29), liberals and moderates, and Americans without a college degree were all more likely to never attend religious services before and after the pandemic.
But it does seem to be a pervasive trend.
Note here again the widely observed finding that the more education someone has, the more likely he is to attend religious services. That’s not the image our society conveys about religion.
There are more graphs in there so check the whole thing out.
Evangelical Husbands
This is an accurate summation of all too many evangelical husbands.
Imagine believing this is a patriarchal religion. A great example of the “ha, ha, only serious” genre.
Best of the Web
Andrew Tate, the online menu’s guru with an enormous audience that I previously wrote about, has been arrested for sex trafficking in Romania. Given that he brags about having a harem of cam girls and that he has corrupt government officials on the take, this should come as no surprise. In the UK, teachers are looking to deprogram boys who were under his influence.
Rob Henderson: Darwinian Hero's Journey in Aladdin
Matthew Crawford: Was the sexual revolution a government psy-op?
NYT: The Year Pop’s Men Dismantled Their Masculinity - no thanks.
Discipleship and Dominion: But who does the dishes?
CNN: ‘Tradwives’ promote a lifestyle that evokes the 1950s. But their nostalgia is not without controversy - speaking of doing the dishes. I believe the 1950s housewife lifestyle has long been present in the fetish role playing world, and I would not be surprised if there’s an element of that with this - consciously or not.
Carl Trueman: Apocalyptic Politics: Christianity and the New World Order
NYT: Tranq Dope: Animal Sedative Mixed With Fentanyl Brings Fresh Horror to U.S. Drug Zones
Evan Rosenfeld provides a cautionary tale of what happens if you build a business entirely on someone else’s platform.
WSJ: Your Coworkers Are Less Ambitious; Bosses Adjust to the New Order - people today increasingly realize that the social contract has been broken, and are acting accordingly. These workers are rightly treating their job like what it is: a transaction.
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New Content and Media Mentions
My three worlds model got mentions at Mere Orthodoxy and Modern Reformation.
New this week:
Prince Harry, Spare Thyself - my look at Prince Harry’s new memoir, Spare. While I find many of the criticisms of him valid, I also recognize that he was put into a really lousy position in life.
My podcast this week is on where to live. I examine the attributes of different kinds of communities, ranging from urban centers to small towns. Paid subscribers can read the transcript.
At American Reformer, Ben Dunson writes on the winsomeness wars, and Timon Cline asks if it’s time to drop the label conservative.
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Post-Script
Paul Ehrlich, author of the now-infamous book The Population Bomb in 1968, is still at it. He was recently on 60 doing his same ol’ schtick. Here’s what he said back in 1970 regarding we should be doing about people who have too many kids.
"Note here again the widely observed finding that the more education someone has, the more likely he is to attend religious services. That’s not the image our society conveys about religion."
That stat also stood out to me. Maybe I'm behind the 8-ball here, but I recently decided that my family needs to refrain from all commerce on Sundays. Like many evangelicals, I've generally been surrounded by a more antinomian view of the Sabbath and have largely had to navigate these ideas myself, for my family's sake.
I'd been thinking about this for a while for a number of reasons, but I recently saw an old friend whose career went sideways and is stuck often working Sundays. And I can see how hard this makes it to get back into the church habit, as he would sort of like to do. Even on Sundays he doesn't have to get to work until noon or so, I think it becomes harder to find the motivation. I can also see how never being assured of a particular day of the week off is just a burden in one's life.
Of course, I don't think this is all that's going on with that statistic about education and church attendance, but I do think it's one thing. The Blue Laws did indeed serve a spiritual purpose, in addition to being an act of basic decency for the working man. The good news is that even a minority within a community that refrains from commerce on Sunday can still make a marginal difference. Perhaps one less restaurant decides to hold Sunday brunch, or one less cashier is kept on staff.
I think the pandemic helped prune our churches of those just attending for appearances and other less noble reasons. I think it helped us become firmly seated in the 3rd phase of the decline where having a religious affiliation is detrimental to your standing in society. This is a good thing. Now to get churches to stop live streaming the services! Sure use Zoom for your true shut ins (have a team that goes to their houses to be with them as well) but eliminate one "excuse" for folks to abstain from actually attending a worship service.