{"id":1542,"date":"2012-03-05T23:19:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T07:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=1542"},"modified":"2012-08-18T15:23:11","modified_gmt":"2012-08-18T22:23:11","slug":"another-thing-to-worry-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2012\/03\/another-thing-to-worry-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Another thing to worry about"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve just finished reading Mark Chavez’s book American Religion: Contemporary Trends<\/em> (Princeton University, 2011), which is well-written and blessedly brief. Chavez’s major conclusion: religious participation in U.S. congregations is either stable or declining (it’s not clear which), but it is definitely not increasing.<\/p>\n

Towards the end of the book, Chavez brings up a reason why we should be concerned about declining participation in U.S. religion. Chavez writes:<\/p>\n

If half of all the social capital in America — meaning half of all the face-to-face associational activity, personal philanthropy, and volunteering — happens through religious institutions, the vitality of those institutions influences more than American religious life. Weaker religious institutions would mean a different kind of American civic life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course we should not be surprised to learn that in this time of civic disengagement in the U.S., involvement in congregations is at best stable, and at worst in decline — that would fit in with the wider sociological trend. Nevertheless, we should worry that congregational participation is at best stable. James Luther Adams, the great mid-twentieth century Unitarian Universalist theologian, used his experiences in Nazi Germany to demonstrate that weakened voluntary associations led to weakened democracy, allowing totalitarianism to establish a foothold.<\/p>\n

If U.S. participation in religious congregations declines, that means half of all participation in voluntary associations declines — which, depending on your political persuasion, might be something to worry about. On the other hand, if you want another reason to justify your participation in a local congregation, you could say that going to Sunday services helps fight totalitarianism. Woody Guthrie’s guitar had a sticker on it that proclaimed “This machine kills fascists”<\/a> — maybe we should place signs out in front of our congregations that say “This machine kills totalitarianism.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Proposed sign for the front of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (click for a larger image)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve just finished reading Mark Chavez’s book American Religion: Contemporary Trends (Princeton University, 2011), which is well-written and blessedly brief. Chavez’s major conclusion: religious participation in U.S. congregations is either stable or declining (it’s not clear which), but it is definitely not increasing. Towards the end of the book, Chavez brings up a reason why … Continue reading “Another thing to worry about”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[262,219,220],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practical-religion","tag-james-luther-adams","tag-mark-chaves","tag-voluntary-associations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions\/2019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}