Yes, I know it’s a trigger topic. But Mormonism is in a faith crisis. Perhaps you can’t really separate the two out since Mormonism is quintessentially American.

I really have to write off Mormonism as a spiritual basket case. There’s no recovering from the current management structure. But that’s me. I could be wrong. Maybe there are strong wards where faith in God (remember Him?) is still the main thing.

Is American faith in decline, or just religion? It seems to me that both are. Do you see this as a disturbing trend? Or is it a positive sign, kind of like coming off a bad drug trip?

I think the USA is losing its faith though more slowly than Europe.

I think it's a good thing, mostly as it's a reduction of one of the prevalent forms of tribalism in the culture. Still need a lot more tribalistic reduction.

Based on my reading, this faith reduction correlates to strong reliable social institutions related to the rule of law. We won't see such reduction in cultures without functional social structures and reliable rule of law. These essentially replace the stranger trust and enforcement aspects religion supplied thus usurping the broad role of religion in the culture.

America is in a reason crisis.

That’s the truth!

Preach. Can I get a witness?!

Raising hand as a witness.

This is a reply to both Babylon's point and Dave's.

The way Babylon phrased the question--faith crisis versus religious crisis--was probably intended to contrast personal faith and organized religion. But it provoked a different worry in my mind: whether religions could decline but "faith," or religiosity, or irrationality, persist. I think the answer is yes, as Dave notes.

God has died before. He died in the late 19th century and as irreligion spread, so too did the human search for other ideologies and movements that were faith-based--things like Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism, and virulent nationalism. Today when God is dying again, we are seeing similar political movements sprout up around the world.

This all recalls what Dostoevsky wrote about his experience in Siberian exile in the late 1880s. Life for prisoners was pretty good in exile. There were no walls because there was nowhere to escape to, people had their own homes and their own social lives, their own love affairs, even their own evening jobs. It was just that they had to work during the day and were deprived of big city society with all its blessings. So logically, everyone was well off: just do what you are supposed to do and life will be both predictable and predictably pleasant.

But every so often a prisoner would break out of his orderly life, punch a guard in the face, and be shot. Why? Dostoevsky thought it was because people could not bear a comfortable but monotonous, structured life lacking all numinous meaning. Some people would rather die than live like that, so die they did.

The point is that for all people to some extent, and for many people to a great extent, mundane life is not enough. Rather than living in a rational world without a greater cause, these sheep seek shepherds. Deprive them of one leader and they will, when other conditions are propitious, find another. So in Dostoevsky's terms, yes it is entirely possible that organized religions may decline while religiosity remains potent or even virulent. Getting rid of the Judeao-Christian-Islamic religions does not amount to eradicating irrationality.

The way Babylon phrased the question--faith crisis versus religious crisis--was probably intended to contrast personal faith and organized religion. But it provoked a different worry in my mind: whether religions could decline but "faith," or religiosity, or irrationality, persist. I think the answer is yes, as Dave notes.

COMMENT: Certainly "faith" (in God) is a separate consideration from religious commitment, and could, as you say, persist or even increase in the face of religious decline. But your throwing in "irrationality" is misplaced. Although, certainly "irrationality" may be correlated to some extent with "faith" but only very loosely. Irrationality can exist quite well on its own terms, as you point out in this post. But that changes the discussion from "faith" to "irrationality."
_________________________________________________

God has died before. He died in the late 19th century and as irreligion spread, so too did the human search for other ideologies and movements that were faith-based--things like Bolshevism, Fascism, Nazism, and virulent nationalism. Today when God is dying again, we are seeing similar political movements sprout up around the world.

COMMENT: I reject the correlation between the "death of God" or the decline of religion with the rise of alternative "faith-based-things." There was plenty of religion in Germany and Russia prior to Nazism and Bolshevism, and these "isms" affected religion far more that religion, or the decline of religion affected these movements. I do not see any correlation between the decline of religion and the rise of "similar political movements." Quite often the rise of such movements is not the result of a rejection of religion, but rather a radicalization of religion.
_________________________________________

This all recalls what Dostoevsky wrote about his experience in Siberian exile in the late 1880s. Life for prisoners was pretty good in exile. There were no walls because there was nowhere to escape to, people had their own homes and their own social lives, their own love affairs, even their own evening jobs. It was just that they had to work during the day and were deprived of big city society with all its blessings. So logically, everyone was well off: just do what you are supposed to do and life will be both predictable and predictably pleasant.

But every so often a prisoner would break out of his orderly life, punch a guard in the face, and be shot. Why? Dostoevsky thought it was because people could not bear a comfortable but monotonous, structured life lacking all numinous meaning. Some people would rather die than live like that, so die they did.

COMMENT: This is a bad analogy. The fact of the matter is that the masses in a society are quite content with the mundane life, so long as their needs are taken care of. It is the minority that are dissatisfied, and certainly this minority does not explain the proliferation of religion, or any other social or political movement.
_____________________________________________

The point is that for all people to some extent, and for many people to a great extent, mundane life is not enough. Rather than living in a rational world without a greater cause, these sheep seek shepherds. Deprive them of one leader and they will, when other conditions are propitious, find another. So in Dostoevsky's terms, yes it is entirely possible that organized religions may decline while religiosity remains potent or even virulent. Getting rid of the Judeao-Christian-Islamic religions does not amount to eradicating irrationality.

COMMENT: I would say that for most people the mundane life is quite enough, again, so long as basic needs are taken care of. But for a few it is not, and in such cases people reach out in both positive (creative) or negative ways. But the "seeking of shepherds" or leaders either within such mundane life, or as a rebellion to such life, does not correlate with either radicalism or irrationality. I think human beings have a need for both social acceptance and self-importance, whatever their level of satisfaction with the mundane life, and seek to satisfy these needs. The fact that this sometimes results in extreme and destructive ideologies has nothing to do with religion or religiosity, or irrationality. After all, the person living the mundane, quiet, non-religious, life can be just as irrational as the radical, gun-toting, ideologue, the difference being motivation.

I don't know if God is dead, but it has been quite the lingering illness. I guess you could argue that Christianity took a turn for the worse when the Roman Empire adopted it, but personally I put the real turning point at the time Arabian mathematics and science infected Italy and Spain around 1200.

Shortly thereafter, Italy became a really hopping place, with the Medici's, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Galileo and the gang.

Then they went and invented printing. The Catholic Church no longer had a lock on information. Within 50 years, Europeans started crossing the Atlantic, and a guy named Martin Luther became a best-selling author, a concept impossible before printing.

The Catholic Church had a melt-down. Inquisition. Threatened Galileo, the Italian party was mostly over, and science moved to England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden (all Protestant to some degree) and France, still largely Catholic, but willing to give the Catholic Church a very hard time.

Then a couple centuries of religious wars in Europe. Then The Enlightenment. The American experiment was a child of The Enlightenment - Jefferson, Paine. Contemporaneously, Catherine the Great started a national campaign of smallpox vaccinations in Russia, and very publicly had herself vaccinated to show there was nothing to fear. She also started public education in Russia. Both Enlightenment effects on European culture.

The Enlightenment, followed by the resultant Industrial Revolution was when God got a serious case of the sniffles. Besides the movements in the late 19th century that LW listed, there was another one that has always fascinated me. Seances and related activities developed a huge following in the US, from roughly the time of the Civil War, through WWI.

I read a couple books a few years ago about the sinking of the Lusitania, and the Titanic. In both cases, there was much blather in the press about nationally know spiritual mediums who either perished in the sinking, calling into question their prophetic abilities, or who cancelled their passage, thus allowing them to raise their rates substantially, I would think.

We don't have "nationally known mediums" anymore. Nobody is writing books on how to hold successful seances anymore either. the paranormal has fallen on hard times. I don't think it has gone away, it is just sublimating into movies like The Matrix and the superhero movies, and a resurgent following of, if not exactly belief in, astrology (aaack!)

In my lifetime, I have seen a couple embers from the old religious wars of 15th century Europe, completely collapse. The Catholic Church had an iron grip on society in Quebec when I was a kid. The Church came out against birth control, and Quebec went from the most conservative province in Canada to arguably the most liberal. It was Quebec that championed the cause of same-sex marriage in Canada. It went from having the highest birthrate to the lowest. In a generation.

The other ember was Ireland. Famously devout. Even the birth control thing, while it dented the church in Ireland, did not knock it off its horse. I'm not sure what finally did do it. Sexual abuse scandals I think played a very major role, Whatever it was, when Ireland approved same-sex marriage by a vote of the people, against staunch Catholic opposition, the grip of the church had been broken.

There is still plenty of church influence in Europe, especially eastern Europe, but even there it is a shadow of its former self. It has been on the wane since at least the late 1700s.

The US has had a couple of major resurgences of religion. Thomas Paine famously was not a fan, but in the early 1800s, well, you know what happened then. Late 1800s and early 20th century was a mixed bag. That was kind of a mini-Enlightenment, when mainline Protestantism went all progressive and Norman Rockwell, especially in the north and west.

By the 1960s, conservative Protestantism had a resurgence, thanks to the counterculture and the sexual revolution (that thanks to the birth control pill). It had a good run, but it is showing definite signs of losing its grip. In fact, it is acting a lot like a desperate cornered animal.

The fastest growing group in America is "no religious affiliation", and the fastest growing demographic within that designation is young adults.

After that extraordinarily long-winded build up, I wouldn't call it a faith crisis. Religion is in decline. I expect the decline to be precipitous in the US, including among Mormons, like it was in Ireland and Quebec. For those of you that will be around fifty years from now, I expect you will see it play out.

Stay tuned. Could be interesting. ;)

Perhaps spirituality is as prevalent as ever even while religion declines. Meditation is more widespread than ever, for example. And interest in astrology.

America seems to be the melting pot of religious ideas, much more free wheeling than the rest of the world. Maybe it’s where tomorrow’s spirituality will come from. There’s no getting rid of the spiritual impulse. It’s part of us whether by evolutionary psychology or by divine light.

Mormonism is facing stiff competition from a rich and easily accessible marketplace of spiritual ideas. Its value proposition has evaporated, leaving it as an irrelevant cult. Which is fine. The world doesn’t need it.

>>We don't have "nationally known mediums" anymore. Nobody is writing books on how to hold successful seances anymore either. the paranormal has fallen on hard times.

I remember Jeane Dixon from my youth.

We still have well-known people who practice as mediums. I would cite John Edwards and James Van Praagh as examples. Both have had TV shows showcasing their abilities ("Crossing Over with John Edward" and "Beyond," respectively.) There have also been many shows with lead characters with psychic/medium abilities such as "Ghost Whisperer and "Medium" (which was based on the experiences of the psychic medium Allison DuBois.) More recently, you have the long-running show "Long Island Medium" with Theresa Caputo.

All of those people are a part of a broader religious movement known as Spiritualism. Wiki traces the beginnings of Spiritualism in the U.S. to the same "Burned Over District" of New York state that also gave birth to Mormonism. Joseph Smith drew some of his ideas about the afterlife from Emanuel Swedenborg, as did the Spiritualists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritualism

Lily Dale, New York, founded during the late 19th century rise of Spiritualism, is still a Spiritualist center.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Dale,_New_York

Jeanne Dixon is the last "psychic" with a national reputation, in my opinion. Her heyday was almost half century ago. I don't believe she claimed to be a medium. I can't think of any well known mediums in my lifetime, with the possible exception of Dixon.

There are still mediums some around, but they are niche players. For that matter, Rusty Nelson is a niche player. Most people in America couldn't name the president of LDS Inc if their life depended on it. Though not a household name, Rusty will at least qualify for an obit in national newspapers when he dies. Mediums, I think not.

Your question is fruitfully open ended.

Faith in what? What is the American faith?

The American faith, oddly, might be encapsulated in the following:

“The law that each creature shall take the benefits and evils of its own nature, be they those derived from ancestry or those due to self-produced modifications, has been the law under which life has evolved thus far; and it must continue to be the law however much farther life may evolve. Whatever qualifications this natural course of action may now or hereafter undergo, are qualifications that cannot, without fatal results, essentially change it. ANY ARRANGEMENTS WHICH IN A CONSIDERABLE DEGREE PREVENT SUPERIORITY FROM PROFITING BY THE REWARDS OF SUPERIORITY, OR SHIELD INFERIORITY FROM THE EVILS IT ENTAILS —ANY ARRANGEMENTS WHICH TEND TO MAKE IT AS WELL TO BE INFERIOR AS TO BE SUPERIOR; ARE ARRANGEMENTS DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED TO THE PROGESS OF ORGANIZATION AND THE REACHING OF A HIGHER LIFE.” (emphasis mine).

—Herbert Spencer—
—Data Of Ethics—

The period when this faith, faith that this is indeed some sort of law, was breached (relatively), from Ike to Ronnie (roughly), the period when an effective “shield” was conceived and wielded, was indeed a higher life. But, opinions differ.

What is remarkable about American religious life is the degree it conforms to and manifests this faith, when it could be otherwise. There are many examples of religious life that finds its very purpose in creating and providing such a “shield”, the old catholic hospital system for example, but the American faith intrudes. That is what is the matter with Kansas, and it is a matter of faith.

LDSinc is infused with this American faith from top to bottom, from its 100 billion down to the free-labour toilet scrubbers.

Remember God, you ask? Well, God helps those who help themselves (and damn the rest, this faith asserts).

The American faith, encapsulated so well by Spencer, isn’t a law, but it damn well looks like one, alas.

Human, off snorkeling

Pressurized cheese spread in a can is great to take snorkeling. The fish love it.

The American Faith is tied up in the second amendment as well. God and guns are like beer and pizza. But wasn’t personal faith a mediating factor? Today’s capitalists might not be sufficiently capitalistic (wiping out wealth for short term gain) because religious faith without personal faith produces a brain dead cult following. Which, as much as I hate to admit it, Brigham Young may have produced a reasonable balance of. But as I’ve noted before, the wheels have fallen off the cart. That balance can’t be produced again and still have a Mormon Church.

Maybe it’s really a problem of balance. Belief in God and faith in miracles can be a good thing when balanced with logic and reason. Otherwise you’re all woo. American faith by your definition without personal faith is just as dangerous but with power behind it. So it may be a mistake to say that the secularization of America is progress. The system was designed around personal faith. If you take the ballast out of the ship, what happens to the ship?

. . . not with a bang but a whimper . . . ?

You can size up history for me anytime, BOJ.

Last one to leave please turn out the lights.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You can size up history for me anytime, BOJ.

No kidding.

Exactly what I was just thinking.

Also thinking I need to go find a history book.

And read it.

From the beginning...

America is losing its faith which I think is a good thing. Personally, I’m not big on believing in something despite a dearth of evidence to support it.
However I believe we need something else communal to replace it so as to continue to maintain societal structure.
I don’t know what that would be.

Agree. Religion has fostered a lot of the charity work in America. I hope that we can ditch the religion and keep the spirit of giving. Let's keep the baby and throw out the dirty bath water. I'd rather see giving based on caring for our fellow man rather than based on guilt and fear of God being displeased.

Maybe it’s an accident of birth, if you believe in accidents, or your personal evolution. Faith might not be for everyone. The evidence in my life has led me to faith, not away from it. I think about the things that happen that shouldn’t in an OCD kind of way. If you believe in miracles, miracles happen. They produce more faith. The parable of the mustard seed is true, whether ghost written or spoken by a historic Jesus. Considering the world of fake news and social manipulation we live in, faith isn’t a bad bet.

No I don't think people are losing any faith, there wasn't much faith to begin with, maybe religiosity was stronger in the 1950s but people aren't much different than the past. Remember when 9-11 happened? suddenly all the flags went up, everyone was saying god bless america, and merry christmas again.

So we just have to wait for another crisis and everyone will be professing their belief again.

> So we just have to wait for another crisis and
> everyone will be professing their belief again.

Perhaps that has already happened but in a form that people don't recognize.

No, actually, I don't remember people saying Merry Christmas again. Christmas cards caught on in the US around 1850, and some of the earliest cards said Happy Holidays, because that was a common greeting, even back then, for the simple reason that there are two major holidays within a week of each other.

People don't send Holiday cards. They call them Christmas cards. I have several Jewish friends who send Christmas cards. They don't send nativity scenes, just generic winter scenes, but generic winter scenes were also common in cards in the 1850s. This was not some politically correct plot. It has always been thus.

There is no war on Christmas. There never has been. There were no doubt some stores that told their clerks to say happy holidays because it is kind of thoughtless to wish Merry Christmas to someone you don't know who might not be Christian. True enough, but also not that big a deal. Like I said, my Jewish friends buy and send and refer to Christmas cards.

The war on 'the war on Christmas' is a bunch of fabricated nonsense. It was fabricated for the sole purpose of certain people being able to declare that they won the war on the war on Christmas. Thanks to their unrelenting bravery, we are allowed to say Merry Christmas again. For cryin out loud.

Pat Bagley last month did an editorial cartoon about exactly that kind of phony trolling. Ah, it is still on their web page.
https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2019/12/19/bagley-cartoon-trolling/

Is this response to me or to maca?

probably to the both of us... But I'd say America's faith isn't declining but changing.

It's the religiosity that has changed over time. When John Winthrop became Governor of Massachusetts 1630ish there was no separation between church state. People could get brutally punished for skipping meetings. And not professing faith might have led to excommunication and being expelled from the community to go live with the Indians. Rhode Island has the unique place in history as a place that had separation between church and state in it's founding charter. They didn't even have a church for the first 30 or so years in the whole plantation. The Rhode Island way caught on.

Fast forward 400 years and religion has dropped it's Calvanist bent, the uncertainty of salvation, and the select few who were suppose to go to heaven, and the culture of trying to be really good and follow all the rules. Most of that old church has died and the faith now is everyone is saved, it's easy, and since it's so easy people's faith is more bent into self help, relationships, emotional self-esteem, being really nice...

The Calvanists would be laughing at us today if they could see it all.

Oops, yes, misplaced.

Yes, too much faith.

Any country that thinks religion should be a guideling for governance or foreign policy has a faith crisis. The crisis is caused by having faith in religion instead of reason.

I wonder if the Roman Empire considered it a faith crisis when the Roman and Greek gods were shown the door, and Christianity took over? Probably. Any history buffs know how that transition went?

It is clear that Zeus and the gang never got their mojo back. There is a little bit of hobby interest in paganism, but I don't see much of a chance of resurgence there either.

Christianity has had its ups and downs in America. My sense is that it is finally catching up with Western Europe and Canada in heading toward a post-Christian culture. One can hope. :)

While I'm not real confident in my prediction, I think WASP religion peaked in the 1950s, took a big hit in the sixties, tried to claw back in the eighties through now. It got a lot more political in the process, but it still feels like a rear-guard action to me.

Thoughts?

This alludes to some of the issues I raised in a different post.


-------------------
> I wonder if the Roman Empire considered it a faith
> crisis when the Roman and Greek gods were shown
> the door, and Christianity took over? Probably.
> Any history buffs know how that transition went?

That is evidence again that the Roman leaders recognized how important religiosity, or irrationality, is to people. It is Dostoevsky's observation in both his exilic reminiscences and in Crime and Punishment. For many, if not most, human beings living without religion, broadly defined, is difficult.


--------------------
> It is clear that Zeus and the gang never got their
> mojo back. There is a little bit of hobby interest
> in paganism, but I don't see much of a chance of
> resurgence there either.

This is what Nietzsche meant, and I paraphrased, with the suggestion that "God is dead." That pronoun should be revised to "gods are dead" because of the vast number of deities who have become nothing more than "hobby interests." Gods rise and fall; and even the same god changes nature over time, as is evident in Mormonism but also in Christianity.

Put differently, God is something like a virus. It is an organic entity that evolves constantly. The question is therefore whether the current virus is spreading, holding steady in a host population, declining, or about to mutate in a way that produces a new epidemic or a pandemic.


-----------------
> Christianity has had its ups and downs in America.
> My sense is that it is finally catching up with
> Western Europe and Canada in heading toward a
> post-Christian culture.

I think that is true. But the US is more religious than other rich countries, and God has reappeared in different, partially overlapping, guises several times over just the last century (moderate Christianity in the 1940s-1970s, politically active Christianity in the 1980s, increasingly charismatic Christianity after that, and now militantly political Christianity) and might mutate into an acute infection yet again.


------------------
> While I'm not real confident in my prediction, I
> think WASP religion peaked in the 1950s, took a
> big hit in the sixties, tried to claw back in the
> eighties through now. It got a lot more political
> in the process, but it still feels like a
> rear-guard action to me.
>
> Thoughts?

It makes sense to me that the US is generally growing more resistant to the Christian vector in its current form. But is that immunity more general? Does it work against other forms of religion/irrationality? I worry that it might not. In fact, I'd extend that observation to the rich world in general. God is effectively dead in much of Europe and Asia, but virulent nationalism--a variant of religion in many senses--has grown much more prevalent.

Is God--or the God impulse--really dead? I'm not sure.

   > While I'm not really confident
   > in my prediction, I think WASP
   > religiosity peaked in the 1950s,
   > took a big hit in the sixties,
   > tried to claw back in the
   > eighties through now (and) got
   > a lot more political in the
   > process, but it still feels
   > like a rear-guard action to me.

I believe your observation to be trenchant. One of the problems WASP religiosity has had these past decades is that while it definitely is a rear-guard action, they often believe themselves capable of being on the attack.

And then there's also the fact that the rear-guard action isn't against any real attacking force! Those rear-guard soldiers are for the most part arrayed against a public body that doesn't appreciate the role the rear-guard soldiers are playing. They are just a bunch of civilians with lifestyles that the rear-guard thinks it should be attacking.

That rear-guard action has achieved considerable success in the political realm. That may not be religion per se, but it surely is relevant.