Thoughts on Why the Nones are Puzzling

The growth of the religious "nones" is confusing only because we're asking them the wrong question. Asking, "What is your religion?" overly simplifies religion. Religion is best expressed using the three B's: believing, belonging, behaving. Here are three alternative questions to the traditional "What's your religion?":

1. Do they express religious beliefs (e.g. belief in God)?
2. Do they belong to a religious body (e.g. membership in a congregation and/or denomination)?
3. Do they behave in a religiously prescribed manner (i.e. weekly religious attendance)?

By focusing on the confluence of these three things, instead of insisting that religiosity is a single thing, we notice that religious change is all about a shift among the importance of the B's, not a simple decline of "religion." Very little of the increase in religious nones is due to people expressing less belief in God. In other words, it's not about more atheists and agnostics. Instead, we see that the vast majority of the nones are people who retain some kind of belief but who have no belonging and little religious behavior.

This perspective opens new lines of inquiry. What about the folks who retain their belonging and behaving but abandon the belief (e.g. atheistic Jews)? What does it mean to believe and behave but not belong?

When Protests Succeed

Following the widespread outrage of many progressives over the "charitable" giving practices of Chick-fil-A and the audacious statements of Dan Cathy, it's president and COO, the company has promised to direct its nonprofit wing, WinShape, to halt all donations to anti-gay organizations and has issued a corporate memo encouraging all employees and owners to "treat every person with honor, dignity and respect—regardless of their beliefs, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender." While they stop short of enacting actual anti-discriminatory policy (though, as far as I know, discrimination had never been an endemic problem), it certainly amounts to a symbolic step in the right direction. However, I've seen several people on Facebook asking "Does this mean I can start eating at Chick-fil-A again?" It's an important question.

To put this into context, let's look back to another social justice campaign, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60's. When buses refused to change their policies about priority seating for white passengers, black customers boycotted the buses, choosing instead to walk whenever they could and to organize carpooling when they couldn't. The protests were ultimately successful, and the bus companies were forced by the courts (albeit grudgingly and primarily for economic and not moral reasons) to change their racist policies. When this happened, the black protesters started riding the buses again. Imagine if they hadn't, though. What if Southern blacks had decided that the reversal of the policy wasn't enough? What if the movement demanded more of their oppressors? What if animosities had been allowed to overshadow the victory? I think this would have been detrimental in a couple ways. First, it would have eroded the sympathy that the Civil Rights Movement had been fostering among non-black wouldbe allies, thus weakening the long-term chances of success of the movement. By not being goal-oriented, the movement would have risked playing into many's suspicions that it was about agitation per se and not about results. Second, the Civil Rights Movement had always been about social equality, about desegregation, and about reunification. By refusing to return to the buses, the Civil Rights Movement would have not only been guilty of baiting-and-switching in the immediate goals of the boycott but also would have been abandoning the overarching goals of the movement itself. Why would things be any different for the Gay Rights Movement?

We should not overlook the fact that the changes at Chick-fil-A are a victory for the protesters. This battle is won. Admittedly, circulating memos and making pronouncements is one thing; actions are another. Observers should most definitely keep a close eye on on the corporate culture at Chick-fil-A and the giving practices at WinShape. In the meantime, I'm going to treat myself to a Spicy Chicken Sandwich--while doing my best not to look smug while eating it.

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UPDATED (1:47 PM)

UPDATED (9/24/2012): Looks like Cathy didn't get the memo.

Getting the -schaft

I was reminded yesterday about an old theoretical expression of the ongoing discussion I have between communalism and individualism. Ferdinand Tönnies introduced the respective German types Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Gemeinschaft is essentially social organization/interaction that is group-oriented for the group's sake, while Gesellschaft is social organization/interaction that is self-oriented for one's own benefit. There is really no good way to talk about these concepts without misconstruing or oversimplifying them, but I'll risk it and write that we can think about them as being roughly realized in the following dichotomies: rural vs. urban, agricultural vs. industrial, family vs. stranger, traditional vs. modern, etc. To say that Gemeinschaft = communalism and Gesselschaft = individualism would be wrong, but I think these concepts offer another way to think about the abstract distinctions and transition about which I have been blogging here for a while. I just wanted to introduce the terms for future use.

The Perverse Nature of Charity: Why Giving Isn't Good Enough

This is an issue that has been discussed in sociology for quite some time. It's nice to see a clergyperson advocating for real social change. Here is a selection to entice:

The problem with charity, including charitable deeds done by churches, is that it allows people to believe that a given social problem is being addressed, when actually there is only a Band-Aid being put on the wound. It allows donors to feel good because they think that they have "made a difference." Actually, charity may do more for the donors than for the institutions they purport to serve. The problems that people face in a country like ours, in which there is such a wide disparity of wealth, cannot be addressed comprehensively by charities, no matter how many people of good will donate or volunteer.

Now read the entire (and short) piece.

The Street-sweeping Brotherhood

I mean, a revolution that cleans up after itself? What's that about? ;)

Race, Yes--But Not Only Race

Here is what Christopher Hitchens over at Slate on Monday about Glenn Beck and the Tea Party party:

One crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile. It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority....In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one....It's not unfair to say that such grievances are purely and simply imaginary, which in turn leads one to ask what the real ones can be. The clue, surely, is furnished by the remainder of the speeches, which deny racial feeling so monotonously and vehemently as to draw attention.

I think that Hitchens has it wrong. It's dismissive and reductionistic to write that this whole thing is about imaginary racist fears. I'm not saying that race isn't a part of this. It most certainly is, but the relationship is spurious. It's only about race inasmuch as race is a part of status. In other words, white Americans are (correctly) sensing that their long-privileged location at the top of the social totem pole is in danger. Unlike racial politics, or even necessarily class, status is by definition hierarchical, that is, it stratifies. It's zero-sum; equality is not an option. If we think more broadly about Tea Party sentiment in terms of changing status, the seeming-irrationality of the race-related fears disappears. The problem is not a bunch of racist idiots but instead a structural issue of status.

I see a clear parallel between the feelings of persecution among middle class whites whose status is threatened (or at least is no longer untouchable) and the embattled subcultural identity of Evangelicals in the U.S. (see Smith's American Evangelicalism), and I suspect that this explains the free flow of both ideas and people between these groups. More on this later.