Are We Losing Our Religion?
By: Fred Pearl
Tags: Religion, Atheism, Anthropology, Religion And Spirituality

Are We Losing Our Religion?

A review of Losing Our Religion by Graham Lawton, that appeared in New Scientist Magazine, April 2014. Fred Pearl Feb 20, 2020·5 min read

Secularism on the Rise

“The human mind is primed to believe in god, so why are so many people abandoning religion — and should we be worried about living in an atheist world”

The quote above is the subtitle for an article that first appeared in April 2014

The quote above is the subtitle for an article that first appeared in the April 2014 issue of New Scientist Magazine. The article, Losing Our Religion by Graham Lawton suggests that even as atheism and secularism are on the rise, religion and spiritual belief are in a global decline.

So, why am I reviewing an article in 2020 that was written 6 years ago in New Scientist? Because it is included in the 42nd edition of Elvio Angeloni’s Anthropology Annual Editions (McGraw Hill, 2019). AnnualmEditions is supposed to present accessible articles from periodicals written by experts in their fields on issues important to students today.

I had to bite my tongue a little as I read Lawton’s sociological analysis of the rise of atheism and the demise of religion. It’s certainly not Lawton’s fault that he’s a sociologist, but I wonder whether there is a dearth of anthropologists for Angeloni to draw from for his annual compilation. It’s unusual for an anthropologist to rely so heavily on survey data to answer big questions. Anthropologists prefer to focus on smaller-scale issues that can be studied by participant observation.

As an anthropologist I was tipped early that there might be a problem when the author described his own Sunday “church” service at a self-proclaimed “godless congregation” founded by two well-known comedians in London in 2013.

I would say there’s nothing wrong with being a member of the Sunday Assembly, but starting off the article with a discussion of your minority cultural group is a good indication that you might have an agenda of promotion and legitimization. This way of operating is rooted out of student anthropologists in their very first introductory anthropology course, when they are taught that exhibiting such ethnocentrism is in poor taste and a recipe for unprofessional results.

The authors early argument is that atheism and secularism are on the rise — a claim that must be readily apparent from the floor of the Sunday Assembly. He states:

“A decade ago less than three-quarters of the world’s population identified themselves as religious. Today less than 60% do… Some of the biggest declines have been seen in countries where religion once seemed part of the future… In 2005, 69 percent of people [in Ireland] said they were religious; now only 47 percent do.”

I’m not sure where these statistics are coming from, but any introductory college student knows you need a citation there. But, let’s return to that momentarily.

On The Demise of Religious Thought

In the late 18th/early 19th century, the eminent sociologist Emille Durkheim, expected that a rise in scientific thinking would eventually lead to an erosion of religious thought. My recollection is that Durkheim saw the complexity of religion as unsustainable once the secular state replaced religious ones in the 18th centuries (Durkheim 1912, On the Division of Social Labour). However, his predictions for the demise of religion were premature.

Remember from our discussion of Malinowski on science and religion that science, or profane knowledge, is not in opposition to belief, or sacred knowledge, but rather, is complimentary to it. Malinowski’s examples of Trobriand magic showed the inadequacy of Durkheim’s kind of sociological thinking, at least as it applied to the abandonment of religious thought. He showed that all societies, no matter how small, large, advanced, or primitive, have knowledge domains that include both science (profane knowledge) and religious belief (sacred knowledge)

For the last twenty or thirty years my common sense tells me that two trends are seen with regard to religiousness in western society: First, there has been an increase in secularism; and second, there has been a concurrent rise in religious fundamentalism.

Graham Lawton, from his vantage-point in the U.K. sees principally a rise of secularism. From my vantage point in the American south (south and east Texas) I see a pronounced rise in fundamentalism — especially since the beginning of the Trump era (2016-present). One could, of course, argue that this “rise” is nothing more than the “silent majority” coming out from hiding because they see in Trump a champion — even if his personal moral code does not live up to their standards.

However, the global rise in fundamentalism began long before Trump’s presidency was on the horizon.

Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project

Back to the survey — Perhaps the data comes from the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project.

According to this 2010 data, only 16.4% of the world’s population identifies as “unaffiliated” with reference to religion (/religions/unaffiliated), only a portion of whom are atheist on agnostic. Many of the religiously unaffiliated in the survey still hold religious or spiritual beliefs.

According to the Pew-Templeton predictive model, the religiously unaffiliated will increase in number from 1.13 billion in 2010 to over 1.2 billion in 2050. As a percentage of the total population, however, this represents a decline from 16.4 percent of the world’s population to just a little over 13.2 percent.

Religious Affiliation in 2010

Religious affiliation in 2050

So, is the world losing its religion? Probably not. Is it easy to come to that belief while living in the U.K, one of the least religious countries in the world? Definitely.