(ThyBlackMan.com) When was the last time you talked about God? Do you also feel that god-talks are declining? As more people are feeling uncomfortable talking about God and faith, a large number of Americans don’t even want to be affiliated with religion anymore. This decline in the religious and spiritual conversation has adverse consequences. Let’s have a look at the reasons behind the decline of god and why it’s scary.
Years ago, when social media platforms were not there, people weren’t able to ask bold questions about religious beliefs. Those who questioned were persecuted for their views. Seeing their condition, others simply kept mum or avoided raising voice against unreasonable beliefs.
Now when people are equipped with more information and logical views, even the things that make sense are being tossed out. The tides have shifted. Now believers are quiet and non-believers are making too much noise. They are even outnumbering the believers as the report by the Barna Group suggests that out of 1,000 American adults, more than one-fifth have not talked about religion or spirituality in the last one year.
Of course, not having a religious conversation doesn’t make someone a non-believer, but it does show how people have started keeping God away from their conversations. A large number of people today say that they have no religion. Roughly 23% of the U.S. adult is now religiously unaffiliated. This is a significant rise as in 2007, 16% of Americans were in the ‘no religion’ category. According to the Pew Research study, the number of Christians has fallen from 78% to 71% during this period.
The data becomes more interesting when you realize that there’s a huge decline in the number of people who are uncomfortable in revealing details about their religious affiliation. So, if a large number of the people who were religious only because they preferred not to go against cultural norms, it is possible that most of them are now in the ‘no religion’ group. They didn’t practice religion but they were waiting for atheism and agnosticism to become more common in social life.
We should be very careful when we interpret such findings. Religion is a complex phenomenon and people can take religious matters in many ways. Some say religion can divide us. Of course, they are not completely wrong, but we should not forget the fact that religion itself builds communities and it brings everyone together.
Religion can divide people only if they choose to listen to one side of the story. Those who are not open to looking at things from others’ perspectives, they can never find peace. They brand Muslims as terrorists, Catholics as oppressive, Jews as Zionists. This is what makes people turn away from religion.
The beauty of any religion is faith. It brings people closer. People build a community where they feel safe. They know that when they become a part of the community, they are expected to think beyond themselves. They are expected to be generous and kind. In a community, they try to understand and share the feelings with each other. Their religion teaches them to treat their bodies like a temple encouraging them to stay healthy and follow good habits.
With faith in God, people gain the strength to cope. It’s true that there are risky and unhealthy ways to solve problems using religion, but there’s a fine line between blind faith and positive healing. You can’t expect God to solve all your problems, you pray for mental and physical strength and then you fix things yourself. That’s how it works.
We can be more logical about religion, but we can still believe in God, if only we chose to understand others’ perspectives. Religion is something that taught us what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s the force that still reminds us of the right doings and wrongdoings. Just because science has shown us the process of how the universe was created doesn’t mean that we should be so close-minded that we can’t see past our own ways of thinking.
Staff Writer; Corey Shaw
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