The horrors of the First and Second World Wars left organised religion in the West in a bad shape. Plagued by existential doubts, churchgoers began drifting away from their congregations. Even in America, untouched by enemy bombs, this held true. In 1945, 76% of American adults were members of a church, synagogue or mosque; by 2020 that figure had fallen to 47%. From over three-quarters to under a half.
This drift towards secularisation was also the result of literal and figurative materialism; chasing money and possessions rather than seeking spiritual fulfilment in a Universe believed by mainstream science to consist solely of matter. A brand new '57 Chevy had become more important that God.
But with over half of America's population having turned its back on churches and churchgoing, a good many folk continue to hanker after the numinous. In a poll published by Pew in December 2023, 22% of the US public claim to be unaffiliated with any religion, yet identify as being spiritual in some way. ('Spiritual but not religious', or SBNR.) That's more than the 21% who don’t think of themselves as spiritual or religious, or hold spirituality or religion as very important in their lives. The rest – those that still consider religion important to them – square with that 47% in the Gallup survey above. However, probed further, the religious were asked whether they considered themselves as 'spiritual'. Of that group, 10% described themselves as religious but not spiritual, the sort of people who attend church out of a sense of tradition, duty, and order – but feel no innate divine calling.
I want to focus on that 22%, the SBNRs. Incidentally, Pew's 2012 survey had that number at 18%; that's an increase of over one fifth in just over one decade. [I am taking the US as a proxy for what's been happening across the Western world in general, obviously each country has its own specific set of characteristics. Decline in churchgoing is also evident in countries that until recently were devoutly Catholic, such as Spain, Ireland or Poland.] SBNRism is on the rise!
We live in an increasingly fragmented age, centred around the self; self-help, self-realisation, self-reliance, self-diagnosis – tech-driven individualism. Community has become less important; participation in religious ritual with one's fellows holds less attraction. Individuals bridle against the laws and restrictions imposed by organised religions upon their faithful. "Who is some priest/rabbi/imam to tell me what I can or cannot do with my life?"
And so SBNRs who wish to seek their own personal paths to Enlightenment and Transcendence tend to do so alone, unsupported by any congregation, without any guidelines or tenets. However, in this day and age, it is easier than ever to find interesting and useful content online with which to develop your thinking. All manner of esoteric teachings are readily accessible, and a curious, though critical, mind can find many seeds yielding new thoughts that lead to genuine spiritual growth.
Coming back to the social transformation in the decades that followed WW2, the generational change that saw the baby-boomers coming of age in the late-1960s, was most profound. The hippies who sought love and peace at that time scorned organised religion, yet felt spiritually connected with the Cosmos – and psychedelic drugs played a part in that shift. I'd argue that the gulf between my parents' generation, who had experienced the full horrors of WW2, and my generation is far greater than than between my generation and my children's generation.
The New Age movement – if one can call it that, for it is so eclectic, so difficult to define – does somehow capture the spirit of our spiritual age. The stereotype of a Californian woman wearing a dress emblazoned with Native American motifs, swinging a healing crystal and chanting a Hindu mantra as she channels a 12th century Tibetan monk, puts the phrase into one neat picture. And as soon as I encounter text like "that's the hour-angle of the vernal equinox" on a website proclaiming some mystical wisdom or other, I click the Close button in the top left corner.
If there's a New Age, there must have been an Old Age; one of tradition and continuity, of orthodoxy, of unquestioning obedience to religious authorities; on this New Age turned its back. But it also turned its back on rationalism, empiricism and the scientific method. However, once science embraced the baked-in uncertainty of quantum mechanics, a whole new lexicon of pseudoscientific psychobabble became available to New Agers. The 'q' word could become a prefix to any given esoteric concept. (I stick to quantum luck.)
Having said that, physicalist science doesn't have all the answers – and only the most hide-bound reductive materialist will still claim that. Consciousness remains a deep mystery to science. Dark energy and dark matter – ditto. The past 40 years of particle physics has yielded little more than confirming the existence of the Higgs boson. What's beyond the Standard Model? Don't know. What was before Big Bang? Don't know that either.
With science riddled with so many gaps – gaps that scientists didn't even know existed 100 years ago – it becomes relatively easy to fill them with supposition and woo-woo.
Part II tomorrow – how the West met the East and a new spirituality was born.
Lent 2023 Day Six
The role of consciousness in human spirituality
Lent 2022: Day six
Do you believe in life after death?
Lent 2021: Day six
How should we see God?
Lent 2020: Day six
Build your own religion – the tenets
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