Camp meeting of the Methodists in N. America / J. Milbert del. ; M. Dbourg sculp.
In September 2022, Pew Research released a bombshell report projecting the religious landscape in the United States for the next fifty years, and the news is a devastating blow to American Christendom.
Pew proposes four scenarios based on current trends, with all of them showing a dramatic shrink in the profession of the Christian faith by 2070:
The first is a conservative projection of a continued, steady rate of religious switching, resulting in the religious population going from 64% Christian and 30% unaffiliated (or "nones," as Pew calls them) to 46% Christian and 41% irreligious. The second projection foresees that Christian adherents will shrink to 39% of the population while the irreligious grow to 48%. This projection is more realistic because it assumes that there is a floor to the mass apostasy from Christianity, which we see in other western nations.
The third is an extremely liberal estimate, which assumes an accelerated apostasy rate with no floor, resulting in Christianity shrinking to just 35% of the population and 52% of the nation becoming unaffiliated. The final estimate is a purely theoretical projection that explores how Christianity would shrink if everyone stopped switching after 2020. Even that still results in a ten percent shrink in Christianity (54%) and a four percent increase in irreligiosity (34%).
The decline in Christianity is also not due primarily to a decline in birth rates as compared to other groups, but due to Christians becoming irreligious at a higher rate than the so-called "nones" are becoming Christian. It also is important to note that these predictions do not show an overall decline in American religiosity. Non-Christian religions are projected to increase [a]. What Pew shows is a solid trend of the decline of Christianity in the United States.
With the recent revival which just concluded at Asbury University, there is major talk and hope within conservative and traditional Christian circles about a coming revival. Pew says a Christian revival is highly unlikely, but there is almost certainly a religious revival turning the corner in America, despite Pew's doubts. The question remains as to what this revival will look like.
A year prior to this report, Pew reported that around 9% of Americans are either atheist or agnostic, while 20% of Americans believe in "nothing in particular." This is significant because it tells us that a supermajority of the so-called "nones" do not adhere strongly to nontheistic systems of belief, but merely do not strongly adhere to anything.
Again, in 2018, Pew released a survey on the pervasiveness of New Age beliefs among both religious and irreligious Americans. The results show that the country is becoming neither secular atheist nor even agnostic. Instead, the US is becoming a largely pagan nation founded upon New Age spirituality.
Pew asked respondents of a variety of different groups whether or not they held to four different New Age beliefs: the location of spiritual energies in physical things, psychics, reincarnation, and astrology [b]. An astronomical 78% of those who are "nothing in particular" believed in at least one of these. Likewise, a not insignificant majority (56%) of agnostics believed in at least one of these doctrines. Astonishingly, nearly a quarter (22%) of atheists even hold to some of these beliefs.
Even more surprising than this is the amount of Christians who hold to New Age beliefs, with 61% overall and 70% of Catholics holding to at least one of these doctrines. What this tells us is that the decline in Christendom is not due to the rise of secular materialism, but instead that we are staring down a massive ground-swell of neopaganism on the horizon.
We see this in our day-to-day lives. Sure, Asbury just had a massive revival, but so far that has been an isolated event. Compare that to the march of neopaganism on our culture: given the rise of the Hindu practice of yoga among white suburbanites, the growth in devotion to the demonic Santa Muerte (Our Lady of Death) among Mexican and Mexican-American Catholics, the growing number of people who practice Reiki and Wiccan rituals, the more frequent public antics of the Satanic Temple, and the fact that seemingly every college town now has a local witchcraft store, it should be obvious to anybody with working eyes that New Age is in vogue and on its way to becoming the new national religion (at least among middle-class and affluent white people).
What should this tell those Americans who are still Christian and poised to become the largest religious minority in the country? Since we have only reported bad news so far, we'll start with some good news: what this trend shows us is that, even as people abandon Christianity, they are not abandoning their belief in the supernatural. That deep-rooted longing for the transcendent remains, but it is beginning to express itself in heterodoxical and hetero-practical ways. Whether or not this will be a stumbling block to the acceptance of real religious devotion, let alone acceptance of the True Religion, remains to be seen. However, common sense would seem to say that spiritualists would be easier to convert than materialists.
Now for some more sobering news: Christians in this nation are going to have to completely adjust their engagement strategies and many of their current practices. As stated before, Pew shows that nearly two-thirds of Christians generally (and over two-thirds of Catholics specifically) already accept New Age beliefs that are contrary to the faith. 40% of American "Christians" believe in psychics and 29% believe in reincarnation. Not just that, but Pew doesn't even account for the large portion of American Christendom that participates in seemingly innocuous New Age practices such as yoga (which, Deo volente, we will treat in a later article). The sad reality is that before Christians can begin to combat the increasingly paganistic spirit of the age, they are going to have to do some serious house cleaning and rehaul their evangelistic marketing.
What does this look like, exactly? While this article is not aimed at giving an in-depth approach to fixing this major problem, we can make some brief, modest proposals:
First and foremost, Christians must exorcise any semblance of New Age from their parishes and their personal lives. Christians must divorce themselves from yoga, reiki, tarot readings, Wiccan practices such as the saging of houses, and anything of that vein. These practices are not religiously neutral: they have a built-in spirituality that flatly cannot be Christianized in any way. Again, Deo volente, the dangers of these practices will be covered specifically in later articles, but suffice it to say that these practices should be avoided for the sake of the individual's soul and the soul of the Church.
Secondly, aspiring evangelists need to learn the mindset of neopagans in order to engage with them more effectively. What is being suggested is not that apologists should be going to yoga classes or getting reiki treatments or anything of the sort (God forbid!). Instead, as the Fathers and apologists of old had an intellectual familiarity with the errors of their age, so should we have an intellectual familiarity with the errors of ours. No yogi will be convinced by a fundamentalist shouting at him about the Triune God damning him to Hell when his goal is to become one with the pantheistic universe. Let us also not forget that, at the very least, these false beliefs contain the true teaching that the transcendent exists. As the Catechism teaches, "all goodness and truth found in these religions [are] 'a preparation for the Gospel...'" (CCC 843). Just a Christian might read the Koran or the Book of Mormon to better engage with their devotees, so should the Christian be familiar with the New Age mindset in order to point to the truths contained therein and show that they find unity and completion in the Catholic faith.
Thirdly, we must look to our own praxis of the faith and examine what traditions are efficacious towards bringing about conversion. To pull somebody out of New Age into nothing in particular would be to throw him off of a sinking ship into the roaring waves: he will either clamor back into the original vessel or sink into the black nothingness under the waves.
Where do we find growth and sustainability in Western Christendom, and specifically in the Bark of St. Peter? We find it in parishes where conservative values are upheld, orthodoxy is preached, and tradition is preserved and revered. We find that, despite the restrictions of the current Pontificate, the pre-conciliar Latin Mass is enjoying phenomenal growth. The pews are filled to the brim, the average attendee is young, and the numbers are booming. Even where the post-conciliar liturgy is celebrated, parishes that embrace authentic Catholic tradition and piety find themselves doubling in weekly attendance. This should be unsurprising, by the way. We are to call people to radical conversion. Why should we expect them to embrace something that either apes their previous ways of life or is a saccharine, butter-soft, silly religion that seems, to many people anyway, to be artificial and drab?
In fifty years, America will be pagan. Yoga studios will be the new churches, tarot readers will be the new confessors, and New Age will be the new national religion. Unless, of course, we correct course. If we embrace our religious heritage unashamedly, refuse to partake in the fads of the age, and seriously engage and strive with men over their pagan rituals, we can turn things around. The 2022 Pew article said that their data "does not mean a religious revival is impossible. It means there is no demographic basis on which to project one." Let us, therefore, create the data for one. Let us replace the tarot cards with prayer cards, exchange yogic meditation for Lectio Divina, and embrace the True Religion in place of the new paganism of the age.
Endnotes:
[a] Albeit, this is largely due to immigration.
[b] Full 2018 Pew Results:
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