In 2021, Ryan P. Burge, the former pastor of the First Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, wrote a book about me. Or at least, about people like me… people who seem to be losing their religion.
Mr. Burge is not just a former pastor of a Baptist church; he’s also a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University. So we have two reasons to mistrust the conclusions in his book, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.
It’s a sad situation, when you can’t trust a church pastor or a college professor. But that’s where we are, these days. Especially if you’re a “None” like me.
We all know what a college professor is, but not everyone is familiar with the “Nones”. We’re the 30% of U.S. adults who, when you do a survey and you ask us, “What’s your religious affiliation?” we will answer, “None.” Some of us are atheists, some are agnostics, but most of us simply can’t find a good reason to sit through another Sunday sermon about the wages of sin. (Or, if we were raised Seventh Day Adventist, a Saturday sermon.)
According to Mr. Burge’s book, a lot of the Nones are younger people, but even older folks like me can qualify. And qualify we do, in growing numbers. He writes that, back in 1972, only 5% of Americans professed “no religious affiliation”. Now, there’s either a lot more of us, or else we’re more willing to be honest than we were in 1972.
While Nones may disagree about the basic question — i.e. Does God even exist? — most of us have this in common:
We. Really. Don’t. Like. Organized. Religion.
As evidence of our growing influence, we could refer to a story by reporter Peter Smith posted to the Associated Press website last week.
They gathered one last time on Sunday — the handful of mostly elderly members of First Baptist Church in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.
The members, joined by well-wishers, said the Lord’s Prayer, recited the Apostle’s Creed, and heard a biblical passage typically used at funerals, “To everything there is a season … a time to be born, and a time to die…”
…Afterward, members voted unanimously to close the church, a century and a half after it was created by hardscrabble farmers in this southern Illinois community of about 14,000 people.
According to journalist Smith, many U.S. churches close their doors each year, typically with little attention.
But this church closure has a poignant twist, because the pastor, on this final Sunday, was Ryan P. Burge. Author of the book, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.
Thus the designation, “former pastor.”
So, reportedly, a lot of Americans — like, 100 million of us? — have lost, or are in the process of losing, our religion.
But what, exactly, have we lost?
That depends on what the term “religious affiliation” means. Like, can a person can be “religious” without being “affiliated”…? Some people think not.
When I looked up the etymology of the word “religious”, professor Sarah Hoyt, of Johns Hopkins University, had this to say, about that:
“The Oxford Dictionary says, The connection of the word religion with religare, ‘to bind’, has usually been favored by modern writers… This etymology, given by the Roman grammarian (end of 4th cent. A.D.) Servius (‘Relligio, id est metus ab eo quod mentem religet, dicta religio’) was supported by the Christian philosopher Lactantius (about 313 A.D.) who quotes the expression of the celebrated Roman philosophical poet Lucretius (c. 96 to 55 B.C.): religionum animum nodis exsolvere, as proof that he considered ligare, ‘to bind’, to be the root of religio…”
I don’t know Latin, but professor Hoyt seems pretty sure of herself, and so do the Roman grammarians from the 4th century. So I’m going to run with the idea that “religious” and “affiliation” mean pretty much the same thing. You decide to ‘bind’ yourself to something. And most likely, it’s the same thing your parents and grandparents ‘bound’ themselves to. Mainly, they bound themselves to attending church on Sunday. (Or Saturday.).
Possibly, your family was Catholic and attended Mass every day. Talk about binding obligations…
At least they serve real wine during the Eucharist.
You’d think a little more wine at Baptist services might have kept Pastor Burge’s church from closing its doors.
But it turns out, the Catholic Church has been losing members faster than most of the other denominations. They should switch to beer, if they want to keep up with the Nones.
The tricky part about this whole story is that the Nones haven’t actually lost our religion. We have a religion, to which we have hitched our wagons. Instead of attending a church on Sunday, we shop at Walmart.
The Christian God wants us to follow His guidance.
Our God wants us to have always low prices.