Sam Smith - Generally under-discussed is how our collective decency is determined not just by the law but by choices we make of our own free will. For example, even convicting a police officer for choking a black citizen to death will not likely change our general attitudes towards those of another ethnicity. Important as the police problem may be, much more of the pain felt by minorities in this country comes from other sources. Yet the media provides us with few examples of how we might improve things, treating ethnic issues mainly a crisis to be resolved rather than a community to be improved.
I was reminded of this by news that for the first time, less than half of Americans belong to a church, synagogue or mosque. Although I have long been a non-attender, I have also understood the role that religious institutions can play in improving or hurting our mutual moral existence. I learned this back the 1960s when my fellow activist friends included a number of ministers with whom I closely agreed save for my schedule on Sunday morning.
According to Gallup, as recently as 2000, 70% belong to a religious center. Now it is only 47% Among those born before 1946, 66% belong compared to only 36% among Millennials.
Gallup reported, “A 2017 study found churchgoers citing sermons as the primary reason they attended church. Majorities also said spiritual programs geared toward children and teenagers, community outreach and volunteer opportunities, and dynamic leaders were also factors in their attendance.
In other words, beyond matters of faith, these religious institutions help their members getting through life in a decent way.
My sense of what we can do now is to create or improve community institutions that could provide similar services absent the faith element.
One primary example would be to improve civics education in our schools As Brookings reported last year:
Americans’ participation in civic life is essential to sustaining our democratic form of government. Without it, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people will not last. Of increasing concern to many is the declining levels of civic engagement across the country, a trend that started several decades ago.Today, we see evidence of this in the limited civic knowledge of the American public, 1 in 4 of whom, according to a 2016 survey led by Annenberg Public Policy Center, are unable to name the three branches of government. It is not only knowledge about how the government works that is lacking—confidence in our leadership is also extremely low. According to the Pew Research Center, which tracks public trust in government, as of March 2019, only an unnerving 17 percent trust the government in Washington to do the right thing. We also see this lack of engagement in civic behaviors, with Americans’ reduced participation in community organizations and lackluster participation in elections, especially among young voters.
Schools also do a lousy job of introducing students to multiculturalism, something well worth doing as early as the elementary level.
It could be that existing community organizations might help by holding meetings that dealt with moral or cultural issues in their neighborhood. In other words, these groups could help fill some of the gap left by declining church attendance. What, for example, if a community group had an occasional session modeled on Quaker meeting – at which residents could get up and talk about troubles they have in the neighborhood?
We should at the very least stop not discussing this problem and move beyond relying on the law to solve all our communal difficulties. The decline of churches does not mean the disappearance of the issues they tried to address.
