Agnostic Front

Remember the days when everybody you knew hated going to church? I grew up in a relatively secular home and as a kid I always counted myself very lucky. My friends would complain about how they had to wake up early, put on nice clothes, and spend more than 2 hours of every precious weekend at a place that was apparently very boring and uncomfortable. I've only been to a few church services in my life and have never practiced any religion, so I can't really confirm or deny anything that my buddies told me, but at the time I was convinced that sleeping late and goofing off were way better uses of my time. Sure, I was just wasting time until my friends got home from church or until the Redskins game came on, but according to my friends, church was a waste of time too. If I'm gonna waste time, I'm gonna do it in pajamas.

This same overall message about church was consistently reinforced throughout the years. A very small percentage of people that I went to college with would have described themselves as religious. Even fewer actually went to a Christian church. In college and graduate school, church was expressly for the scant few evangelical Christians and devout Catholics. The cumulative experience of my youth led me to believe that religion in America was on a downswing. We were moving towards a more secular society. Someday a childhood like mine would not be an anomaly. Surely all of my friends who grew up hating church wouldn't subject their kids to the same thing. I'm not saying that this would have been a good or bad thing. I wasn't leading a campaign for sleeping late on Sunday, it just seemed like an increasingly antiquated practice.

I guess this experience is what led to my current consternation with our third Great Awakening. I never thought I'd live in a country that is becoming more religious. Again, I'm not saying that the spirituality aspect is a bad thing (there are plenty of other bad things that go along with it, but the spirituality is fine). I think a lot of people need a spiritual side, but I'm really surprised that it has taken the form of traditional Christian church. Sure, they have skateparks and bowling alleys and the youth group leader has tattoos (of Jesus), but they're still talking about accepting JC as your lord and savior. They're still trying to proselytize and carry out religious imperialism through their missionary work. It reminds me of those people who say that they're going to have a non-traditional wedding, but still end up being married in a church and subjecting their friends to 1st Corinthians for the millionth time in their lives. Those are still traditional weddings and this is still traditional church.

So now I'm wondering if I was misreading the status of religion in America all along. I grew up in an east-coast blue state where Christianity holds less sway than the rest of the country. Most colleges are not a representative cross-section of America either. Maybe I'm the only one who feels like this snuck up on them. Either way, religion is back and a lot of those kids who complained about church are now piling the family into the SUV and continuing the tradition. I don't know exactly what brought church (and the children who hated it) back, but I have some ideas. I'll start on those in my next post.