Here's an off-the headlines theme for media to explore: To what extent does the slide toward a Great Depression for churches since 2000 underlie America's ills?
Think about it. Surveys and pundits underscore the rampant pessimism and dissatisfaction among many citizens, the toxic political divide and the way anything from calls for COVID vaccinations to Simone Biles's Olympics withdrawal will now stir partisan furies.
Consider ills that occurred simultaneously with weakened churches, bemoaned last week by New York Times columnist David Brooks. Major depression among teens jumped 63% from 2013 to 2016. Suicides increased 33% in the two decades ending in 2019. Estrangement from a family member is reported by 27% of Americans. Since 1990, those saying they lack even one close friend have quadrupled.
Such concerns evoke the classic book "Bowling Alone" by Harvard Professor Robert Putnam, a much-mulled 2000 tome now available in an updated 2020 edition. Not just bowling leagues but hyper-individualism, minus personal fellowship, is shrinking local lodges, civic groups and charities as well as churches. This seems to be an old problem (see the video with this post) that is only growing more intense.
The 2012 National Council of Churches yearbook (the 80th and last edition before publication ceased) reported that groups representing 330,222 local congregations claiming 159.8 million members filed data (a big undercount that omitted scads of independent churches). That was well over 20 times the current U.S. outlets for McDonald's or Starbucks. Big numbers, high stakes.
Local churches' centrality in community decline and prospects for recovery was asserted by Matt Lewis, a Daily Beast conservative, in an Eastertime piece (“America’s Losing Faith, and That Makes the Next Trump All But Inevitable“) and a follow-up last week (“How Trumpists Prey on Loneliness, and Loneliness Preys on Trumpists: Frankly, We Did Join a Cult“).
Lewis describes himself as a churchgoer (no specifics revealed) and "a (very flawed) Christian" who constantly needs God's forgiveness.