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I'm Scott Galloway and this is No Mercy, No Malice. For the past several decades
religion has been fading from its central role in our lives. This week we
consider the monumental nature of this shift and how we are filling the void.
Losing my religion as read by George Han.
What has been the most significant change in the American experience over the
past century? The internet, civil rights, antibiotics, the transition from a
manufacturing to a service economy or rapid urbanization? Right up there, I believe,
is the displacement of religion from the center of our culture
and what has taken its place. Religions and religious institutions play key roles
in society, practical and spiritual. Humans are meaning-makers. We're wired to
imbue our actions with purpose. We will have gods, even if forced to make them
of mortals or machines. Religion is successful because it works. Participation
in religious services is correlated with a reduction in mortality by a third,
depression by 25%, and suicide rates by three to six times. Religion motivated the
construction of cathedrals, pyramids, and temples that set against space travel
and pocket computers still invoke awe. Here in the secularizing US, religious
people are three times as likely to be active in community organizations and twice
is likely to participate in local sports leagues. They are also 44% more likely to vote
and 44% more likely to describe themselves as very happy.
Much of religious experience has been insular, hostile to change,
driven with corruption and abuse of power. The previous sentence may be the mother of all
understatements. The land of the free was born of a violent
theocracy. Contrary to what you likely learned in grade school, the earliest English settlers wasted
little time before exiling anyone who differed on the fine points of biblical interpretation.
Eight of the original 13 colonies had official state churches and persecuted heresy.
From 1300 to 1600, European towns executed tens of thousands of their own people,
mostly women, on accusations of witchcraft, over 3,000 in my ancestral Scotland.
And in the New World, the single village of Salem executed 20 people out of a population of
just 1400. The ratio of positive to negative is legitimate cause for debate.
But there's no denying religion matters. Religion, like old actors, doesn't die. It's just fading away.
Churches are still operating and people still line up to see alpapa, but religious observance,
practice, belief is down, almost everywhere, like ad-supported cable down.
Even where it persists, Christianity co-exist with other religions and other passions.
In America, 75% of us believe religion is losing influence. We're correct.
Napoleon said religion is the only thing that keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
As our nation prints more wealth and poverty, and as we register a decline in reasons to congregate,
church, work, the mall, we are witnessing a palpable increase in hostility among Americans
toward other Americans. Exceptions distort our view of the long-term trend.
Compared to 40% of Americans generally, 59% of black Americans say religion is very important to them.
In part, this is a legacy of the role churches and church leaders in the civil rights movement.
But their fidelity is waning. 28% of Gen Z black people are religiously unaffiliated,
compared with just 11% of baby boomers. Membership in the Mormon church, once a growth engine,
has also stalled. A broad religious nationalism, which may be more the latter than the former,
is driving political change in India, and it remains a headline issue in the Middle East.
But even Saudi Arabia is creeping towards secularization.
Much of the rest of the world is already there. In China, only 10% of people claim
affiliation with a religion, and only half of them attend services. Only 11% of Western Europeans
say religion is very important in their lives, and only 22% attend services regularly.
It's worth taking a moment to consider the monumental nature of this shift.
Our species hasn't known a time when religion played such a small role in our lives.
Being religious is our natural state, and nature abhors a vacuum.
We are finding substitutes in two realms, the spiritual and the corporeal.
Humans need meaning. We crave stories and reasons and higher explanations for things.
We want someone or something to tell us what it all means.
I believe this was a significant factor behind the rise of Google.
Now, even more so, it's powering our fascination with AI.
Google and Chat GPT are omnipresent, all knowing, and soon all powerful.
Our gods can drive cars and use credit cards, sentient yet immortal, everywhere and nowhere.
Feels like a god worthy of worship, no? A? No.
If we're not worshipping the tech itself, we are treating its masters as high priests.
No group cements this more than the Elon Stan army.
Their idol is a brilliant entrepreneur, a world-changing innovator, and a
jubating absent father of 11 or 12. The refusal to hold musk to the same standards we try to
live up to defines the distinction between admiration and worship.
Tech is not our only new god, however. Our need to follow is easily transferred from the pulpit
to the stump. I didn't plan to write about politics this week, but it's inescapable.
Donald Trump loons over the American landscape more myth than man, worshipped as a savior
persecuted by the sinners of the left. There's ideological and demographic overlap between
Trump's followers and fundamentalist religion. Christian nationalist identity is highly correlated
with political extremism and violence, and was bound up in the events of January 6.
Equally concerning, 85% of adherents believe, or mostly believe, that God has called Christians
to exercise dominion over all areas of American society. Spoiler alert, they haven't succeeded.
Religion is not merely a spiritual sucker. Religious institutions have long provided the
foundation and framework of society. Their declining relevance leaves a vacuum of more immediate
and practical concern than our need for meaning. Catholic schools enroll 1.7 million American
kids. Around 15% of parents rely on faith-based childcare. More than half of food pantries,
which people rely on heavily during economic downturns, are church-affiliated.
For decades, one of the major fault lines in American politics has been the social safety net.
I, and half the country, believe the government's role, is to provide it. The other half
hates the notion. It's no coincidence that my half is largely, not entirely,
made up of people whose religious connection is scant.
Along the baton has a book about this, religion for atheists, in which he goes through the practical
things religious institutions have provided in the past. In our increasingly atomized society,
the physical coming together of weekly church attendance is sorely missed.
Most religions provide moral guidelines that, at their heart, are simple and useful.
Don't steal, be good to your parents. Render aid to the needy.
My father has been married and divorced four times, so my religious indoctrination has been
more varied than consistent. When I was at my dad's, I'd go with Linda, number three,
to a unitarian church. At my mom's, we'd go intermittently to temple. Statistics and trends only
tell us so much. The role of religion is personal. While inconsistent, the impact of religion on
my development was real. I remember the rabbi at Temple Isaiah delivering a Dvar Torah that spanned
from the conflict in the Middle East to the role of friendship. Afterward, over a brisket dip at
Junior's Delhi, my mom and I would discuss the sermon, and I remember thinking,
this is fun, and I'm good at it. I asked my mom what rabbis did and how much money they made.
They educate and comfort people, and not much. However, they command a great deal of respect.
In high school, my closest friend was Mormon. He was part of a two-parent family who loved sports,
laughed a lot, and treated me well. As a latchkey kid raised by a working single mother,
I was at the Jarvis household almost every day. I went to church events,
played on their sports teams, and even went to services a few times.
I never felt any pressure to convert, sign up, etc. My observation from spending several years
in and around Mormons and their church, the Mormon faith is strange, and Mormons are wonderful.
My path to atheism has been downhill. I've always been skeptical and judgmental and consider
myself a scientist. This made it easier to dismiss believers as idiots. As I get older, I realize
my belief that all this was nothing, and then it exploded, sounded no less batshit crazy
than the parables about loaves and fishes. Regardless, my atheism is a source of strength, as it
motivates me, to envision my death, the end of the road, versus an offeramp. Imagining my death
has made me less afraid of it, and more bold in my behavior preceding the event, i.e. now.
I've been more bold in my career, but also in my emotions, risking embarrassment, I frequently tell
people I love them, because why wouldn't I? Those who might laugh like me, face the same destination,
soon. I'd also like to think that the absence of preordained truths,
fosters a relentless pursuit of knowledge, a deeper appreciation for the wonders of the universe,
and a profound respect for the inherent value of all living beings.
It's clear to me that every being will register joy and tragedy,
and the ratio is 90% of function of when and where you're born, and the chemistry you inherit.
Seneca believed religion was regarded by the poor as true, the wise as false, and the powerful
as useful. As someone who has been all of those things, however, I believe the absence of religion
and opportunities to congregate with strangers leaves a void. I'm getting older,
wanting to serve in the agency of others to be part of something bigger and register comfort.
I'm left wanting. I'm losing my religion.
Life is so rich.
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