Is there room for religious moderates? 12-22-15

The worst-kept secret in America is that the number of people who identify as religiously unaffiliated is growing. Recent studies show such people currently make up nearly 23 percent of adults.

This move away from traditional religion has been going on for decades, but has picked up momentum in recent years. The question for churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship is why this is happening and what might be done to turn around that momentum.

The Christian Science Monitor did this recent story exploring the question of why people of faith are leaving congregations even though they are keeping their core beliefs.

A telling excerpt:

Many are uneasy with the exclusivity that their conservative traditions lay claim to – in which the denominations assert that they have the right interpretation of Scripture and the prescription for obtaining salvation. Many are also uneasy with how this exclusivity translates into treatment of those outside the fold – what can feel like a critical judging of “others.”

For those grappling with these issues, religious institutions have a rigidity that just isn’t jibing with the increasing diversity of America. And so they’re leaving the institutions, although they still want to be on a spiritual journey with others.

These people see faith not as being about rituals and doctrine, but as about individuals coming together and enjoying an honest exchange of views.

There are several ways congregations and the branches of faith they represent can and do respond to this reality. In some cases they double-down on dogma -- becoming ever more rigid, circling the theological wagons, finding infidels everywhere. In other cases, almost the opposite is true. They practically abandon any theological claim likely to cause the slightest offense and seek to become sort of a Rodney-King-Can't-We-All-Just-Get-Along institution.

There is, of course, a middle ground, in which a deep sense of both community and humility play a role. The idea in this middle way is to support and embrace one another and to allow those in the community to ask the hard questions, the challenging questions -- all without abandoning a core set of principles and doctrines.

As is true in many other aspects of life, including politics, advocating this middle way often seems less appealing than the other ends of the continuum because it relies on reasonableness and moderation. As this Republican presidential nomination race has shown so far, candidates who at least sometimes advocate reasonableness and moderation are losing to the extremes. The task for faith communities is to find a way to make that middle way more attractive than the extremes. In an era of short attention spans coupled with some legitimate complaints about how things traditionally have operated in those communities, it's a tough -- but not impossible -- sell.

* * *

'WE CANNOT BOMB AN IDEOLOGY'

Here's another complication in the struggle against ISIS: A global think tank concludes that even if ISIS were defeated in Syria, most of the Syrian rebels remaining are in sympathy with ISIS's ideology. A key finding: “The west risks making a strategic failure by focusing only on IS. Defeating it militarily will not end global jihadism. We cannot bomb an ideology, but our war is ideological.” Sounds like we're back to figuring out how to win hearts and minds. No shock. Violence against violence rarely accomplishes anything long-term.