Worry about decline of belief, especially among the young

After doing a little summer nonfiction reading, my thoughts this weekend center on houses of worship, and I won't sugarcoat what I'm thinking.

Frankly, I'm worried.

COVID introduced a new reality for churches; thanks to the March 2020 stay-at-home order, parishioners now expect to have the option to stream the service from the comfort of their homes, and many churches now offer virtual church on a permanent basis.

In-person attendance is less than it was pre-pandemic; in some cases, the crowd is much reduced.

When people fail to show up, the hope church leaders have is that financial giving will be either mailed in or sent electronically.

After a quarter century of leading churches, it is evident to me that houses of worship are, at a basic level, small businesses, with income and expenses and with profit and loss.

It is my surmise that some pre-COVID giving, hopefully a small percentage of weekend attendance, will never return.

The landscape has changed.

Projections

The New York Times, in an op-ed piece earlier this month, warned of "America's Coming Charity Deficit."

Columnist Ericka Anderson penned, "The decline of religious belief in America will cause incalculable spiritual damage, but even non-believers should worry about the practical consequences of an increasingly secular U.S.," with the writer making note of what she called "a ticking time bomb of philanthropic demise."

Philanthropy Roundtable, the newspaper said, reported wealth and age matter a great deal.

"The wealthiest 1.4% of the country comprise 86% of charitable donations," noted the Roundtable -- with PR's factoid covering not just churches but the universe of not-for-profit organizations.

"Giving is highest among those in their 60s and 70s (and) 44% of Generation Z and 42% of millennials identify as religious 'nones,' meaning their ardor to support organized religious groups is markedly less than that of their elders."

Solutions

"Religious organizations and churches are working to draw people back to faith, but some will never return," concluded the Times.

Hold on just a minute.

I'm old enough to remember a movement that gained popularity for a time in the 1960s, a philosophy based on the views of the German Friedrich Nietzsche, himself no fan of faith.

An anecdote is told of Nietzsche's view of religion, which I'll share as a first-person account.

"I was about to descend into the New York City subway and a sign was seen which read, 'God is dead. -Nietzsche.'

I got on the underground transport and went to work. At day's end, I returned home.

As I ascended the steps to the subway platform, I saw the same sign spotted in the morning.

Someone had crossed out a couple of words in the placard and added a few new ones.

The sign now read: 'Nietzsche is dead. -God.'"

Yes, churches have noticeably less in-person attendance post-COVID in 2022 and the allure of streaming worship is strong. Giving has been impacted.

I'm worried, but I'm not in a state of panic.

I'm not panicking because God, in my view, has got this seemingly alarming situation under control and is about to do a new thing with faith communities.

What that new thing is this writer hasn't the foggiest notion.

In my mind, however, I recall a liturgical phrase to which I cling like a life raft.

Those words close today's column: "The church is of God and will be preserved until the end of time."