Religion is Dying
by Jorge Vargas
But belief isn’t. At least, in the West.
Let’s move beyond sensationalist statements – they rarely have a point and when they do, we never understand them clearly. During a recent 4-month-long stay in Madrid, Spain, which allowed me to travel to Italy and France, I experienced many things – my wording is vague for a reason.
One of those things which I experienced in the Spanish capital was the entire topic of religion. Prior to my time in Spain, religion had been an important part of my life but I soon realized, after meeting a few people who I know hold it in the highest of regards, that I’m not religious in the conservative sense. I’m Catholic and believe in God while also giving all respect to the Vatican and its codes and teachings, but I don’t ‘practice’ with as much frequency as others. My reasons for why I don’t ‘practice’ are usually kept private but I won’t shrink from the occasion and will gladly point out that I don’t like the hypocrisy attached to public ‘worship’.
Regardless of creed and nation, we’ve all seen those people who go to religious services and make sure everyone sees them. It’s just one of the reasons that people often use when defending their lack of attendance in religious services.
Another reason would be that it’s merely ‘too much’. That’s an easy enough argument to make within the Catholic religion – just take a look at some of the cathedrals of Europe and South America and you’ll realize that it really is a bit too overwhelming. But there are too many reasons to name them all, and they all boil down to the title of this piece that you’ve kindly chosen to read: Religion is dying.
But how can I make such a claim and on what grounds?
The topic of religion came up with certain frequency in Spain thanks to the fact that that country is still reeling from the effects of Franco’s conservative and ultra-Catholic dictatorship – people weren’t allowed to kiss in public, and at the beginning of Francisco Franco’s regime, the Vatican and the Dominican Republic were the only two entities to not sever relations with the former imperial power. And it would appear that Spain – if one were to accept some minor generalizations that are always necessary in these types of arguments – can be divided into two camps when it comes to the issue of faith: stout believers who were usually more right wing and in most cases would have aligned themselves with Francisco Franco, and disbelievers who opposed the right in all of its ways.
The concept of the stout believers is a simple one to grasp. Just look at the Protestants in the US who genuinely believe that Bush is embarking on a holy war to save us from the heathen, but the concept of disbeliever is slightly more complicated because we’re taught to assign those people to negative connotations that are always applied to atheists. Most of the disbelievers who I spoke to in Spain believe that there is something else out there. That there does exist a God and a Jesus and so forth, but they don’t believe in the Catholic Church or in any other organized religion. When presented with these findings, some would claim that these people are agnostics and therefore they’re nothing new because the world has always had agnostics, but this is not agnosticism. How do I know that?
Because I believe the same thing, and I know I’m not an agnostic. These people are spirituals. Or perhaps the proper term would be that they’re ‘spiritual’.
This only begins to answer a part of the question asked beforehand. This doesn’t explain why religion might be dying but it does give more than a clue as to what is most certainly going to replace religion in a process that will outlive everyone reading this article.
Judging from first-hand experience, Peru, Spain, and the United States all have something in common, as do several other Western nations. If one is allowed to judge from what one has read, heard, and seen: The number of people who don’t believe in religion but believe in the belief itself is growing dramatically and the percentage of people who have these beliefs is largest in the ages of 14 to 30.
The number of people attending mass weekly in the Christian countries falls steadily in some areas, and dramatically in others. The urban areas of the United States could easily be described as religious wastelands, while the cathedrals of South America and especially Europe remain packed – but if one looks closely, the majority of people attending are the elderly or the poor, depending on the region.
This isn’t just a commentary on the state of world religions but on the state of humanity. The West needs a revival of some sort. Judaism has lost its honor now that Israel – rightfully so – is constantly being depicted as a bloodthirsty menace over the ‘poor’ Palestinian, while Roman Catholicism has long since held the stigma of being too corrupted too easily. And of course, with US President Bush constantly claiming that God has given him visions and messages and the like, the Protestant sects are quickly losing all of the respect that was once given to them. The West is tired of religion. The West wants change.
After all, for how long can the West ignore the fact that most of the world lives in utter despair while our cathedrals are filled with gold and other riches, or while the Jewish faith centers itself on the state of Israel, a state that has time and again proven its desire to exist above all costs, including the loss of innocent human lives. The West is losing its soul in this desire to consume what belongs to others and defend its own. And religion is standing by, a doing which is completely unacceptable.
But the fact that religion is dying in the West, while giving rise to Spirituality is a sign that we’re headed toward an era where openness of mind will be a real thing rather than rhetoric. After all, if you can accept that your beliefs are completely personal and come from within not from the gilded halls of Rome or Jerusalem, then you’ll have no reason to force your beliefs down the throats of others. While it’s somewhat pitiful that our species needs things to be that personal for us to respect them, it’s certainly better than the US version of religious tolerance in which Tolerance only extends to Christians and, if in urban centers, Jews.
Perhaps all of this can be summarized by the following: The great
religions of the world are falling because of their own power and arrogance.
The world has had enough. And change, of some sort or another, whether
you like it or not, whether I prefer it or not, is most certainly necessary
and on its way, lest we lose our own souls. The divisions of Spain will
be felt throughout the world, and we’ll have to choose between tolerance
and religion. Which will you choose?
