Why Is Organized Religion Failing

[california boy]

I thought one of the promises of the Savior was that if we trusted in Him our burdens would be lifted.  

 

 

Luke 10

28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

 

 

 

 

 

Or how about the scripture in Nephi.  

 

"Adam fell that men might be.  Men are that they might have joy.

 

 

.  

That sounds like a promise that religion should make our lives easier more joyful and more at peace if we embrace the gospel.  From your responses, it sounds like most people are disagreeing with this concept and this verse only refers to the next life?  And people are choosing to quit organized religion because without it, there is greater joy and happiness.  

 

Was that not the promise of religion as well?  Or am I misreading the scriptures?  

[california boy]

The Internet fits that bill rather nicely.

I think you bring up a good point.  It used to be that religion provided answers to many questions that man had.  Unfortunately many of those answers were completely wrong.  The sun did not stand still, there really wasn't a world wide flood, Adam was not the first man. People have found partly through the internet that religion does not have those answers that they sought.  But the truthful answers can actually be found outside of religion.  This is something our great grandfathers did not have.  They thought they could rely on religion for those answers.

 

But that doesn't really explain the rapid decline that is occurring since the 1990's.  We have known that the earth was not the center of the universe for some time and man has been on this earth for more than 6,000 years.

[california boy]

I would suggest, among other reasonable things already mentioned, a percieved lack of miracles. c.f. Moroni 7:27-37

 

Do you think that there is a lack of miracles?  Or do you think that many things that were once thought of as miracles are explained by more knowledge of how things work?

[Gray]

I think the most likely reason is that churches are failing to meet the needs of their members. Most of the people leaving religion aren't atheists, but they're not getting fulfillment in church. 

Edited April 20, 2015 by Gray

[Mystery Meat]

Just don't cite "I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it" please. 

 

 

If you re-read what I said, I never did cite that.

[Mystery Meat]

 

 

Was that not the promise of religion as well?  Or am I misreading the scriptures?  

 

 

You are not misreading them, just wresting them.

[california boy]

Mainstream churches and synagogues in America have been losing members at an ever increasing rate for decades, while some forms of Christianity and Judaism in America have actually continued to grow.  That is why your comparison with Mormon Church attendance worldwide is not apt.  This is an American survey, and Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians, Mormons, etc., in America, do not follow the larger trend at all.  The published surveys which show this have been discussed here on this board many times.

 

I don't know that alarmist language is appropriate, since the figures don't actually tell us what they mean, or within which groups such trends are most obvious.  Such trends have been published and are readily available.

 

"Organized religion" in the West has been declining overall for a long time, harking back to the Enlightenment and furthered by modern secularism (which is itself a "religion").  We see this most starkly in Europe, where state religion was so entrenched that people were taxed by the state to support it even into modern times.  Europeans are generally so anti-religion that children who believe are made fun of at school nowadays.  Even Mormon missionaries in Europe, who have a very different message from the entrenched religions, find themselves ignored and the object of scorn through guilt by association with other Christian religions.

 

Americans have been much slower to get on the secular bandwagon, so the statistics you see now were bound to come about.  No surprise.  It was all predictable.

 

Naturally, Mormonism elsewhere in the world has not had to contend with such dispiriting anti-religious attitudes.

 

 

My comparison was only a comparison of how many people 7 million people is,, not a comment on the church.  

 

You don't think that 7.5 million people leaving organized religion in the past three years is alarming?  Hummm.

 

Religion in general has been decreasing steadly for a long time   But f you look at the graph in the article and read the statistics, there is a pretty steep uptick in people leaving religion since the 1990'3.  Just wondering what has changed.

[rodheadlee]

I find your God inept. To have to resort to death and destruction to prove a point is like a child lashing out to see who he can hurt to make himself feel better. This kind of God is not worthy of worship.

 

Organized religion is failing for two reasons. First in has not progressed with the world. It is stuck in the past insisting the future is scary. But many secular types want a more hopeful future than all the death that organized religion touts. Second as human knowledge grows the need to explain the unexplainable by invoking God diminsihes. Organized religion is just not needed to define the universe any longer.

Which godless progressive world are you talking about? The one where a godless Putin is probing our defenses daily to see if he can get away with a first strike before the end of Obama's term? Or the godless progressive world where our internet is under daily attack by godless Russians stealing our money? Or the progressive godless world where the Chinese attempt steal our defense plans and inventions daily? Or the progressive godless world of North Korea? Where is this  progressive godless world you speak  of? Must be Western Europe where they have done nothing to ease the plight of the immigrants drowning daily in their attempt to reach freedom.

Edited April 20, 2015 by rodheadlee

[Avatar4321]

Only one organized religion is lead by revelation. That could be the problem right there.

[california boy]

Perhaps one of the contributing factors in this sharp decline is the politicizing of religion.  Pat Robertson started this in the 80's with his moral majority.  He was the first one to rally religion into a political block.  That movement solidified in 2009 when the Tea Party was established.  It codified religion firmly into politics.  While that movement has done much to give Christianity a united voice in politics, I think that it has also left many disenchanted with religion itself.  TheTea party pushes the belief that their ideas are religious ideas, based on God and the Bible.   If you don't believe in the social issues that the Tea party espouses, then you can't believe the religion that is driving those beliefs.  At least the timing is in sync with the rapid decline in religion.

 

I don't think it is one thing that is causing the rapid decline in religion.  There are multiple reasons.  Hollywood, the internet, lack of trust and more.  

[stemelbow]

3 quotes from Joseph Smith which I think articulates the problem quite well:

 

“Mormonism is truth; and every man who embraces it feels himself at liberty to embrace every truth: consequently the shackles of superstition, bigotry, ignorance, and priestcraft, fall at once from his neck; and his eyes are opened to see the truth, and truth greatly prevails over priestcraft. …

“… Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, is truth. … The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.”1

In January 1843, Joseph Smith had a conversation with some people who were not members of the Church: “I stated that the most prominent difference in sentiment between the Latter-day Saints and sectarians was, that the latter were all circumscribed by some peculiar creed, which deprived its members the privilege of believing anything not contained therein, whereas the Latter-day Saints … are ready to believe all true principles that exist, as they are made manifest from time to time.”2

“I cannot believe in any of the creeds of the different denominations, because they all have some things in them I cannot subscribe to, though all of them have some truth. I want to come up into the presence of God, and learn all things; but the creeds set up stakes [limits], and say, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further’ [Job 38:11]; which I cannot subscribe to.”3

Religion hasn't proven dynamic enough, essentially. It'll remain unappealing as long as it continues to try to box in truth and people.

If Mormonism ever really becomes what Joseph describes in the first quote above, I think it'll succeed, and my hope and my expectation is that will happen, some day.

_________________________________________________________________

1. Letter from Joseph Smith to Isaac Galland, Mar. 22, 1839, Liberty Jail, Liberty, Missouri, published in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, pp. 53–54; spelling and grammar modernized.

2. History of the Church, 5:215; from “History of the Church” (manuscript), book D-1, p. 1433, Church Archives.

3. History of the Church, 6:57; punctuation modernized; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on Oct. 15, 1843, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Willard Richards.

[thesometimesaint]

I think you bring up a good point.  It used to be that religion provided answers to many questions that man had.  Unfortunately many of those answers were completely wrong.  The sun did not stand still, there really wasn't a world wide flood, Adam was not the first man. People have found partly through the internet that religion does not have those answers that they sought.  But the truthful answers can actually be found outside of religion.  This is something our great grandfathers did not have.  They thought they could rely on religion for those answers.

 

But that doesn't really explain the rapid decline that is occurring since the 1990's.  We have known that the earth was not the center of the universe for some time and man has been on this earth for more than 6,000 years.

 

As a good Rabbi told me. I look to the Scriptures to tell me the WHY God did it, and to Science to tell me the HOW God did it.

[Mystery Meat]

Perhaps one of the contributing factors in this sharp decline is the politicizing of religion.  Pat Robertson started this in the 80's with his moral majority.  He was the first one to rally religion into a political block.  That movement solidified in 2009 when the Tea Party was established.  It codified religion firmly into politics.  While that movement has done much to give Christianity a united voice in politics, I think that it has also left many disenchanted with religion itself.  TheTea party pushes the belief that their ideas are religious ideas, based on God and the Bible.   If you don't believe in the social issues that the Tea party espouses, then you can't believe the religion that is driving those beliefs.  At least the timing is in sync with the rapid decline in religion.

 

I don't think it is one thing that is causing the rapid decline in religion.  There are multiple reasons.  Hollywood, the internet, lack of trust and more.  

 

This certainly didn't help.

[ALarson]

I had an interesting conversation recently with a young man (he's currently in college) regarding why he left the church.  He told me he's not against the Mormon church, but is opposed to ALL organized religion.  I asked him why and he replied:

 

"Jesus never had an organized religion on the earth, but just taught us to love everyone and live honorably. We can live the teachings of Christ and not attend church every week."

 

Then he went on to add this relating specifically to the LDS church:

 

"I also do not believe that there was a church of Jesus Christ that needed to be restored in these latter days  Christ had no officially organized church."

 

I thought that was an interesting angle and I could tell he firmly believes this.  He also said that many in college right now feel there is no need to be a part of any organized religion.  

Edited April 20, 2015 by ALarson

[Gray]

Perhaps one of the contributing factors in this sharp decline is the politicizing of religion.  Pat Robertson started this in the 80's with his moral majority.  He was the first one to rally religion into a political block.  That movement solidified in 2009 when the Tea Party was established.  It codified religion firmly into politics.  While that movement has done much to give Christianity a united voice in politics, I think that it has also left many disenchanted with religion itself.  TheTea party pushes the belief that their ideas are religious ideas, based on God and the Bible.   If you don't believe in the social issues that the Tea party espouses, then you can't believe the religion that is driving those beliefs.  At least the timing is in sync with the rapid decline in religion.

 

I don't think it is one thing that is causing the rapid decline in religion.  There are multiple reasons.  Hollywood, the internet, lack of trust and more.  

 

I do think that's a big part of the decline. Another part might be that churches used to be the center of the community and everyone's social life, but I don't think most communities work that way anymore, especially with people under 40. 

 

And of course I think churches tend to be slow to adapt to the needs of their congregants. 

Edited April 20, 2015 by Gray

[bluebell]

I think both of these observations are true.  But the nagging question for me is still the why?  Doesn't religion promise a better life here on earth by following its precepts?  Don't you think your lives are richer and fuller being involved in a religion?  Yet from what you are saying, people are finding a better life outside of religion.  Or is the only promise of religion a better life in the world to come?

 

I think it all depends on how someone defines better.

 

If a person defines a better life as one where they are always able to do what they want, where they never have to sacrifice their own wants to take care of someone else, where they and their desires are the the ultimate authority as to what is 'right' and what is 'wrong', then no, religion does not promise a better life to them in the here and now.

Edited April 20, 2015 by bluebell

[Sleeper Cell]

I find your God inept. To have to resort to death and destruction to prove a point is like a child lashing out to see who he can hurt to make himself feel better. This kind of God is not worthy of worship.

 

Organized religion is failing for two reasons. First in has not progressed with the world. It is stuck in the past insisting the future is scary. But many secular types want a more hopeful future than all the death that organized religion touts. Second as human knowledge grows the need to explain the unexplainable by invoking God diminsihes. Organized religion is just not needed to define the universe any longer.

 

Yet, for the last hundred years or so, the primary sources of death and destruction have been secular movements, not religious. And the secularists who were responsible justified it all in the name of a more hopeful future.  

 

“Organized religion is failing … [because, in large part] it has not progressed with the world.  It is stuck in the past …”?  Then wouldn’t one expect that those churches which are the most stuck in the past would be losing members at a much higher rate than the “progressive” churches?

 

Perhaps one reason why more people feel that “organized religion is not needed to define the universe any longer” is that fewer people feel a need to define the universe.  

[JLHPROF]

I think the most likely reason is that churches are failing to meet the needs of their members. Most of the people leaving religion aren't atheists, but they're not getting fulfillment in church. 

 

This may surprise you, but I do agree with this.

But it still raises the question, is that the fault of the Churches or the members?

 

If their needs really have changed, are their needs more in keeping with what God wants, or do they just want a religion that makes them happy, regardless of truth.

 

"Sadly enough, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.  Talk about man creating God in his own image!"  - Elder Holland

[Jeanne]

There are a lot of people that probably really want to believe.  But we see so many good people die and so many promises broken that it is easier to find more spirituality in other parts of the universe.  Sometimes, I believe the only hold I have of God is the beauty of nature..the quiet...in art..in music than words repeated over and over..prayers unanswered all in a world that is not accepting to difference.

[Damien the Leper]

Yet, for the last hundred years or so, the primary sources of death and destruction have been secular movements, not religious. And the secularists who were responsible justified it all in the name of a more hopeful future.  

 

“Organized religion is failing … [because, in large part] it has not progressed with the world.  It is stuck in the past …”?  Then wouldn’t one expect that those churches which are the most stuck in the past would be losing members at a much higher rate than the “progressive” churches?

 

Perhaps one reason why more people feel that “organized religion is not needed to define the universe any longer” is that fewer people feel a need to define the universe.

I disagree. This year we remember the centennial of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. The Holocaust. Ethnic and religious cleansing on Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Darfur. Rwanda. Islamic regimes. Saddam Hussein's massacre against Kurds and Shiite Muslims.

These are not secularly based atrocities.

[Gray]

This may surprise you, but I do agree with this.

But it still raises the question, is that the fault of the Churches or the members?

 

If their needs really have changed, are their needs more in keeping with what God wants, or do they just want a religion that makes them happy, regardless of truth.

 

"Sadly enough, it is a characteristic of our age that if people want any gods at all, they want them to be gods who do not demand much, comfortable gods, smooth gods who not only don’t rock the boat but don’t even row it, gods who pat us on the head, make us giggle, then tell us to run along and pick marigolds.  Talk about man creating God in his own image!"  - Elder Holland

 

Everyone wants a God that shares his/her own values. I don't think there are any exceptions to that, at least among those who believe in a personal god. 

 

As to whose fault it is, I don't think blame needs to be assigned. It's just social evolution. 

[Gray]

I disagree. This year we remember the centennial of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. The Holocaust. Ethnic and religious cleansing on Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Darfur. Rwanda. Islamic regimes. Saddam Hussein's massacre against Kurds and Shiite Muslims.

These are not secularly based atrocities.

 

I don't think it's about secular vs religious. Any time you get any kind of dogma (political, religious or other) that is viewed by many adherents as more sacred than human life and human welfare, atrocities tend to follow.

[JLHPROF]

Everyone wants a God that shares his/her own values. I don't think there are any exceptions to that, at least among those who believe in a personal god. 

 

As to whose fault it is, I don't think blame needs to be assigned. It's just social evolution. 

 

You are probably correct on this.

 

But there are a few people who want to share God's values, not have God share theirs.

[Tacenda]

I find your God inept. To have to resort to death and destruction to prove a point is like a child lashing out to see who he can hurt to make himself feel better. This kind of God is not worthy of worship.

Organized religion is failing for two reasons. First in has not progressed with the world. It is stuck in the past insisting the future is scary. But many secular types want a more hopeful future than all the death that organized religion touts. Second as human knowledge grows the need to explain the unexplainable by invoking God diminsihes. Organized religion is just not needed to define the universe any longer.

More homocide deaths have occured in the name of God than for any other reason. So much for free agency.

[Gray]

You are probably correct on this.

 

But there are a few people who want to share God's values, not have God share theirs.

 

I'm sure you're right. But even if you desire it, how do you remove your own sense of right and wrong from the equation, when trying to follow what you think God thinks is right and wrong? And would doing so lead to a desirable outcome or an undesirable outcome?

 

Just thinking out loud.