Steeple Chase

The American church has historically been a bedrock institution for fostering social capital. What do we replace it with when it declines?

By Jean-Luc Currie

October 2023

20 Minute Read

Volume 2. Issue 9.

Two Jews and a Christian are talking about the future of church in America.

It’s not the start of a joke, it’s actually what happened on my front porch recently. It was a nuanced conversation, something that’s often missing from discourse about religion in our modern political climate, although there was plenty for us to disagree about.

But there was one point of consensus––the American church, on balance, has been a net-negative to the United States over the past 40 years.

To support this claim, look to the parade of usual suspects: sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic Church, sexual abuse in the Protestant Church, religious and emotional abuse suffered by people like those who attended Mars Hill, the vitriol stirred up by the over-blending of religion and politics that started in the 1950s, or the weird, unnecessary evangelical campaign against J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter in the 1990s and 2000s. The church in the past 40 years has mostly characterized itself by mistakes and opposition.

Of course, there are churches doing good things for their congregations and their communities. But on the whole, it’s been a rough four decades for the American church.

I need to say up front, for this essay to be read in good faith, that I don’t attend church. However, I grew up in church. My father pastored a church for several years. And I identify as a Christian. But my interest in church is admittedly, well, secular.

Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, identifies churches as ‘arguably the single most important repository of social capital in America.’ He describes social capital in this way,

“Your extended family represents a form of social capital, as do your Sunday school class, the regulars who play poker on your commuter train, your college roommates, the civic organizations to which you belong, the Internet chat group in which you participate, and the network of professional acquaintances recorded in your address book.”

Granted, I don’t know anyone who plays poker on commuter trains anymore (we should bring that back), but his description is easily transferred into our own lives when we try to imagine our own social networks and the social capital they represent. Social capital––differentiated from human capital, intellectual capital, or physical capital––is purely the result of relationships between people. The mere interactions between human beings have outsized effects on the community, the economy and the country.

Putnam gives further context to his statement about churches, writing, “...nearly half of all associational memberships in America are church related, half of all personal philanthropy is religious in character, and half of all volunteering occurs in a religious context.” I’ll break some of that down in a moment, but first we need to realize that when Putnam published Bowling Alone in the year 2000, those stats were true. In the intervening two decades, however, we’ve seen some massive shifts in church affiliation and attendance.

Let’s talk about a few of the numbers.

Reported church membership declined from 70% in 1999 to 50% in 2020. And that decline occurred across all generational demographics, not just younger folks. The GI Generation (or ‘Traditionalists’) dropped attendance by 9 points, the Boomers by 10 points, and Gen X’ers by 8 points. (There isn’t good data for Millennials because most were too young in 1999, and Gallup only surveys adults over 18.) The point is, this isn’t just a ‘young people’ problem.

What’s more, there are a significant number of Americans who have a religious preference but choose not to attend church. As Jeffrey Jones points out, this is attributable to a variety of factors, including a general, growing mistrust in institutions. Among Millennials, nearly half of those with a religious preference choose not to attend a church (or synagogue, temple, etc). I fall into that 43%.

There are plenty of people asking why this is happening, and there’s no shortage of explanations. But understanding why isn’t the most interesting question to me. The more interesting question revolves around the long term. What does this decline mean for the future of church in America? And, more importantly, what does this mean for the future of America?

Before we dive into that we need to first understand exactly what it was churches provided to our civic life to understand what we'll be missing.

The Church as a Civic Incubator

Whether or not the Judeo-Christian consortium on my front porch reached a defensible conclusion that can empirically be proven or not, the perception alone is enough to continue hurting the church and the country in a serious way.

One of the reasons this concerns me, as Putnam found, is that churches have historically been bedrock institutions upon which our civic life rests. Churches are dense social networks that upskill their communities, provide the bases for productive lives as citizens, and generate momentum to enact significant social change.

To summarize Putnam’s conclusions about the positive externalities of vibrant church communities:

Churches provide an important incubator for civic skills, civic norms, community interests, and civic recruitment.
Religious involvement is an especially strong predictor of volunteering and philanthropy.
Churches have been and continue to be important institutional providers of social services.
Churches have provided the organizational and philosophical bases for a wide range of powerful social movements throughout American history.

I’ve seen these advantages present in my own experience.

At the ripe age of 12, I was given the opportunity to lead a co-ed group of 10-12 campers at a Christian summer camp. We competed in sporting events, memorized Bible verses, attended services, and spent the entire week together. I practiced motivating teams and individuals. I learned empathy and skills for relating to people not like me.

For example, a thirteen-year-old trying to convince an unathletic, introverted eight-year-old to participate in a kickball game requires the soft skills necessary to navigate the much more complex social, civic, and workplace environments of that thirteen-year-old's future.

These valuable leadership skills carried me into high school as I led our church Youth Group, where I gained further experience in public speaking, event planning, and operational execution. And all of this served as an excellent basis for my time in the Marine Corps, where the stakes were higher and the consequences graver. That isn’t to say churches are the only way to instill these skills in young Americans, but historically they have been a primary way we do so.

Additionally, between church and family life, service was always a venerated ideal. When I matriculated at the Naval Academy and then went on to serve in the Marines, my church community in Alabama honored and celebrated that. The idea of service, central to the Christian faith and many other faiths, helps explain why church affiliation is so strongly correlated with volunteer involvement––at church and in the local community.

Even today, I don’t have to look far in my hometown of Denver to see faith-affiliated groups doing a significant amount to tackle our toughest social problems, like homelessness. I volunteer on a regular basis with Habitat for Humanity, a Christian organization that provides affordable housing to low-income families, among other services. And I recently learned about Team CrossPurpose, a local, church affiliated non-profit that is dedicated to ‘abolishing economic, relational, and spiritual poverty’. I can’t read their story and mission without weeping as it’s a powerful reminder of the good that churches can do.

Finally, churches are––um, were?––instigators of social change, helping advance a vision of democracy laid down by our Founders that ‘all men [and women] are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.’ The two most prominent examples are the opposition of the church to slavery, especially among the Methodist population in the 1800s, and the critical role the African American Church played in the Civil Rights Movement.

Of the abolition movement in the 1800s, the historian Donald Worster writes, “Slavery was not bad in the eyes of its critics because it was inefficient or unprofitable. The case against slavery came primarily from religion.” That, in itself, is a bold claim, but Worster takes it a step further,

“In fact, the discrediting of slavery may have been, in the terms of this world, evangelical Protestantism’s greatest achievement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

The religiously fueled abolition movement feels like a far cry from a church in America that’s now known culturally by its opposition, outrage, and vitriol. Maybe this is why there are a flurry of articles from prominent evangelical figures in magazines like The Atlantic pointing to a crisis in the American church. And because of the importance of the church in American history, we have to acknowledge that a crisis in the church means a potential reckoning for America writ large.

This is why asking about the future of the church in America is also a question about the future of America. Not because these futures are inextricably linked (nor should they be, for both their sakes), but because of the important role church communities played in the past and continue to play today. If membership in our churches declines, where are people building social capital? If the civic involvement of our churches constricts, where are people finding social outlets for improving their communities? If churches fail, where will our young people learn the skills necessary to participate in democracy?

These aren’t questions with foregone conclusions. In the weeks since I published an initial version of this article on Substack, I’ve had several people reach out to me to debate, discuss, and dissect the views laid out above. Several of them have pointed to other groups, affiliations, and institutions that could potentially offer a similar civic core that our churches used to provide. Below, I briefly explore three of those, which I’ve categorized broadly as secular religious groups, secular affinity groups, and organic community groups.

I define “secular religious” groups as those that approximate religion without attachment to divinity, dogma, or formal liturgy of any kind. An example would be humanist societies, like the Ethical Society of St. Louis.

A friend and former resident of St. Louis turned me onto this organization. The timeline on their website indicates a beginning in 1886 with 93 members, and in 1986––the last year for which it lists membership––the organization had 450 members. Their web homepage states that ESL is “a place where people come together to explore the biggest questions of life without reference to scripture, religion, or God.”

As a kid who grew up in the church, the ceremonies they hold (Platform on Sunday instead of a worship service, or Sunday Ethical Education for Kids instead of a Sunday School) all feel very familiar. Even the list of Core Values are all things that I heartily support, and are all things I would expect to be reflected in the philosophy of any religious church community, things like “Every person is important and unique” or “Every person deserves to be treated fairly and kindly” or “I accept responsibility for my choices and actions”.

I can’t help but wonder why something like Humanism hasn’t had a broader reach and greater growth, and why religion continues to be the dominant philosophy in the United States––75% of Americans still identify with some religion, according to Gallup.

The American Humanist Association states that it has 225 chapters and over 34,000 members, a paltry number when compared to the 50% of U.S. adults who still report religious membership. So why hasn’t Humanism spread further? And could it represent a legitimate replacement for the social capital and civic skills obtained through traditional church membership, as Putnam argues?

As long as the reach of Humanism remains inconsequential (their membership would barely populate a medium-sized town), then it doesn’t represent a meaningful replacement for church and religious institutions.

On the other end of this secular religion spectrum is an organization that sprouted in California which caters to the rich and famous of Los Angeles. Secular Sabbath, an exclusive members-only organization started by Genevieve Medow-Jenkins, has an annual membership fee of $180. But that only allows you to purchase tickets, it doesn’t actually get you into an event. Event prices themselves can range up to $400 and include such exotic locales as Joshua Tree, Iceland, and Antarctica.

The Free Press ran an excellent profile of the Secular Sabbath (“Can you find God in a bikini?”) in September of this year. The purpose of the Secular Sabbath, reports Oliva Reingold, is to connect the “couple hundred” members to a higher power at a time when attendance at religious services across the country is dwindling.

While fascinating and definitely more “spiritual” than the strict Humanism of the Ethical Society of St. Louis, its whiff of elitism and steep membership + event fees also make it an unlikely contender to replace churches.

I don’t have any good data that shows whether (or not) these organizations build the same long-term social capital that churches do. My instinct says that in the case of ESL, it could, but the limited reach of Humanism makes it impossible to reach the scale of the church. In the case of Medow-Jenkins’ Secular Sabbath, the answer seems to be a definite negative.

Secular Religious Groups

I joined an adult soccer league when I lived in West Virginia.

One day, our team captain solicited a volunteer replacement for the bi-annual captain’s meeting. When I volunteered I thought I would be attending a dry, procedural meeting that consisted solely in the transfer of information from the league organizers to me.

Instead, I found a vibrant community group dedicated to civic norms and its own little version of democracy. I pulled up to a modern pizza joint, and met an outgoing group of people sitting around the table drinking craft beer and enjoying one another’s company.

Ostensibly, adult soccer leagues aren't all that important. They don’t move armies or shift the scales of the economy. There are no macro-trends associated with the meeting of a few local citizens as they discuss league rules and the quality of referees. But, if government is to be of the people, by the people, and for the people, then these seemingly insignificant voluntary associations belie intrinsic democratic density. They carry a lot of weight.

Sure, some things were trivial: Like the price of league fees; or how many exception players to allow in the Over 35 League (as one of those players I recused myself from that vote); or game rules for weather delays.

But something stood out to me. One of the oldest members––he’s been playing in the league since its inception in the 1970s––framed the conversation and votes under these conditions: that the league has always struggled to balance the conflicting concepts of competition and community, “...but, ultimately,” he said, “it’s all about building community.”

Secular Affinity Groups

For one reason or another, my little soccer league never bloomed into the full-grown community I was hoping for. Maybe it was West Virginia. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the distance I lived from the league. Maybe I smelled bad. Who knows? Despite my best effort, I never formed any meaningful relationships with the team.

However, there are plenty of examples where these sorts of secular affinity groups––sports leagues, philanthropic societies, bocce clubs––do create meaningful social capital.

And speaking of bocce, the perfect example of this is Volo Sports, which started in Baltimore out of a bocce league. Since then, the company has expanded to 11 cities, started a Kids Foundation, and also has virtual programming.

In the Denver league alone, there are over 60,000 participants across all kinds of sports: volleyball, basketball, pickleball, kickball, cornhole, dodgeball, and flag football, just to name a few. And Volo is very explicit about its social mission. In two separate articles in the Spring of this year, one from Denver’s 303 Magazine and the other in San Diego’s Locale, the copy is nearly identical: “Ditch the gym. It’s inclusive. Have fun. And maybe meet your future spouse!” All part of what social networks are designed to do.

Volo’s Kids Foundation also gives it an edge over many similar types of adult sports leagues. If we’re talking about building social capital and how these groups fare in comparison to churches, then there has to be a dynamic that develops the youth of America and develops those skills that I learned at church summer camp or in my Youth Group.

All in all, I would consider Volo’s blueprint to be highly successful. Hundreds of thousands of adults participate in its sports leagues every year. They boast over 42,000 kids in their youth sports programs, plus nearly 10,000 volunteers help run these kids’ leagues. There's lots of social capital at work.

The lingering question for me is "How far does it extend?" Do the relationships on the field spill over into other areas of civic life in as powerful a way as those in church communities? Do they inspire the same intensity of volunteerism and community service that churches typically provide?

According to numbers from 2019, most volunteers, or 32%, worked within or through religious organizations while sports-related volunteering came in fairly close, at 25.7%, much higher than I would have expected. Note that this isn’t a percentage of the total adult U.S. population, rather the percentage of the adult population who formally volunteered, which the U.S. Census Bureau puts at roughly 23% for those over 16.

(Here’s some quick McKinsey math: About 80% of the U.S. population is over the age of 16, according to 2020 Census Data, or roughly 264 million people. 23% of that would be 60 million people. So 60 million people formally volunteer each year. Take a quarter of that, or 15 million, and that’s how many people volunteered in sports-related activities recently. It’s not a paltry amount, and it far eclipses the reach of something like the Humanist societies.)

There are countless other examples of secular affinity groups. Adding all of those up, including civic organizations like the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and other volunteer organizations, then the impact grows to sizable proportions. It seems to me that these social and civic outlets do possibly represent potential solutions to the gap a declining church leaves behind, but it's not a one-to-one replacement. These types of organizations have existed for centuries yet the church still dominated as the preeminent body for social capital.

Volo Sports or the Masons represent a form of formal volunteering, but what about informal volunteering? This is the type of volunteering where you help your neighbor paint her living room or rebuild a fence, or when you pick up trash at your local park.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that over 51% of the population helped their neighbors between September 2020 and September 2021. That’s a huge number. Maybe, just maybe, we don’t need institutions and organizations. Maybe neighborly, organic communities represent a significant enough form of social capital to fill the gap.

But first, another question. What percentage of your neighbors do you know?

If you live in a neighborhood, limit this to your street. If you live in an apartment complex, maybe just the people on your floor. Now, of those you know, how many of them are you comfortable asking a favor? The proverbial “borrow a cup of sugar” type of favor. Or, what about something bigger, say, watching the dogs while you’re out of town? or taking you to the airport?

Social capital represents a real form of capital, and economists do their best to quantify it wherever possible. The 2021 data on formal volunteering puts the economic impact at $122.9 billion, but if the U.S. Census Bureau is right, and over 50% of the adult population informally volunteers, then the economic impact of informal volunteering could be much, much higher.

To illustrate this point: If I leave town for a week and my neighbor watches my dog, that represents a potential savings on my part of somewhere between $300 and $600, depending on where I choose to kennel my pet. All of that adds up over time. And these interactions not only save me money but strengthen ties in the community. For example, I’m more likely to complete a favor for my neighbor when he asks. Social capital works as a virtuous cycle.

The bigger your network, the greater the resources at your disposal, and the less you have to use actual capital to get things accomplished. (This is why ostracization and loneliness cost people in more ways than one. It actually creates compounding social debt which people pay for with the interest of real money, decreased mental and physical health, and lowered productivity.)

But how strong are our neighborhoods and our organic communities, really?A Pew Research Center survey in 2018 found trends among Americans and their neighbors that likely won’t come as a surprise.

Most Americans (57%) say they know some of their neighbors, while only a quarter say they know most of them. For those who do know some of their neighbors, 66% of those reported they would feel comfortable leaving their keys with a neighbor. But, and this is a big but (and I cannot lie), social events among neighbors are still extremely rare.

I’m skeptical that we're capable in a widespread way of organically creating the type of communities that churches and successful civic organizations do, the types that will shore up our democracy and groom a younger generation for important social interactions and leadership.

Organic Community Groups

Jean-Luc is the co-editor of The Hart & The Cur

The Hart & The Cur

There are two further points to be made.

First, these things are not mutually exclusive. The church mustn’t decline in order for other civic organizations to grow. What’s more, it would be ideal if all of these institutions were able to thrive and grow simultaneously. It would create a more engaged, service-oriented, relationally connected democracy. This isn’t a zero-sum game.

And second, there is a dark side to the growth of church attendance. Yes, churches are our greatest repositories of social capital, but there is ample evidence to show that often this social capital is an insular kind, what Putnam calls bonding social capital.

Among Evangelicals, in particular, Putnam found that church attendance is not correlated with community involvement even though rates of volunteerism are high. This is because “Most evangelical volunteering supports the religious life of the congregation itself––teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, ushering worship services––but does not extend to the broader community...”

Obviously, the same could be true of any organization. We all have to guard against our default toward tribalism, close-mindedness, and typecasting the Other.

In a recent Atlantic article, Jake Meador, the editor of Mere Orthodoxy, points out that we have adopted a way of life that has left us ‘lonely, anxious, and uncertain of how to live in community with other people’ and that the church has failed to provide a meaningful answer to these challenges over the past several decades. However, he envisions a brighter future, one in which the church is the antidote to the loneliness, depression, isolation, and outrage infecting the American body politic.

As one of the ‘religiously affiliated’ but unchurched members in this country, I hope Jake is right, and I’m rooting for the church, hoping to see it revive, rebalance, and reform. The upside is a stronger civic life that complements the American vision and expands democracy for all.

But if the church fails, then we have a harder road ahead of us––building institutions and communities to fill the void they leave behind.

Religion is an important topic in our country, and we'd love to hear what you think. For the first time ever, we're accepting letters to the editor, and we'll be publishing the most thoughtful responses in the coming weeks. Just respond to this piece by email to jeanluc@thehartandthecur.com with the subject line starting "Letter:". Feel free to header your letter. If not, we will.