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| Julianna Margulies |
"The Good Wife's Grace Florrick (Makenzie Vega) has been slowly growing more devout since season two and was baptized in season three. Her atheist mother Alicia (Julianna Margulies) has been generally accepting of the conversion, but tension has developed in the wake of a death close to Alicia, due to Grace's repeated insistence that the deceased is in heaven. Meanwhile, The Americans' Elizabeth and Philip Jennings (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), being undercover Soviet spies, have no faith, and are furious when their daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) joins a church." (read more)
This article is from the Ezra Klein new "explainer" website Vox. You are welcome to comment about that if you want.
27 comments:
In studies of churchy stuff, the common theme, supported by a lot of studies, is that the most conversions occur among teenagers, with a drop off in conversion and attendance in college. Post-college that trend continues until the person is married and has kids, then church attendance rises again.
That's the trend for a long time.
Which isn't to dismiss the shows or the articles. That Hollywood actually pays attention to actual lives and includes faith is a big step. It long struck me weird that there are a lot more gay people than religious people on television.
The Corner used to have a Hollywood guy write for them before he went off to According to Jim. I asked him about it, and he said that it's because writers write from their experiences.
That there's change is a sign of better writers, either from broader backgrounds or better imagination beyond their contexts.
Paddy O, I know a few teen conversions, but a lot of these changes are due to marrying a spouse and adopting their faith. I see that far more often.
That is of course not a scientific study, just EBL's own observations.
EBL, religious involvement is really varied across a lot of boundaries, so that's not surprising to hear.
There were a lot of studies on this in the 90s that I looked at, and from what I've heard from friends still involved in church studies, that continues. But, as a broad trend, there's going to always be exceptions and different experiences.
The newest blitz in response, that relates to this, is "sticky faith." How to keep kids connected to church once in college.
Ezra Klein
Explanatory journalism
Oxymoron of the first order.
But I will still read the piece.
The modern age particularly in the western world is extremely inimical to the religious impulse.
We sort, categorize, analyze, measure, and technologize. Who has time for the supernatural other than in the movies?
I've been listening to a lecture series on evolutionary psychology and the guy's been talking about the heritability of the capacity for religious experience and temporal lobe epilepsy.
The capacity for religious experience and the capacity for warfare are (1) co-evolutionary, (2) the product of both individual selection and group selection, and (3) mutually reinforcing, IIRC. Adaptive? obviously.
That said, the guy seems totally uninterested in the possibility that the vast majority of people are religious almost entirely because they are social.
Parent vs. child?
Conflict is the essence of drama.
The kids who go religious will turn out despicable.
The Commie atheists will be the nice guys.
Right?
"The modern age particularly in the western world..."
One reason this all is still discussed is that we're not longer in the modern age. The Enlightenment is over. For better or worse, there's more involved in post-modernity than the highly rational and categorization. The responses also go beyond the Continental deconstructionism, with an interest in the broader interconnectivity of things and how reality is much more complex than our ability to intuit or categorize.
The trouble is that just when Christianity became decent at the Modern approach, people moved on. So, there's a curious gap in the religiosity people seek and what they find in most Christian settings.
Youse guys are looking at this from a very parochial standpoint if I can make a Catholic joke. Religious belief is strong and growing in many parts of world especially South America, Africa and China. Just because the decadent West has lost its way is not the whole story about religion an its place in human society.
We sort, categorize, analyze, measure, and technologize. Who has time for the supernatural other than in the movies?
Your statement indicates complete ignorance of the core teachings of Judeo-Christian theology.
Perhaps you need some education.
Religious practice increases and decreases among the populace in a cyclical fashion.
We're in the Worship of the Golden Calf phase.
As moral degeneracy leads to economic and political collapse, the wise ass belief that thousands of years of Judeo-Christian theology are just useless pieces of scrap paper will slowly fall away.
This theology is the cyclical story of humans retold endlessly. Nothing has changed. We're just in the wiseass stupid part of the cycle.
Those who imagine that Judeo-Christian theology is about some sort of old guy with a white beard sitting on a cloud...
Jesus (and I use the word advisedly), are you dumb.
Religious belief and, especially, Judeo-Christian theology and practice are pragmatic and proven methods for ordering the life of the individual and society.
It's interesting to talk with kids who've never had a Christian indoctrination.
When I suggest to them that the teachings have great intrinsic value, they invariably respond:
"Are you saying that I'm going to be a bad person if I don't go to church?"
I haven't yet been able to devise a response that adequately conveys to them the message that their response is a display of absolute ignorance about what I think is valuable about religious practice.
Such kids have had no contact with religious experience except the bad mouthing wise cracks they've heard on TV.
And, no, I don't think that I'm such a great, exemplary Christian or Catholic.
"Religious belief and, especially, Judeo-Christian theology and practice are pragmatic and proven methods for ordering the life of the individual and society."
This. And the fact that the anti-religionists don't realize what a bad guy I would be if not for the morality that that theology taught me.
The article's drift is that "atheism" as a childhood faith is less "sticky" than actual, you know, organized religions. But I suspect their data is ca-ca because it looks like they're batching atheist, agnostic, and "unchurched" households together to get their "childhood religion" numbers, and if unchurched is a significant fraction of those "atheist" numbers, then yeah, a lot of those kids are going to find a church to match their inchoate religiosity.
Trooper York said...
Youse guys are looking at this from a very parochial standpoint if I can make a Catholic joke. Religious belief is strong and growing in many parts of world especially South America, Africa and China. Just because the decadent West has lost its way is not the whole story about religion an its place in human society.
Saw an interesting piece at Ace that said Moslems in the Balkans, Asia, and Africa are going Christian in surprising numbers.
If true, it may be because nobody wants to live under the crazies.
The real measure of the strength of Christian faith is where it grows. It grows best under adversity. Even persecution. That is why Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China.
The West is indeed in the Caligula phase and it is understandable that people reject the moral teachings of the Judea-Christian tradition. They are constantly bombarded and distracted by the attractions of the secular world. Parents do not work at introducing their children to religion because it is not an active part of their lives. That is why children will seek it out on their own. They know something is missing. They can find it in the nearest church, synagogue, temple or mosque.
That is why I was very disappointed in the selection of the current Pope. I was hoping for one of the African prelates who are true believers and men of faith. Who would not be afraid to stand strong for the faith as Pope John Paul 2 did against the Communists.
I think Pope Francis is a man of faith but very misguided in his priorities.
Atheists keep trying to pave over those God-shaped holes, but come spring there they are again.
Rabel said...the anti-religionists don't realize what a bad guy I would be if not for the morality that that theology taught me.
That reminded me of Evelyn Waugh, who said when asked how he could be such a cruel bastard and call himself a Christian: “You have no idea how much nastier I’d be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.”
Trooper York said...
The real measure of the strength of Christian faith is where it grows. It grows best under adversity. Even persecution. That is why Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China.
Exactly. Christianity was never for wussies.
The West is indeed in the Caligula phase and it is understandable that people reject the moral teachings of the Judea-Christian tradition
It's the Nero phase that gets rough and I can't think of anyone who could do it better than our current Emperor.
I'd say the West is in its Julian phase: post-Christian idealization of pre-Christian ideals and morality.
Ms. Margulies sure is purdy.
"Religious belief ... pragmatic and proven methods for ordering the life of the individual and society."
As Rabel said, this is a very good point.
I had a prof. in grad school who said, "The scientific method is just a process that allows even stupid people to gather knowledge." I don't know if I'd put it quite that way, but I got the point, and it seems clearer to me as I age that religious traditions serve an analogous role: they allow even stupid, amoral people a greater potential to lead good lives. Or at least not be harmful. You throw away the rule book at your peril.
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