This may be a somewhat controversial subject, and it depends on how one define's "religion" but I've wondered about this for some time. We've all seen the Gallup polls regarding the decline in worship attendance, but we've also seen a rise in people's passion for an evolving set of values namely politics on the left and the right, sports fanaticism, and idolatry of consumer capitalism to name just a few. The article link below to a Boston Globe article spells this out pretty clearly.

If you can't view it through the BG paywall...here's the summary: A very different effect of religion’s disappearance is already all too visible: The unwavering faith and passion of true belief is increasingly being channeled not into religious observance but into identity politics and the culture wars.

Let me be clear and say at the outset, I am not suggesting that a Public Religious engagement of the issues of our day is not warranted. I believe speaking to matters of Social Justice, Economic disparity, and Environmental degradation are indeed consistent with a faithful biblical religion, indeed consistent with other religions as well including Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism.

I, do, however think there is a loss of our encounter and engagement with sacred experience in contemporary US American religious life. An engagement with issues of the day that grows out of a spiritual foundation looks different than one that emerges from a political ideology or mere tribalism. Martin Luther King Jr and Mohandas K. Gandhi are 20th-century examples of a spiritually informed public religion. Today, as the Globe article suggests, we may be running the risk of our religionless society engaging important issues without a foundational frame.

“Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations,” remarks Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution in The Atlantic. “This is what religion without religion looks like.” His article “America without God” in the Atlantic is another worthwhile read.

For a long time, people who did not wish to attend worship articulated a position that has been summarized as “I’m Spiritual but not Religious.” That seemed to suggest I’m not interested in institutional forms of religion, I’ll find my own way. But, one has to wonder if the now 53% of US Americans who do not attend worship are exploring something spiritual? Or are they, along with the many of us within institutional religion, simply embracing a new form of religion, one that lacks a spiritual core?