Apparently, The New York Times editors have decided that religion needs more coverage. A box within a recent religion story said, “The New York Times is exploring how people believe now. We look at Americans’ relationship to religion, moments that shape faith and why God can be hard to talk about.” There was also an invitation to signup and get email notices for future such stories, grouped under the category “Believing.”

The Times has an undeserved reputation for being part of the “liberal media” (if such a thing actually exists). Religion is a good example. Several of the NYT’s regular and occasional columnists write about religion with some frequency. All of them do so from a conservative and/or traditional viewpoint. Some are evangelical Christians who think they’re enlightened because they have come to reject the extremes of fundamentalists and MAGA Christians, but that hardly makes them progressive.

Then there is Ross Douthat, a conservative Catholic convert, who I can rarely make heads-or-tails of what he is trying to say. (Judging from reader responses, I’m not alone.) Nonetheless, he is a good example of how these writers try to hang on to traditional religion (usually Christianity), but mostly stumble into incoherence. They want to retain liberal values (like education) and traditional institutions but don’t understand why they can’t fit the two together.

This new series is being authored by a reporter I have been unfamiliar with until now, Lauren Jackson. She has an impressive academic resume (Rhodes Scholar!) and wide range of international experiences. Jackson says she has been working enthusiastically on the “Believing” series for the past year. Her personal engagement with the topic, however, is not what you might expect: she is a lapsed Mormon. And according to her first article which appeared this past weekend, she has not connected with any new religious tradition. For that reason, however, and unlike her NYT colleagues I mentioned above, she may be exactly who you would want writing about religion now: a religious dropout.

Right off the bat, however, I was skeptical of this first piece based on the title alone: “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion: Is it any wonder the country is revisiting faith?” Both assertions are highly questionable, as the reader responses showed (and I realize titles are often not written by the author but by editors trying to grab readers’ attention). Many people actually have found a “satisfying alternative” to their previous religious practice. Nor is it clear that “the country” is “revisiting faith”, if I even know what that is supposed to mean.

Jackson’s essay is better than the title, but it has its problems too which the title hints at. And the central problem is the question: What are we even talking about? Religion is huge and amorphous, so trying to tackle it is no easy task, as I’m sure Jackson is discovering. If you ask people what they mean by religion, faith, or God, you will get a wide range of responses. I found that among members of my own congregations.

The most recent Pew survey of American religion has gotten a lot of attention and Jackson cites it several times. The title of Pew’s report, “Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off”, is more circumspect than many of the interpretations I have read, including Jackson’s. “Slowed, may have leveled off” is far short of the conclusion “the country is revisiting faith.” Indeed, the Pew authors say this may well be only a temporary pause in religion’s decline given how nonreligious teens and young adults are, compared to their elders.

Jackson plays fast and loose with the date she cites and often jumps to unwarranted conclusions. One rule she violates is the bugaboo of scientists and researchers: correlation is not causation. In other words, because A was followed by B does not mean that A caused B. For example, Jackson asks whether the country’s secularization “has left us better off.” As evidence that it hasn’t, she then says, “People are unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness.” Jackson further states that people “without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.”

While it is true there have been studies that support such conclusions, it’s all more complicated than Jackson lets on. On the happiness question, the consistent international leaders have been Scandinavians, who are among the most secular populations in the world. America’s growing unhappiness is certainly not unrelated to growing economic inequality, stagnant wages, rising housing costs, difficulty affording or even finding needed health care, and other issues that have made up much of the political rancor of recent years. It’s too big a stretch to imply that leaving religion is the primary cause of nationwide unhappiness.

The issue of nonreligious people ranking “lower on key metrics of well-being” is important but again, more complicated than Jackson lets on. There is no question that participating in a religious community can provide important social, psychological, and spiritual benefits. But on the flip side, many have left such communities after being emotionally wounded by rigid and judgmental people that sometime dominate them, including clergy.

It’s also not clear what role the religious component of such communities plays. Are the beliefs and theology key, or is it simply being with people in some communal activity? For example, studies have shown that singing in a choir is one of the healthiest social activities. But it doesn’t have to be a church choir and it doesn’t matter whether you’re singing Bach or the Beetles.

I know quite a few people who have dropped out of church, often after years, if not a life-time, of participation. Their decisions were not easy and they usually are clear about things they miss. Yet, for a variety of reasons, leaving was the right thing for them to do. And, yes, they have found new activities to fill the time they previously invested in church, even if they aren’t perfect substitutes.

I give credit to Ms. Jackson for her sincerity in this often autobiographical essay. At the end, she acknowledges both what she misses from her earlier Mormon faith and her inability to return to it.

I miss what I had. In leaving the church, I lost access to a community that cut across age and class. I lost opportunities to support that community in ways that are inconvenient and extraordinary — when the baby arrives, the moving truck comes or grief overwhelms. I lost answers about planets, galaxies, eternity….

But I don’t feel I can go back. My life has changed: I enjoy the small vices (tea, wine, buying flowers on the sabbath) that were once off limits to me. Most importantly, though, my beliefs have changed. I’ve been steeped in secularism for a decade, and I can no longer access the propulsive, uncritical belief I once felt. I also see too clearly the constraints and even dangers of religion….

I recognize, though, that my spiritual longing persists — and it hasn’t been sated by secularism. I want a god. I live an ocean away from that small Arkansas chapel, but I still remember the bliss of finding the sublime in the mundane. I still want it all to be true: miracles, souls, some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.

For years, I haven’t been able to say that publicly. But it feels like something is changing. That maybe the culture is shifting. That maybe we’re starting to recognize that it’s possible to be both believing and discerning after all.

I’m not sure what Jackson means by that last sentence (“be both believing and discerning”) but I’m not sure she does either. That may be the point of the whole article. But I think she is looking in the right direction. Religion as it has been isn’t working anymore. And trying to force it to often results in strange and sometimes disastrous consequences. Religion is too much part of a world that is now gone, which overall is a good thing. Yet religion did provide a valuable and important quality to life which is still desirable today, and perhaps even essential for fulfilling our highest human possibilities.

The challenge is for the religions that remain to get over their obsession with institutional survival and figure out what 21^st century religion should look like. The alternative is for something new to come from an unexpected quarter. And, of course, there is good precedent for that kind of thing. Some would say a better chance than having the old transform into something new. Jesus said something about the folly of putting new wine into old wineskins. If that’s our path ahead, then I hope the new skins show up soon.

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