Faith, a constant even in changing times

There is an ongoing belief in many parts of the world that religion is on the way out. The thinking goes that as people become more educated, they begin to rely less on the comfort and meaning provided by faith and the presence of God.

This is what is happening in much of Europe today, where church membership and attendance in church services have drastically gone down over the last several decades. According to a 2018 PEW study (PEW Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank based in Washington, DC), it is true that in many European countries, some churches are being sold or converted to other uses because of the lack of any significant attendance.

In 2020, political scientist Ronald Inglehart claimed that religion was in global decline. He said: “As societies develop, survival becomes more secure, and as this level of security rises, people tend to become less religious.” However, the global statistics on religion over the past century is actually one of growth and consolidation outside Europe.

There are actually a select handful of religions that have been increasing faster than any time in history. The two faiths that have seen dramatic increases globally are Islam and Christianity. The first one has 2.0 billion believers and the second has 2.6 billion adherents. Although the two faiths have several church branches, each one is still united by a common ideology.

Islam is united by its belief in a common Messenger of God called Allah and a common book of faith which is the Koran. Christianity is united by a common belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ and a common Holy Book, the Bible.

Both these faiths are finding new audiences and devotees in areas like Africa and Asia, where the population is still growing.

In fact, there is still one major geographic area where there is still a potential for more than a billion converts to religion. This is, of course, China.

Even in areas where church membership has fallen, belief in God or some higher power remains high. In the United States, for example, Church membership has fallen below 50 percent of the population. However, to a 2023 PEW poll, 88 percent of Americans still believe in the God of the Bible.

Religion also continues to be more than a matter of private personal belief. It continues to be a communal practice with common public rituals, shared experience and the formation of identity.

Among Christians, evangelical Christianity, for example, has become a growing force. In many countries, including the Philippines, many Catholics attend mass and take Communion even if they have doubts that they are actually receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. In fact, I think that many Catholics who attend mass may actually harbor doubts about some of the teachings of the Church, like birth control.

Even a number of evangelicals, in private discussions, appear unsure about the divinity of Christ, which is actually a basic requirement for being Christian.

It actually takes a leap of faith for people to believe in the unseen in a world where everything must now be explained as rational and logical. However, even many of the greatest scientists of the modern era continue to believe in some form of religion.

One of the most interesting rationales about religion that I have read is Pascal’s Wager. The 17th century French mathematician Blaise Pascal believed that it was in one’s self-interest to find a way to believe in God, even if God may not actually exist.

He said that the potential benefit of a belief in God was eternal salvation and even a small chance at something as consequential as eternity trumps any of the relatively minor inconveniences associated with belief in a faith.

Today, people believe that religions are comparable to corporations. This means that they must have the resources to keep growing. It is often publicly believed that without economic resources, the message of religion will not be heard.

People may have forgotten that at its beginning, Christianity and Islam had very few resources. Before they became powerful, these two faiths were actually powerless.

One can argue therefore that religions succeed and spread because they provide what humans need and want. There is this argument that people who believe in a religious faith tend to be happier, more fulfilled and more socially connected with their fellow citizens than those who do not.

It is religion that addresses a different need beyond the material. The ordinary human seeks for meaning in life and the securalization of societies cannot undo this. As long as people need meaning, a religious faith will remain uniquely suited to provide it. There have been many attempts to replace religion with a secular ideology but they have invariably failed. The best modern example was the attempt of communism to replace religion with a political ideology.

In the modern era, political ideologies have attempted to imitate the certainty, conviction and the other aspects that religion provides. A religious faith has the advantage over a secular ideology because faith is concerned with the ultimate meaning of life in a way that secular ideologies cannot provide.

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