Renowned Notre Dame sociologist Dr. Christian Smith is out with an important new book on the decline of religion in America called Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America. It powerfully covers cultural trends from the 1990s and 2000s that undermined the religion in America, rendering it obsolete, though not extinct, in the public mind.
Smith’s book covers a wide range of trends that many of us have heard of before - neoliberal capitalism, postmodernism, the rise of the internet, changing family structures, etc - but explains point by point all of the subtle ways in which these trends tended towards undermining religion in America. While none of us will agree fully with everything Smith says or how he frames it, this is an important book I highly recommend.
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