By Jeff Brumley
They may be leaving or avoiding organized religion in droves, but the nation’s “nones” are still craving community — otherwise known as fellowship — recent reports suggest.
Known also as the religiously unaffiliated, this growing segment of the U.S. population has been generating headlines in recent years for its rejection of churches, synagogues, mosques and other faith communities in favor of a solo-brand of spirituality. Many report exasperation with worship services, church politics and being asked to serve on committees.
But religious and cultural observers know that human beings, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof, seem to crave community. It was something that piqued the attention of New York Times columnist David Brooks.
“Secular individuals have to build their own communities,” Brooks wrote in a February column. “Religions come equipped with covenantal rituals that bind people together, sacred practices that are beyond individual choice.”
Wouldn’t it follow, he added, that those who have rejected organized religion must still yearn for the relationships provided by communities of faith?
“Secular people have to choose their own communities and come up with their own practices to make them meaningful,” Brooks said in the column titled “Building Better Secularists.”
‘We long to belong’
Stated from a more specifically Christian perspective, some Baptists say: You can take the person out of the fellowship, but you can’t take the fellowship out of the person.
“Yes, that’s right,” says Mary Richerson Mann, pastor at Westover Baptist Church in Richmond, Va.
The proliferation of online gaming, exercise, outdoor and other communities have been recognized by some as alternatives to the fellowship provided by churches. Whatever the outlet, Mann said human beings cannot help but seek out groups to be part of.
“We long to belong as people,” she said. “We want to find people who will accept us because we are creatures that need relationship and we are going to look for it anywhere we can find it.”
It will be an even more common yearning in a gadget-driven age in which cell phones, tablets and other devices increasingly isolate individuals physically from each other, she said.
These issues also should remind Christians why it’s important to attend church and worship and to avoid the temptation to stay home with their Bibles and prayers.
“Faith is communal and in order to have a relationship with Christ that is real, we need to live that out by having relationships with other people,” Mann said.
‘It can be very isolating’
Few doubt that these trends are real and increasing.
In May, the Pew Research Center announced that the “nones” were increasing at a pace even greater than previously believed. Its research found they make up 23 percent of the U.S. adult population.
“This is a stark increase from 2007, the last time a similar Pew Research study was conducted,” according to the report. That year, 16 percent of Americans were described as “nones.”
Meanwhile, the organization noted that Christians have fallen from 78 to 71 percent of the overall population during that same time frame.
Protestants, specifically, are declining, Pew reported.
“Once an overwhelmingly Protestant nation, the U.S. no longer has a Protestant majority,” Pew said.
Pew’s first Religious Landscape Study in 2007 found more than half of adults — 51.3 percent — identified as Protestants. As of May, 46.5 percent of adults claim to be Protestants.
It’s all the more reason for churches, as well as individuals, to cling to fellowship, said Jay Kieve, coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of South Carolina.
Congregations that do not affiliate and cooperate with other churches run the risk of missional and spiritual isolation just as individuals do when they isolate, Kieve said.
“It’s important for a few reasons — one of them is identity,” he said.
Associating with other churches reminds congregations there are others like them in the world. He said this can be especially important where one or two CBF churches may be the only Baptists of their kind in a given geographic region.
“It can be very isolating for clergy and church folks” to avoid getting together, he said.
Churches that fellowship have access to best practices in everything from worship to missions.
“Also, fellowship among congregations leads to greater missional awareness and vision,” Kieve said. “It’s a way to see our own community in a new way.”
‘A holistic aproach’
Likewise, fellowship provides individuals with instructions on how to be better Christians and to develop their faith, said Kenneth Meyers, faith formation specialist with the Alliance of Baptists.
Community is the venue in which individuals can share their stories of faith and struggle with fellow members, Meyers said.
“It’s not necessarily ‘I got saved on such-and-such date,’ but where are you seeing God in your life these days? What’s impacting your life and what’s causing you to lead an examined life?” he said.
Community, or fellowship, is right up there with theology, doctrine and ethics in forming a Christian’s faith, Meyers added.
“It’s one of the fundamentals that needs to be considered for a holistic approach to lifelong learning,” he said.