Is traditional religion obsolete, like the typewriter? New book says yes

When I started my career over 40 years ago, I used a typewriter to write all my stories. It worked fine; I had no complaints back then. 

But now I have a computer with a sophisticated word processing program. I could still use a typewriter, if I wanted — it still would work. But for me, like for most people, typewriters are obsolete. 

Is something similar happening in the world of traditional, or institutional, religion? For Christian Smith, one of the premier scholars about religion in the U.S., the answer is yes. 

Like the typewriter of old, the way religion is still organized into denominations and practiced today—appointment-style services with a few songs and a sermon delivered top-down by clergy with no chance to engage the topic during the delivery—is obsolete for many, especially younger people. 

That’s the argument he makes in his new book Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America (Oxford University Press). 

Read about Smith’s new book in my Free Press column.