What would happen if all places of worship closed tomorrow? No services at churches, mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras or temples, and nobody saying they were religious anymore.
The answer, according to a new book is — nothing. No societal collapse, no dramatic rise in crime, no huge fall in morality.
That’s the conclusion of Goodbye Religion: The Causes and Consequences of Secularization (NYU Press) by American sociologists Ryan Cragun and Jesse Smith.
Based on their interviews with over 100 people who are religious, were never religious or who left religion, together with data from the General Social Survey and other research in the U.S., they say Americans would remain engaged in society, volunteer, give to charity and continue to strive to make the world a better place—they wouldn’t start stealing, cheating on taxes, not paying bus fare, accepting bribes or committing acts of violence.
A non-religious world wouldn’t be a catastrophe, in other words.
Read about the book and
its conclusions in my most recent Free Press column.
