Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. For the 2022-2023 academic term, he is also the Alonzo L. McDonald Family Chair on the Life and Teachings of Jesus and Their Impact on Culture. On October 12, 2022, he delivered the second of a two-part lecture series. The lecture was titled, “Converging Perfect Storms: Hard Hits on American Organized Religion Since 1990.”
Religious observers in the U.S. have noted major transformations of American religious culture in recent decades that profoundly affect Christian churches and other formal religious institutions. These include the dramatic growth of the number of “non-religious” Americans, especially among youth; the rapid spread of “spiritual but not religious” identities across many generations in the U.S.; and an alienation from “traditional” religious institutions among many Americans, again, especially among younger people. How do we explain these huge changes? This lecture offers a broad sociological explanation, identifying and pulling together a host of religion-undermining social forces that emerged in the 1990s and converged in the 2000s to transform the American religious zeitgeist.