Putting Morality in the Hands of the People
As I was looking at the Pew Research web page, I discovered something quite surprising. While Christianity as a homogeneous blob is the largest religious group in the United States, if you break it down into 3 main subgroups, that is no longer the case. If Christianity is broken down to Catholicism, Evangelicals, and Mainline Protestants, the largest religious group in the United States are “Nones.” And by “Nones”, I am referring to religiously unaffiliated people.
Currently 23% of the adult population are religiously unaffiliated and the percentage goes up to 35% when the age is restricted to adults that are younger than 40 years old. This is important because religious groups have traditionally been the guardians of morality and determining the rules of good and bad behavior. But clearly large swaths of the population are rejecting religion and it is time to take the power of morality and put it in the hands of the people.
Just as religious theologians debate the finer points of good and bad behavior, it’s time to move those conversations into the public forum. While I am not a fan of religious rules, they do provide motivation for people to at least try to behave in a decent manner. So as more and more people forsake religious communities, we need to shift the conversation of morality and good and bad behavior into a different arena.
It is important for us to begin to create communities where we talk about how to be a good person. We need to form communities that will support its members and encourage them to make the world a better place to live. As we move away from religion, we must not forget that the concept of morality and what constitutes good behavior is still vitally important to our society.
Fortunately, I have come up with a concept that may help. It is called a “Not Church.” A “Not Church” is a community of people that support each other and talk about things like morality and how to be the best version of yourself. It is a group completely removed from religion (hence the name “Not Church”) but yet talks about concepts normally reserved for church. In other words, it takes the power of morality from religious traditions and puts it in the hands of the people.
As it happens, I have started one of these “Not Churches” that I call Journey Beyond Belief. It is primarily facilitated by a private Facebook group where we support each other and talk about concepts that are important for the benefit of society in general. If you are interested in checking us out, click the link below and request permission to be in our group. What are you waiting for? Come and join the conversation!
