Why Religion Went Obsolete:
Not by Secularization Alone
by Christian Smith
Click here for excerpt from the book in Church Life Journal.
The story of my recent book, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, presents an empirical challenge to traditional secularization theory, which holds that, as societies become more modern and developed, they will become more secular. While traditional religion has declined in the United States, it has not been replaced by sheer secularism. Religious obsolescence in the United States has not meant the disappearance of the sacred, spiritual, magical, enchanted, supernatural, occult, ecstatic, or divine. They remain alive and well.
The sacred and ecstatic have migrated to new locations. The spiritual is reconstituted in new forms. Old divinities are replaced with new and sometimes even older ones. One has to crawl under a rock to escape popular interest in spirituality, magic, and occulture. But to see that, one needs to discard certain theoretical blinders. The cultural field of play today is not a binary one on which two teams face off and battle for supremacy. The field is occupied by many competitors playing different games, some clusters of which do not even look like teams. Far from religion’s growing obsolescence entailing the triumph of secularity, then, the American experience demonstrates instead the relocating and morphing of religionish things to nontraditional sites and expressions.
- Christian Smith, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.
An Open and Relational Response
to the Culture of Re-Enchantment
Where are millennials and post-millennials (Gen Z) culturally? In his recent book, Why Religion Went Obsolete, sociologist Christian Smith offers a descriptive—not prescriptive—account of an emerging cultural reality, without judging it as good or bad.
1. Three Spiritual Displacements
Post-millennials are increasingly not at home in (1) traditional church-centered Christianity, (2) secularism—including the belief that science is not only valuable but normative for all descriptions of reality—or (3) the once-influential but now outdated new atheism.
2. The Return of Individualized Enchantment
What is rising instead is a deeply personal attraction to the sacred—spiritual, magical, supernatural, occult, ecstatic, and mysterious—sought and interpreted in individualized ways, grounded more in experience than in doctrine. Often, this enchantment is accompanied by a felt sense of the earth and cosmos as alive.
3. From Disenchantment to Openness
Open and relational (process) thought can respond by affirming, not dismissing, the “enchanted” dimensions of life and the universe, interpreting them in ways consistent with a life oriented toward love. Process theology is uniquely suited to this task, given its existing openness to relationality, experience, the parapsychological, novelty, and its embrace of panexperientialism.
4. From Propositions to Participation
However, open and relational (process) theology must expand beyond abstract claims about God in reaction to classical theism and move toward forms of expression that engage experience, imagination, and participation. Theology must include storytelling, art, music, and immersive experiences of interconnectedness with the more-than-human world.
5. A New Spiritual Ecology of Community
The future lies in communities that balance solitude and relationship, and that humbly recognize the sacred as present both inside and beyond institutional religion. Relationality, in this context, cannot be limited to relations with others alone; it also includes relations with oneself. Solitude, rightly understood, is one of the primary ways such inward relationality is discovered and deepened.
6. The Spirit of Love, Many Ways Named
The emphasis can still be on a universal Spirit of Love at work in the universe, the earth, and human life; but envisioning this Spirit in personal terms will be appropriate in some circumstances and not in others. In some contexts it is best to speak of “love energy,” and in others of God as an inclusive Thou in whose womb the universe unfolds.
7. The Long View
No immediate theological response can adequately meet the unfolding of cultural history. The obsolescence of traditional religion, the disillusionment with secularism, the waning force of the new atheism, and the rise of re-enchantment have a momentum of their own. To assume that theology can decisively redirect these currents is misguided, and perhaps even a form of arrogance. What is needed, from an open and relational perspective, is trust in a universal Spirit of Love at work within the process itself—patience with the slow rhythms of cultural transformation, and a willingness to inhabit an uncertain future with humility and hope,
The Obsolescence of Traditional Religion
and the Culture of Re-Enchantment
In Why Religion Went Obsolete (2025), sociologist Christian Smith argues that traditional religion in America has not simply declined—it has, for many, become culturally obsolete. This does not mean that religion has disappeared. Rather, it persists in diminished and transformed ways, much like vinyl records or landline phones: still present, but no longer central for most people.
Smith’s aim is descriptive, not prescriptive. He is not judging this shift as good or bad, nor suggesting that earlier forms of religious life were superior. Instead, he seeks to name a cultural reality: a growing mismatch between inherited religious institutions and the lived experience of contemporary people, especially younger generations.
At the same time, this obsolescence does not signal the end of spiritual longing. Quite the contrary. Smith argues that traditional religion is increasingly being superseded by forms of “re-enchantment” that better fit individualized, experience-centered ways of living. A companion volume, focused explicitly on re-enchantment, is forthcoming (expected in 2027).
A Culture of Re-Enchantment
What is emerging is not a turn toward flat secularism, but toward a re-enchanted world. Many people continue to seek meaning, depth, and connection with something more than themselves. However, they do so outside traditional institutions and doctrines, often crafting spiritual lives that are highly personal, fluid, and experiential.
This shift reflects a broader “Millennial and Gen Z zeitgeist,” one that favors individualized spirituality over inherited systems of belief. The sacred is not rejected; it is relocated—into experience, imagination, nature, and alternative practices of meaning-making.
Smith identifies a “perfect storm” of long-term social transformations that have gradually rendered traditional religion less compelling:
Technological Transformation
The rise of the internet and digital culture has fundamentally altered how people access information, form communities, and explore meaning. Institutional religious authorities are no longer necessary as gatekeepers of knowledge or belonging.
Changing Family Structures
Delayed marriage, lower birth rates, and shifting family dynamics have weakened traditional pathways through which religious identity was once passed down across generations.
Institutional Scandals
High-profile failures—such as the Catholic abuse crisis and financial or political scandals among Evangelicals—have eroded trust and credibility, reinforcing the perception that religious institutions are outdated or compromised.
Individualized Spirituality
Younger generations increasingly prefer forms of spirituality that are personalized, flexible, and experiential rather than doctrinally fixed or institutionally mediated.
Global and Cultural Realignment
The end of the Cold War dissolved the earlier “godless vs. Christian” binary that had reinforced religious identity in American life. In its absence, religious affiliation has become less culturally obligatory.
Not Secularization, but Transformation
Crucially, Smith argues that this is not simply a story of secularization. It is not that people have ceased to care about meaning, purpose, or transcendence. Rather, the forms through which these concerns are expressed have changed.
What is emerging is a re-enchantment culture: a landscape in which the desire for the sacred persists, but is pursued through new, decentralized, and often highly individualized pathways.
A Cultural Mismatch
Taken together, these forces have produced what Smith calls a “cultural mismatch.” Traditional religious institutions were shaped for an earlier social world—one with different technologies, family patterns, and cultural assumptions. In today’s context, they often no longer align with how people actually live, think, and seek meaning.
This mismatch, rather than any coordinated ideological attack, explains why traditional religion feels increasingly obsolete for many.
Interview in Faith+Lead
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Interview in New Books Network
"Is traditional American religion doomed? Traditional religion in the United States has suffered huge losses in recent decades. The number of Americans identifying as "not religious" has increased remarkably. Religious affiliation, service attendance, and belief in God have declined. More and more people claim to be "spiritual but not religious." Religious organizations have been reeling from revelations of sexual and financial scandals and cover-ups. Public trust in "organized religion" has declined significantly.
Crucially, these religious losses are concentrated among younger generations. This means that, barring unlikely religious revivals among youth, the losses will continue and accelerate in time, as less-religious younger Americans replace older more-religious ones and increasingly fewer American children are raised by religious parents. All this is clear. But what is less clear is exactly why this is happening. We know a lot more about the fact that traditional American religion has declined than we do about why this is so.
Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America (https://bookshop.org/a/12343/97801978...) (Oxford UP, 2025) aims to change that. Drawing on survey data and hundreds of interviews, Christian Smith offers a sweeping, multifaceted account of why many Americans have lost faith in traditional religion. An array of large-scale social forces-everything from the end of the Cold War to the rise of the internet to shifting ideas about gender and sexuality-came together to render traditional religion culturally obsolete.
For growing numbers of Americans, traditional religion no longer seems useful or relevant. Using quantitative empirical measures of big-picture changes over time as well as exploring the larger cultural environment—the cultural "zeitgeist"—Smith explains why this is the case and what it means for the future. Crucially, he argues, it does not mean a strictly secular future. Rather, Americans' spiritual impulses are being channelled in new and interesting directions.
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents and emerging adults, and social theory. He has written many books, including Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (with Michael O. Emerson), as well as Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (with Melinda Lundquist Denton)."