Introduction
I am writing this in October 2025. There’s a YouTube channel– Professor Archive – which, among other things, surveys the decline of Christianity. I’ve just watched What a Post-Christian World Might Really Look Like. There are some interesting claims, like in the UK more people practice Wicca than attended Church of England services? True? I haven’t verified, but the fact that the claim is made says so much. The video is against secularism and sees Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) as presently incoherent – but may be the beginnings of something new.
In 2025 religion is not the only thing being broken. What we believe and how we live together (with other humans and other lives) are being broken apart in anticipation of new ways of thinking and acting. Do we respond in fear or in hope?
A few days ago, I finished Why Religion Went Obsolete by Christian Smith. Smith is a sociologist. He charts the rise of the SBNR and the decline of adherence to traditional religions. In the past decade organised Christianity’s loss of followers has been catastrophic to those who are intent on preserving the faith. The emergence of Christian nationalism in the US has been emblematic of the crisis. We see an appeal to politics because the content of faith has lost its power, and shift toward even more pronounced divisiveness and intolerance.
Smith’s survey of the decline of formal religion explores secular forces which have transformed our cultures toward more individualistic values and less reliant on local geographic communities (everything from greater physical mobility and the internet, social media and developments in telecommunications technology). This is quite apart from the growing mismatch between emerging psycho-spiritual needs and what a 1,700-year-old faith can offer.
Late last year I was interested in what astrologers had to say about 2025. One summed things up by saying, “Don’t hold on to things too tightly.” Professor Archive’s video on things post-Christian noted there is a crisis in ‘mental health’, observing that this was evident in countries which had largely abandoned religion and were mostly secular. But I’d also note that faith can also be a way of sandbagging against existential reality. The term ‘religious psychosis’ is becoming very popular.
There is a widely discussed ‘mental health’ crisis. Personally, I detest the term and never use it. Its ‘psychological health’ to me. This crisis seems to signify something important is going on – the loss of the old and emergence of the new. The old is falling away and the new is yet to form in a way that is universally accessible. Transitional times can be traumatic. Do we hang on to what we have, or do we let go?
Below I want to reflect this time and the drama of transition
The way things are now
Smith’s book explores the attitudes of generational cohorts (Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z). Each generation views ‘now’ through a different experiential lens. Our sense of ‘used to be’ can be nostalgic or a relief.
As a Boomer my nostalgia is about being able to visit places of sublime natural spirit before they became overrun. I treasure the privilege of solitude where hordes now blunder. But I love tech in so many ways.
I abandoned Christianity when I was six years old. But I did not abandon the spiritual – which insistently engaged with me to the point of crisis, and I finally accepted it fully (after several decades).
In 1970 I left Tasmania as a ‘straight’ person and travelled to Melbourne as the first step of a life adventure. I walked into a radical alternative culture utterly unprepared. I was like the tarot’s Fool. I arrived with a backpack, a small portable typewriter and a camera. I had a dream of getting into journalism. The typewriter and camera were promptly stolen. The dream of journalism evaporated, and I entered an existential drama that took me to the edge several times. I came to understand I was under the watchful eye of spirit after a decade. But it was watching and, if anything, making life tougher for me than I’d cared for.
During that time, I had a telling experience back in Hobart. I had smoked some fiendishly potent weed mixed with hash (I later learned also laced with heroin) and found myself in a seriously bad place. It was a very unpleasant experience, and I knew I had to ensure until the effects of the joint wore off. After a time of grim determination, I suddenly found myself in a quiet calm place full of light. I knew this was the ‘real me’ and nothing external could harm me. Even now that memory remains a potent source of knowing. Some get to that place through devotion, others through trauma.
This present time seem reminiscent of Melbourne in 1970. Only I am now a more seasoned traveller. The familiar seems to be falling apart or have gone completely. The world seems to be going through a crisis of transition between two states. Of course, this transition has been going on for some time and it’s not easy to figure out at what point of the transition we are at. Consider the business of being born into this world. The transition process begins and then passes through stages that are ever more dramatic – and then the umbilical cord is cut. Then begins another transitional phase of adaptation to being in this world.
Where are we now – collectively and individually? Individually some are resisting, some are brashly gung ho. Many are somewhere between – bewildered and worried. “Don’t hang on too tightly.” That seems like good advice. But hardly any comfort.
The drama of transition
Another book I recently finished was The Immortality Key. It explored the idea that from the time of the ‘establishment’ of civilization there has been a tradition of the use of hallucinogenic substances – which started off as ‘spoiled beer’ and evolved into the psychoactive wine of the Greek mystery cults. These cults informed early Christianity. The sacrament of the wine and wafer is an inert residue of practices and beliefs now denied, suppressed and punished.
The book also reminded me of those times in the early ‘70s in Melbourne. We were determined to throw off the repressive influence of a religion we thought debased. We gathered secretly in homes where we shared meals and took our illegal enlightening drugs. We engaged in earnest conversation about life and meaning and explored alternative ways of engaging with the sacred.
This was a transition time that began intensely in the 1960s but can be traced back to the 1950s. It was part of a larger transition period that goes back millennia, but has ages we have distinguished – the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution. Smith charted the fall into obsolesce of religion from post World War 2. That suits us because it is meaningful in concrete ways. For the sake of a conversation, we create start and end dates in a continuum that began when we began. Transition (let us also call it evolution) is a constant but also has periods of great intensity when familiar and cherished things get broken. This includes our senses of meaning and purpose.
We are finally taking ET seriously. AI, still festooned with hype, looks as though it will change a lot of things (for good and ill). Climate change is beyond denial, and its impacts are concerning. Change-denying political movements are hitting us in discomforting ways. Progressive politics seems visionless. There are dire economic indicators that the present system isn’t fit for purpose.
Smith’s sociological survey of the factors of religion’s decline into obsolescence reminded me just how radical change has been. In 1970 I arrived in Melbourne with a portable Olivetti typewriter. It was red and slipped into a hard plastic case. Its gone. Now the equivalent is a notebook computer. When I moved into my current home in 2002 I had maybe 12 boxes of books. Now I have over 300 eBooks on my phone. I can chart the past 60 years of technological change with ease.
Changes in attitudes and values are complex and less easy to list, but no less spectacular. In the ‘60s and ‘70s I protested against the Vietnam War and the drowning of Lake Pedder. I marched for women’s, Gay, and Aboriginal rights. There has been steady progress on equity and inclusion since then. Now new change-resistant religious/political movements want to restore discrimination and inequity.
Conclusion
I can’t see ahead with any clarity. Maybe our world three decades from now will be as radically different to how ‘now’ would seem to three decades ago. Smith’s characterisation of those who are SBNR is hopeful. In three decades, they are likely to be the majority by a wide margin. This will bring welcome changes, but what else will there be?
In that time a lot of things will have to change – especially on the political front. Being SBNR means we can choose our own pathway to the sacred and go alone or in company. But the political must evolve to enable this new way of living together. Disengagement from the debased and distorted politics of our time sends a message to those who imagine they can be of service – but we cannot disengage from the political itself imply because we need functional means of managing our common affairs at the level of community. It has ever been thus for humanity, and we have mostly done it well – until the advent of civilization when elitists imagined they had divine sanction to impose their will.
Our life worlds are being shaken up for good purpose. But it will not seem like that for a lot of folks who will feel their comfort zones are not something they have elected to sacrifice for the sake of a greater vision. But when was that ever a realistic choice?
The SBNR have elected to determine meaning and value on their own account. That means a hive of exploration and innovation with success and failure. The early Christians were inspired by the idea that as individuals they could establish a personal relationship with the divine. Subsequent manifestations of the faith corralled that sense of relationship within constraints of dogma, theology, rituals, rules and imposed authority. And then corruption and scandal killed off any residual loyalty and hope.
The future can be what we make it – well, it will be that, regardless. If we want it better than we fear, then we will have to allow that some things must be broken and discarded – and that includes things we presently imagine to be good. This is especially so in politics, but this is also a proposal that being partisan in a spiritual sense isn’t conducive to shared positive outcome.
Among those who assert their right to believe as they do is a willingness to denigrate and insult others who believe as they choose. Aggressive belief is invasive and likely to stir up conflict for no good outcome. Relationships with our community members are not one of the things we need to break – but mend.
Holding firm to our deep impulse for spirituality is vital. That way we can surrender our grip on things that must change. Belief serves our psychological needs, not our quest for rational or objective truth. If we understand that then we can be free in our quest for meaning and values. Belief about what is ‘truth’ is always context dependent and reliant on what we know and how we think. It is always contestable.
Being SBNR is a personal quest for meaning and values. Professor Archive’s concern that SBNR thinking is a pick and mix smorgasbord of selected elements from many systems and isn’t coherent doesn’t bother me. Other religions aren’t coherent either – especially Christianity. What matters is the quest for meaning and values rather than dogmas.
What we are witnessing now and will continue to witness in the years to come, will not likely bring us comfort. It may distress some of us and excite others. What matters is whether we can discover the core of our values and meaning – where our indestructible nature is affirmed. How we get there is down to us.
Do explore Christian Smith’s book. A sociologist’s take on generational changes in the way we live, think, feel and act since the end of World War 2 is immensely helpful – not only to understand why formal religion is shrivelling but why so many other things we take for granted are also changing, and must change.