By Mark Zirnsak
Over the summer, I was challenged in my existing understanding of the church’s role in society by reading Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s ‘The Upswing’.
Published in 2020, it covers the US’s cultural, social, political, religious and economic history over 125 years.
While needing to be cautious about assuming trends in the US can be transferred into Australia, some of their findings are worth considering in our current situation.
Putnam and Romney Garrett make the argument that between the 1870s and 1890s the US was plagued by inequality, political polarisation, cultural narcissism, a rise in white supremacist violence and hostility to migrants. It was an age of aggressive individualism, much like today.
However, at the start of the 20th Century, American society became more focused on community wellbeing, and churches played a significant role.
What followed was that from the 1910s to the 1960s, financial and wealth inequality narrowed and the situation for women and African Americans steadily improved (from a very low starting position), well before the civil rights movement emerged.
Then, at some point in the 1960s, society swung back again with an increasing focus on individualism and self-interest. Political polarisation, financial and wealth inequality accelerated, people disengaged from community groups and racism increased.
From empirical evidence, Putnam and Romney Garrett conclude that it seems likely that cultural shifts drive societal change, with politics following and economic change bringing up the rear.
Thus, churches can play a positive role in a more caring society to the extent that they encourage a community-focused culture.
Further, churches as part of the community can play a positive role in reducing political polarisation.
In a highly partisan system, people are more likely to support what their party or candidate sets as policy than meaningful engagement in policy details.
Putnam and Romney Garrett also argue it is harder to address economic inequality and racism in a polarised political system. Thus, when church leaders attack individual politicians rather than reflect on policy, they feed into growing polarisation.
Putnam and Romney Garrett found that churches played a largely positive societal role in the examined period.
Church-goers were more likely to give to all sorts of community causes and were twice as likely to be volunteers in the community and serve in community groups. The authors conclude that statistical analysis points to church involvement being casual to these community benefits.
Church theology does matter. The authors point out that from the 1870s to the 1890s, Protestant theology focused on personal piety and salvation, which led to a preoccupation with personal sins and an erosion of social ethics.
At the turn of the 20th Century, Protestant theology started to pivot from a focus on individualism towards a concern with the broader community, and the Social Gospel movement emerged.
Thousands of congregations became centres for women’s meetings, youth groups, girls’ guilds, boys’ brigades, sewing circles, benevolent societies, athletic clubs and other community groups.
Putnam and Romney Garrett’s analysis also provides warnings against churches embracing individualistic culture, which will not put a brake on the decline in church affiliation.
Churches that took a turn to the political right, promoting individualistic prosperity theology and forming the Religious Right in the US, initially stemmed a decline in church attendance.
However, ultimately, they sparked a broader backlash in society, who viewed them as judgmental, homophobic, hypocritical and partisan.
Church attendance then declined again after a brief pause.
Mark Zirnsak is the Synod’s Senior Social Justice Advocate