Has traditional faith become obsolete in America?

And if so, why?

Until now, there's not been a thorough sociological analysis of the various factors contributing to the demise of religion in America since the 1990s.

Our guest today, Dr. Christian Smith, a sociologist, has written an important new book that deserves a lot of intention in which he does just that.

I'm Sean McDowell.

I'm your co-host, Scott Ray.

This is the Think Biblical Podcast brought to by Talba School of Theology Biola University.

Dr. Smith, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me.

Really appreciate your book titled Why Religion Went Obsolete. For starters, maybe just tell us,

what's your interest in the question of religious decline in America? Yeah, so I'm a sociologist,

and American religion is really interesting. And for the longest time,

this story was that religion has declined in Europe. Secularization has happened elsewhere, but not in the U.S.

In recent decades, however, we've seen a lot of indicators of religious decline. And so, and it's significant. It stands out. So it's obviously

something that would be interesting to a sociologist. And of course, people of faith, communities of

faith, would be very interested in this topic. So, yeah, there's a lot of different kind of audiences

that care about this. I don't think we'd understood it well enough until now, so I really wanted to

try to explain it better. Yeah, you use a different term than most people use to describe

religious decline. You used the term traditional religion becoming obsolete in America.

Tell us a little bit about what you mean precisely by that term religion

becoming obsolete. Yeah, so I mean what the normal usage is that obsolescence happens

when most people feel something is no longer useful or needed because something else has

superseded it in function or efficiency or value

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