In and Out of Church: The Moral Arc of Spiritual Change in America

Why are so many Americans leaving church? Half no longer belong to a congregation. A quarter now say they are unchurched, up from one in six a decade ago and one in twelve a generation ago, led by more than a third of young adults. Where have they gone, and what are they doing instead? What moves them? What should we make of it? What can we learn as well from those who have stayed or returned, and from congregations that have sparked their continuing commitment or renewed participation?After decades of drift and several long years of grievous pandemic that shut church doors and crowded the internet, the time has come to weigh these questions more closely and answer them more carefully. We need to open a keener moral inquiry into the arc of spiritual change in America. We need to probe a thicker cultural account of intergenerational religious influence and inspiration that we practice today in forms of ritual action, sacred expression, and moral community that reach far beyond the pews.

In and Out of Church tackles these tasks. It’s a book voiced by spiritually attuned, morally articulate young adults adrift from the churches and temples of their childhood yet immersed in currents of spiritual practice and imagination now shifting the shape and course of American religion. In heartfelt dialogue with their baby-boom parents these Millennials ponder how and why they got here in terms that open up and deepen the ＂spiritual but not religious＂ story sketched by surveys of ＂religious nones.＂ This book brings these numbers to life and makes moral sense of this story of individuals leaving church by setting it within the larger cultural drama of modern multiplex society and quicksilver selfhood in search of authentic fulfillment in caring community. It takes the reader inside a mushrooming megachurch in Silicon Valley and three thriving mainline congregations in Atlanta to see how they reach out to unchurched young adults and hold onto their own as they come of age by ＂putting belonging before believing and behaving.＂ They lift up spiritual experience above creed and code, and they challenge conventions of ＂organized religion＂ in ways that many ＂spiritual and religious＂ churchgoers have now come to embrace.

Steven Tipton is a co-author of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society and the author of Public Pulpits and Getting Saved from the Sixties. He is Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Religion at Emory University and its Candler School of Theology, and a former Director of Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion. A 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, he completed a joint PhD degree in Sociology and the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 1979.