Can religion rein the "nones" back in?

C-Span2, otherwise known as "Book TV," can absolutely come to the rescue on weekends when cable TV seems so weak.

"Book TV" at its best is the absolute best TV you can find. It completely contradicts what Newton Minow once famously said about television, that it was a "vast wasteland."

C-Span2 allows you to sit in on lectures and discussions that you might consider driving a fair distance to attend. They'll just set up a camera at a bookstore or lecture hall and let the event unfold. They aren't scared of an occasional minute of "dead time" when nothing is happening and people are just milling about in the room.

That's a trademark of the C-Span channels. Chris Matthews of MSNBC talks about how "incremental" it is.

When a book author is discussing something of particular interest to me, I sit transfixed. It makes you think, analyze and want to raise your hand to ask a question yourself.

On Sunday (4/1) there was a fellow talking about the increasing number of people who identify themselves as nonreligious. The analysts call these people the "nones," not to be confused with "nuns," because they answer with "none" when asked what religion they subscribe to, the speaker said. The number is getting up close to 20 percent.

I suspect the term "atheist" isn't used because atheism denotes an active doctrine, whereas the people answering "none" really aren't pressing the matter at all. They probably wouldn't be any less irritated (not much anyway) by PZ Myers than anyone else.
Myers is one of those academic atheists. Academia has plenty of its own problems without concerning itself with, or confronting, organized religion. We only listen to Myers because he has a position in academia.

For those of you not familiar, he's associated with our own University of Minnesota-Morris. I wouldn't be surprised if he has caused considerable hair-pulling among administration. We hire people like Myers, academicians that is, to help shape young minds.

The speaker on Book TV reported that the apparent flight from religion is especially marked among the young. He used the term "millennials." He had a theory about this that I respect, but I personally think at least one other strong force is at work.
The speaker talked about the blending of religion and politics.

When did this begin? Was it when Republicans started taking over the Deep South? As a kid I remember hearing the term "the Democratic solid South." Today the region with all its evangelical Christianity is quite Republican, Jim DeMint-style.

Can we suggest that Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority got the ball rolling?

I remember a very nice Baptist couple in Morris, very well-intentioned, who dug in their heels as members of the local Republicans. Nice they were, but they were hard right-wingers.

I find it hard to say anything disparaging about the locals as long as they never did anything that was really in-your-face. Still, the type of people I once associated with the local Republicans - temperate folks - drifted away. These were your typical middle-aged people who were business-oriented and cautious in their sensibilities. Paul Stark wouldn't mind if I typed his name here.

These people had an ideology but it wasn't flaming. Evangelicals decided it wasn't enough to just profess their beliefs in the church pew. If they were real believers, or so they felt, they had to get engaged in politics.

Non-white religious leaders still felt comfortable in the Democratic Party. But the whites gravitated Republican, or they sure made the most noise. The fellow on Book TV suspects this says much about the drift away from organized religion among the young.

Many of the young who are alienated by the chief tenets of the far right have their attitudes about religion colored. They aren't in the pews as much. The people who make their living in religion have seen this. That is why there is a current effort to gain more separation between religion and politics, from people inside.

Is it too late? You see, I think other forces are at work too. We live in a totally knowledge and information-driven age. Allow me to explain:

Church has historically been an important way for people to "network." The World War II generation was great for believing in clubs, organizations and churches giving great fulfillment. Bless them.

They did believe in the aims of these groups. But there was also a self-interested base in their activities. Belonging to the Elks Lodge or veterans club was a way to keep your place in the community, enhancing basic job security. "Who you knew" was important.

Today the criterion of "what you know" is absolutely paramount. As the number of menial or tedious jobs goes down, the need to master new data management tools takes over as whether you sink or swim.
It doesn't matter so much what church you go to. It doesn't matter if you drink to excess at an Elks club on Saturday. It won't get you anywhere. It's bad for your health and safety, which it always has been.

Better to stay home, get your proper amount of sleep and be absolutely certain you keep up with all the tech-driven changes that are most certainly affecting whatever occupation you're in.

There's no guarantee you'll survive. But the old-fashioned way of networking isn't likely to help you at all. It isn't who you know, it's what you know.

This also explains why it's less important to dress in a "formal" sort of way.
The decreased emphasis on dressing "formally" in church has been noted for some time. People my age discuss this with amusement. We'll make note of some people dressing "grubby" for church, which in a previous age (like in our youth) would have brought great disapproval.

As the "information age" began cutting its swath in our society, the mere act of choosing how to dress became less important. We were no longer putting on airs of being a certain type of person. Again, knowledge became everything. Adjusting became everything.

People who understood and could manage complex data systems landed on their feet. They "got it." Dressing formally or belonging to certain groups would become totally secondary.

I remember the character in the movie "War Games" who was the total computer nerd of his time. The hero went to him to consult, remember? He had the sidekick named "Melvin," a nerd to the point of eccentricity. Melvin's little quips got the Ally Sheedy character smiling.

The moviemakers were trying to tell us something - I have no doubt. The computer mavens paid no mind to their appearance or behavior and maybe not even to their hygiene. But we were supposed to admire them. They were on the cutting edge of what was coming for our society.

The Matthew Broderick character was able to stop a world conflagration and he of course showed up a lot of clueless and pretentious older folks in the process. Remember the general who talked about "pissing on a sparkplug?"

The young will always lead.

The fact that around 30 percent of millenials are "nones," professing no meaningful tie to religion, is interesting. That presenter on Book TV was fascinating, just like a later speaker in the day who had written a book about the final surrender of the Confederacy - all the twists and turns.

Book TV can rescue a blah weekend. My friend Glen Helberg is a big C-Span fan.

It's ironic we get bored by TV when so many channels are available. Sometimes I'll be channel-surfing and stop to watch one of those half-hour infomercials for a Time-Life music CD collection. Have you caught those? I'll often stay on that channel for the rest of the half-hour, even if it's a show I've seen before. I like the one with "Bowser" and the 1950s collection.

It says something that this programming often seems like the best available. Weekends are the "wasteland" as pointed out by Newton Minow, even though he was thinking more of shows like Gilligan's Island, and not "Huckabee," that strange Fox News prime time show that presents politics in a Tonight Show-like format.

The Huckster is a conservative Republican from the Deep South (Arkansas).

When will the conservatives' reign in the media finally end? One thing is for sure: Young people find the blending of right wing activism and religion unacceptable.

Hence they are "nones."

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com