A Message from the Rector
“GOD HELP US”
W
e are a couple of weeks into the Great Fifty Days of Easter and I’m still high on the joy of such a wonderful season. Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter Sunday were rich with meaning and I hope you left engaged and inspired each time you worshipped here. Easter is an opportunity to celebrate the faith we have, as well as the chance to invite seekers into our community. This year, I hope the invitation to join our faith family is more explicit and intentional, because I think the need is greater than it has been in living memory. I made an apologetic plea to those outside our faith community in my Easter sermon and have already received some encouraging feedback. Christian apologetics is a branch of theology that seeks to provide a thoughtful defense for the Gospel. Although much of what we do as Christians can be thought of as a form of apologetics, I hoped to tackle some of the easiest criticisms of Christianity, and intend to continue that thread through the Easter Season.
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THE ARCHANGEL | MAY-JUNE 2019
One of the threads of thought I introduced was based on a recent survey of US adults. For the first time ever, surveys show that there are as many atheists as Catholics and Evangelicals in the US. The number of “nones,” those adults who do not identify with any faith group (atheist, agnostic, etc), has surged since the early 1970s, so now, they are statistically dead even with the other two largest faith groups.1 I’m guessing this report doesn’t surprise you. It’s no secret that church attendance in the US, and thus religious affiliation, has been declining for decades. The decline is across the board in every major US religious group (the exception would be the very statistically small, yet growing, Muslim population). Although this might sound more dire to those of us in a faith community like Saint Michael, I believe that every person, even those who identify as atheists or agnostics, should be very concerned. As religious affiliation declines, the rates of illness has climbed. In almost every health category, studies show that those who are connected to a faith community are healthier, happier, and live longer. A recent Pew Research Center report shows that actively religious people are more
likely than their non-religious neighbors to describe themselves as “very happy,” to join charitable and civic organizations, and to live longer.2 The research doesn’t stop there. Countless other studies and surveys have shown similar results. Psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, a self-proclaimed atheist, reports that, “If you are having serious cardiac surgery and receive strength and comfort from your religious faith, you’ll be almost 3 times more likely to be alive 6 months later.”3 Scientists don’t know exactly why this is true, but they have their suspicions. People who are connected to religious communities are simply less lonely. I don’t mean the feeling of loneliness—everyone feels that way every now and then—I mean that people who belong to religious communities are literally less alone. By their very nature, churches and other faith groups gather together regularly. People who attend those gatherings, whether they be for worship, study, or service, get to know other people and get to be known by other people in a much deeper way than those who are unaffiliated. Personal connection is desperately important for all of us. There are countless social
