How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization
Source: The Heritage Foundation - Mary Eberstadt Book Discussion
Date: May 30, 2013 (Archived August 20, 2025)
Speaker: Mary Eberstadt, Senior Fellow at Ethics and Public Policy Center
Type: Book Presentation & Q&A Analysis
Core Revolutionary Thesis
Eberstadt presents a groundbreaking challenge to conventional secularization theory, arguing that family decline and religious decline are interconnected in a "double helix" relationship rather than religion simply declining first and then affecting family structures.
"Family and Faith are the invisible double helix of society dependent on one another for support and reproduction"
The Fundamental Problem with Conventional Secularization Theory
The Linear Process Myth
"Secularization has been understood by most great modern thinkers and for that matter plenty of mediocre ones as a linear process in which religion slowly but surely vanishes from the earth or at least from it more sophisticated precincts as people become more educated and more prosperous"
Eberstadt systematically dismantles this assumption by pointing to three major problems:
Problem 1: Christianity's Persistence Defies Predictions
"American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark who is a contrarian in these matters wrote a lively essay in 1999 that's something of a classic it was called secularization rest in peace and it opened with an entertaining review of predictions of the demise of the Christian faith going back to 1660"
The predictions of Christianity's death from figures like Frederick the Great, Thomas Jefferson, August Comte, Friedrich Engels, and Sigmund Freud have consistently proven wrong.
Problem 2: The Class and Education Stereotype is False
Eberstadt destroys the common assumption that religion is primarily for the poor and uneducated:
"British historian Hugh McLoud has done fascinating work on London between 1870 and 1914... he documents that among anglicans in London during that period quote the number of worshippers Rises at first gradually and then steeply with each step up the social ladder"
"Only a small proportion of working class adults the historian observes attended the main Sunday church services... the working class were irreligious and the middle classes were the church-going bastions of civil morality"
Modern American Data Confirms This Pattern:
"The upper 20% of the American population data from the General Social Survey show are considerably more likely than the lower 30% to believe in God and to go to church among the working class 61% a clear majority either say that they do not go to church or believe in God or both and among the upper class that number is 42%"
Problem 3: World Wars Don't Explain Secularization
"If it were true it would be hard to see how countries with different experiences of those Wars like neutral Switzerland vanquished Germany Victorious Great Britain should all lose their religions in tandem... the world wars were actually followed for by uh sorry for two decades by a religious boom not a religious bust"
The Missing Piece: The Post-War Religious Revival (1945-1960s)
Eberstadt identifies a crucial period that conventional theory cannot explain:
"Those particular years saw a remarkable Revival of Christianity Across the Western World Church attendance was up denominational affiliation was up baptisms and related ceremonies increased religious language and religious ideas influenced public speech manners laws Arts even popular culture"
The Key Connection:
"The extraordinary religious boom was accompanied by another boom even more familiar the baby boom which was itself preceded and accompanied by a marriage boom"
The Double Helix Theory: Evidence from Around the World
Scandinavia: The Least Religious, Most Fragmented Families
"What is the least religious region in what was once known as the Christian West... it's Scandinavia yes poll and Survey data confirm this only 10% of Danes and swedes Believe In Hell For example which is the lowest number in the Western World"
The Family Connection:
"Scandinavian rates of outof wedlock births have led the Western World... more people in Scandinavia live alone in households of one than anywhere else in the world in Sweden now half of Swedish households are households of one person"
Ireland: Simultaneous Collapse
"Irish religiosity as measured by mass attendance and Survey data Etc let alone changing uh the changing legal landscape has dropped faster than it has anywhere else in Europe... Ireland's remarkable religious collapse did not occur in a vacuum... Ireland went through the demographic change in one generation rather than two and the fact that fertility and religiosity collapsed simultaneously and at similarly radical rates suggests once more that the family has been a silent and unacknowledged partner in Christianity's fate"
Why Families Drive People to Church
1. Childbirth as Transcendental Experience
"For many mothers and fathers whether they are religious or not child birth itself is experienced as a transcendental event... it gives some people the feeling that they've understood or earned a place in the cosmos for the first time"
Whitaker Chambers Example:
"He writes about how studying his infant daughter's ear as she sat in her high chair one night became a personal and Cosmic epiphany that moment was the very beginning he wrote of what became his Epic Journey away from atheism and communism and eventually back to Christianity"
2. Seeking Moral Community for Children
"People seek out churches for another reason... because are looking for a community in which to situate those children particularly a moral Community consistent with with what the parents want to teach"
3. Family Life Mirrors Christian Sacrifice
"Family life as everyone knows is full of sacrifice taking care of sick people old people people with mental problems sacrificing time Leisure... Christianity is a religion that starts with the birth of a baby his mother and adopted father begin their lives with this baby by making an enormous sacrifice... so is it really any wonder that people who who live in families are more likely to go to church when everything about the story of Jesus resonates with their everyday experience of sacrifice"
The Theological Barriers of Family Breakdown
Eberstadt makes a profound point about how family breakdown creates conceptual barriers to Christian belief:
"If you live in a world where many people grow up in in fatherless homes... judeo-christianity from the very beginning has presented the idea of God as that of a loving benevolent father figure if you don't have that in your life you've got a little more of a conceptual reach"
"After 1973 we live in a world where every birth is negotiable right so of course there are people um less likely to understand why what is so miraculous about say the birth component of the Christian story"
"A world of plummeting birth rates is a world where many people grow to adulthood never having held a baby if that is your experience it might be a little harder to understand what is so miraculous about the idea of God coming into the world as a baby"
The Role of the Welfare State
"The welfare state has been operating in this sort of Helix like way uh in the fracturing of those other two institutions because on the one hand a lot of what it does is to substitute for what the family used to do... and on the other hand the more families have fallen apart the more it's been called upon to to do that"
Future Implications:
"It's entirely possible that the future of the welfare state is an important part of what happens to Christianity in the future because what we're seeing in Western Europe suggests that these large expensive family substitutes known as the modern welfare state are not sustainable over time"
Why Strict Churches Survive
"The phenomenon called why strict churches are strong... if you look at American protestantism today and you see that the churches that tried hard to be nice and to jettison some of the very strict um traditional moral code of Christianity... those are the churches in demographic freefall... on the other hand the strict Protestant denominations the Evangelical churches generally are doing well"
The Demographic Reality:
"If you're a pastor and you're indifferent to the question of people having babies you are writing yourself out of a job demographically"
Historical Cycles and Hope for Revival
The Pattern of Adversity Driving People Home
"In 2008 when the economic crisis began a couple of interesting things happened one a lot of adult children did not strike out on their own but went back to their homes of their parents... two there was also a drop in the divorce rate... both of these are examples of how in times of economic adversity people look to their nearer and more organic connections"
"The same is true of church as we saw in a very different way after 911 when suddenly the churches were full and people who hadn't been to church in decades were suddenly showing up for a few Sundays"
The Nietzschean Misdiagnosis
"Maybe in the end n was right to spy what he called the tombs across Western Europe meaning the empty churches in Cathedrals but he was wrong I think about what was buried in them it was not God per se but rather the weakened and fractured and sometimes non-existent family especially on the modern continent that explains the emptiness of those places"
The Sacred Music of Family
"The Human family in short appears to have been the symphony through which many people have heard God's voice not everyone not the prophets or the intellectuals perhaps but a great many other Ordinary People and given the state that the family is in today including though not only in Western Europe it's not surprising that some people find it harder to hear the Sacred Music anymore"
Key Takeaways
- Conventional secularization theory is fundamentally flawed - it assumes linear decline when the reality is cyclical
- Family and faith are interdependent - neither can be understood in isolation from the other
- The welfare state has artificially propped up the consequences of family breakdown while accelerating religious decline
- Economic adversity historically drives people back to organic connections (family and church)
- Theological barriers emerge when family breakdown makes Christian concepts (divine fatherhood, miraculous birth, sacrifice) harder to comprehend
- Demographic sustainability requires both strong families and strong religious institutions
This theory provides a compelling alternative framework for understanding both the decline of Christianity in the West and the potential pathways for its renewal through the restoration of strong family structures.