Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson writes in the Washington Post about the unique benefits of religious communities in American society:
There is a book that everyone will be talking about—when it appears over a year from now. “American Grace: How Religion Is Reshaping Our Civic and Political Lives,” being written by Robert Putnam and David Campbell, is already creating a buzz. Putnam, the author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” is the preeminent academic expert on American civic life. Campbell is his rising heir. And the book they haven’t yet finished will make just about everyone constructively uncomfortable.
At a recent conference of journalists organized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Putnam outlined the conclusions of “American Grace,” based on research still being sifted and refined. Against the expectations of hard-core secularists, Putnam asserts, “religious Americans are nicer, happier and better citizens.” They are more generous with their time and money, not only in giving to religious causes but to secular ones. They join more voluntary associations, attend more public meetings, even let people cut in line in front of them more readily. Religious Americans are three to four times more socially engaged than the unaffiliated. Ned Flanders is a better neighbor.
He concludes, too, that the secularized youth are not lost forever; they’re just waiting for the right church to go to:
But Putnam regards the growth of the “nones” as a spike, not a permanent trend. The young, in general, are not committed secularists. “They are not in church, but they might be if a church weren’t like the religious right….There are almost certain to be religious entrepreneurs to fill that niche with a moderate evangelical religion, without political overtones.”
Continue reading at the Washington Post.