To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, many Americans may find themselves in places of worship. An increasing number of citizens, however, may not have religious houses to which they can claim membership.
Although more than 90 percent of Americans say they believe in God, religious involvement is either stable or slowly declining based on other indicators, according to a recent study conducted by Mark Chaves, professor of sociology, religion and divinity in the Divinity School.
Dean of the Duke Chapel Sam Wells said he believes it is hard to track whether religious involvement has declined because of the shift of the student body from mostly white Protestant to a wider array of beliefs.
“Today we’re a much more diverse community. We’ve got a Muslim chapter and a Hindu chapter and a Jewish chapter and many more students with their own traditions,” he said. “There are probably fewer mainline Protestants but whether that’s because mainline Protestantism has declined or because Duke is a very diverse community is hard to assess.”
Freshman Qi Dong said she deemed herself a “free-thinker.”
“I think there is some high existen, but I really don’t have any clear idea about what it is,” she said. “My parents are not religious.”
On the other hand, freshman Stephen Cameron is a practicing Roman Catholic.
“I attend mass every week,” he said.
Furthermore, Cameron indicated that he will be praying for victims of 9/11 this Sunday at mass.
Wells believes that Cameron will not be alone.
“I think it’s perfectly natural for people who feel their deepest convictions threatened and attacked to gather together to reaffirm them,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more people than average in churches this weekend.”
He said that people who do not regularly attend church and are “spiritual” rather than participating in organized religion are not getting a complete experience by going to church this coming Sunday.
“If you’re not in the habit of gathering together and exchanging understandings of truth and expressing the best truth you know on a regular basis, if you do face a time of public crisis, you have to borrow somebody else’s tradition," he said. "A number of people will go to church who don’t normally—and they’re very welcome—but in some ways it’s a little naïve to think we only gather together at times of crisis. We gather together all the time because there are matters of great public concern all the time."
People across a wide spectrum of religious beliefs will be thinking of 9/11 on Sunday. Even though organized religion may be on the decline, churches across the country will likely be filled with people praying for the nearly 3,000 people whose lives were lost ten years ago.
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