The Substance of Things Hoped For

The fastest-growing religious category in America is the "religiously unaffiliated" - atheists, agnostics, and people who don't associate themselves with any religion. This fact is perhaps unsurprising in our secular age. One of my favorite college professors, Alan Jacobs, posts that perhaps people haven't changed - they just feel more comfortable eschewing faith. In fact, decades ago C.S. Lewis noted that once chapel attendance at Oxford and Cambridge was not compulsory, chapel attendance dropped. He said that students had "left" chapel years before they were allowed to skip it - now appearances were conforming with reality.

Dr. Jacobs says maybe it's not a bad thing for people to throw off the illusion of religious belief if they really don't believe. On the other hand, I've always agreed that "[h]ypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue." Would you rather people act hypocritically if that means they act better, or would you rather they be true to their ideas and feelings if that means they act worse?

For your reply, consider these questions. To what do you attribute the rise in secularism in our culture? Do you think people are more comfortable rejecting religion now? What stopped them in the past? What about hypocrisy - can you defend it? You can use examples unrelated to religion if you like.