Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 10/23/23

When everything goes bad everywhere all at once. Whether you’re tuning into the world or national news, chances are the bulk of what you’re seeing and hearing isn’t comforting. While the world appears to be teetering on the brink of all-out war, domestically we are country suffering from rampant crime, personal depression and overall disunity. In 1955 49% of Americans told pollsters they attended religious services. That percentage slid to only 34% in 2019. Dr. Seth D. Kaplan, an expert on fragile states and conflict prevention at Johns Hopkins University, connects the dots in his new book Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time.

JWK: I think your book is, unfortunately, relevant on a worldwide scale right now. As a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, what are your thoughts on what’s transpiring in the Middle East?

Seth D. Kaplan: Clearly, if you’re Jewish and you have connections to Israel, on one level it’s shock, on one level it’s tragedy. So many people I know are affected. They have kids being called up. I mean no immediate person I know has been injured or killed but I know people who have close relatives who have been killed. It’s just a tragedy clearly for the families and places most affected. It’s all a tragedy. The biggest tragedy, of course, will be for the Palestinians and just the scale of people who will be affected. It’s just very unfortunate.

I often I write about the positive force of religion but we also know religion can be used like any technology – if we’re thinking about religion from a social science perspective – social technology, as well as material technology, can be used for good and bad. I think some of this – if you want to connect it back to religion – is how certain groups use religion, as well as ethnic identity and everything else, for the wrong cause. I would sincerely hope that there will be peace and prosperity for everybody. It’s just hard not to be a pessimist in the short to medium term.

JWK: A lot of this does seem to be rooted in ancient and religious hatred – but can religious faith help people get through this?

SDK: I think there are multiple answers for that.

First, clearly, Israel has incredible social cohesion. It has an incredibly strong society where you have a lot of people who don’t trust the government, don’t like the government, don’t have a lot of faith in the government and yet people are rallying to the extent that people are volunteering to go and fight even though they’re not being called up. You have people from around the world flying back to support the effort. You have such social cohesion and, I think, it’s hard to believe that the social cohesion doesn’t have its roots in faith.

Judaism, in particular, is a very bottom-up, very communal religion and it certainly has instilled certain norms, institutions and beliefs even in the secular population of Israel. I mean there’s all the history of state-building and everything. So, it’s not only religious. It’s secular but there’s certainly an echo even in the secular parts…So, you can look at that as a very good positive in terms of people coming together, people helping each other, people opening their homes, people praying. In my neighborhood, people literally are praying for Israel. We have groups on WhatsApp doing psalms…So, all of this is very cohesive, very mutually supportive. So, I certainly think religion can be like that.

I know firsthand that Islam can be the same way. Islam also is very similar to Judaism as a force at the local level in terms of institutions and community building. Some of my best experiences…have been working in Muslim communities with their type of warmth, hospitality and social support…So, Islam certainly can do that for its people as well.

I think the big question is how do these two peoples live (maybe not) together but side by side. There you need better government. There you need better leadership. There you need a different narrative. This all could be found in Islam but currently is not. It’s certainly not the leading element in the society. So, you’re not getting the kind of outcomes you could with different leadership, a different narrative and definitely much better state institutions. Sorry for that long answer.

JWK: No, that’s okay. So, I gather from what you’re saying that religion is a powerful force that, if channeled well, can be a great force for getting people through these kinds of situations but, if channeled poorly, can actually create these situations.  

SDK: There’s plenty of evidence that religion brings people together. Think of American Grace – a wonderful book by Bob Putnam and David Campbell – and all the data that they come up with that show how people who go to houses of worship on a regular basis are more generous. They volunteer more. They’re there for other people more. They contribute more in many ways. It’s not their beliefs. It’s their practices that matter. I think that’s certainly true.

In my experience most of the world is more religious than the western countries and the United States is more religious than Europe – but it’s really not as religious the Middle East, not as religious as Africa, South Asia and places like that. To the extent that in the Middle East you have strong religion, you do have strong social support. You know, religion is many ideas. The question is what ideas will come to dominate?…How do political and social leaders leverage these beliefs in religion, the narratives in religion and, in many ways, the rules or the interpretations of rules in religion? And they could easily leverage these. This could (also) be done in a secular context. It doesn’t necessarily only work in a religious context – but that force for cohesion, that force for bringing people together, surely can be misused. We certainly have clear evidence of that in many countries.

JWK: You’re known as an expert on fragile states, societies and communities. How do you gain that kind of expertise?

SDK: Well, there’s how I got my knowledge and what my record actually says. So, let me give you two answers.

The knowledge comes from (this). I think most people when they work in the peace-building field – and that’s, broadly speaking, what I work in, what my day job is – they will go to school and then they will go to work for some organization and they’ll study and they’ll learn from others and they’ll work up a certain career path. That would be the standard route. That’s not the route of everybody. You can certainly find individuals who became great mediators and have no (formal) training or anything like that.

In my case, my knowledge – and then, eventually, my reputation – came not from going to school and not by working at some organization. It was because I wandered. I basically got out of college (and) got curious about the world and I just wandered. I lived in Nigeria. I traveled around Africa. I lived in Asia, spoke a few Asian languages. I just wandered. Eventually I wandered to 75 or so countries and I built these databases based on my knowledge of lots of different countries. I learned lots of material by reading. Then I published a book. I literally was not in the field and yet I wrote the first book on fragile states…and then I got to work on lots of projects (for) organizations.

For example, the most important conflict prevention report in the last 12 years – there was a big report in 2011 and then there was a big report in 2018 – the only time the World Bank and the United Nations ever came together to write a report. For Pathways to Peace, I wrote the concept chapter and I was senior advisor on the whole project. I, basically, had a reputation…but initially, in answer to your question, it’s because I wandered, I asked questions and I sought out answers not in a structured format. That’s why I think my answers are sometimes quite different than other people’s answers.

JWK: So, you brought fresh eyes to a lot of this stuff. Again, this, unfortunately, is a particularly timely subject. It seems like the whole world is a fragile neighborhood right now. How can religion help us maybe prevent World War III?

SDK: Well, of course, that’s a really big question. It seems to me that in the world we have multiple challenges to peace. I think religion can be useful for some of the challenges. If you look at the geopolitical challenge – which is basically China, Russia (and) Iran challenging the international order led by the United States  – I’m not quite sure religion has an obvious role to play. China is not religious – if anything, the government is anti-religious – and I’m not sure religion can deal with the differences between the US and Iran and the US and Russia.

I would say the second dimension of our increasing fragility – putting aside global warming and all sorts of issues like that but talking about politics on the national level – is you have increasing ungoverned spaces (and) collapse of political order. What’s happening in Sudan is not widely reported but it’s very tragic what is actually going on on the ground. You hear a little bit about Haiti but I think Sudan is in a much worse state. You have all the coups and the growing disorder across the (globe). Literally, you can go from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and go through (several) countries (where) there have been coups in the last three to four years – I mean all the way across Africa. I think religion could play a positive role here. I think religion can bring about political order (but) you have to have the right leaders and the right institutions.

This region is not completely – but mostly – Muslim. Some of the actors are Islamist. The question is could more moderate religious actors galvanize social forces to come together to create a political order that would be more peaceful, more inclusive and more sustainable? I do think it’s possible.

JWK: Turning to America, which is the focus of your book, do you see declining religious participation as contributing to the social problems we have now?

SDK: For sure…I wrote this book initially because people asked me if America is a fragile state. They did that around the 2015/2016/2017 time frame…They saw what was happening to America. A lot of people got scared about American democracy, American polarization…I think it was the right question. So, I spent a lot of time researching, exploring, reading and traveling. What you see in the United States is you have a whole string of social problems. You have depths of the spirit, a declining lifespan. You have problems of loneliness and isolation. You have problems of mental illness. You have problems of depression. You have problems of family breakdown and situations with a lot of specific neighborhoods (where) many children grow up (that)  really reduce their life opportunities. We could go on and on.

All of these are typically viewed as different problems – and there are some differences and there are some things you could do that would be particular to them – but my main argument is that all of these problems are all getting worse simultaneously and the trajectories have all started roughly around (the same time). It’s not only an issue of religion. It’s basically an issue of the deinstitutionalization of social life (and) the deinstitutionalization of belief. People, instead of going to church, they’re still spiritual but they’re not involved with the church or any sort of religious establishment. That, I think, is paralleled by the deinstitutionalization of relationships (in) marriage and family (and) to a certain extent the deinstitutionalization of civic engagement.

You have all these parallel things happening. Religion is contributing to it but it’s also being very much affected by these things. So, I think we need to look at all of these and then we need to look at the drivers that cause them. I believe there are many things going on but surely there’s something about the physical landscape  and something about the institutional landscape. When it comes to religion, instead of us (walking) to a church or a mosque or a synagogue that’s near our house, next to some stores we might go to and it might be in the same neighborhood of the school that our kids go to and (is surrounded by) a whole bunch of other institutions, now, we drive.

It’s not only the decline of religion. Religion itself is not the same. Religion becomes a consumer product like everything else. We listen to the sermon for two hours, we might get a couple of more services from our house of worship and then religion disappears from our life. This is not religion as it was historically meant to be – or was.

So, I would say it’s not only a decline of belief. It’s a thinning of the idea of religion. I think the thinning of the idea and the decline in participation are correlated. I think they go hand in hand. I am a believer that religion needs to reclaim its communal aspect if it is going to restore its place in American society.

JWK: How does it do that?

SDK: I presented to the National Association of Evangelicals – their board of directors – a few weeks ago. My specific suggestion to them was to make their churches more communal. This would mean, to the extent possible, becoming more place-based and, to the extent possible, thickening their practice…That means doing more things together as a group. It may mean we’re having more activities, more learning, more day-today contacts…It could be meals together. It could be making the sabbath much more important.

In my neighborhood – because I’m an religious Jew – we spend something like  20% of the days of the year in our neighborhood. We can’t drive. If you include the Saturdays plus the holidays, we’re spending almost one-fifth of our calendar together in a specific place doing things together…I also told them that they should do as much as they can to bring children into their cultural cocoon. To the extent that we want children to grow up in the faith and pass the faith onward, it’s very important that children grow up in the culture of the church or of any religious house of worship. If children grow up and their main cultural markers are of the broader society and not the markers of their faith, it’s likely their faith will not be carried on.

Then, of course, I told them they need to be more counter-cultural. I think one of the great problems of religious leaders is they’re trying too much to be like everybody else. I actually think they’re spending too much energy on politics – which I also told people at that meeting. Our main emphasis (should be) building community, building strong institutions and bringing people up in that.

In my neighborhood I feel like I’m in a security blanket of relationships because I walk down the street and I look at the houses and I know who lives there and I know what kids they have and I can walk around shops and I know people and I can say “Hi” to people. They’re mostly not my “friends” – but I know them. I know I can knock on their door. If there’s a problem with one of my kids I know there’s lots of people there for me and they’re always there for me. I could give you lots of specific examples of how people were there when we had a crisis in the house with a child or with something else.

The more we build communities like that (the better). I think it entails (being) counter-cultural…and more true to what our faith means in terms of living day in and day out. We don’t try to be like secular society. I surely think the answers for most people are (found in) local community. They don’t need politics. I mean I’m against stickers on my car. I’m against signs on my street. I don’t want to know the politics of my neighbors (though) it comes up, of course. I want us to build community and houses of worship can play a tremendous role in bringing people together – but they have to be not ashamed of what it means to be religious and what it means to build a religious life.

I think it’s an extremely attractive lifestyle. I know in my community we have a lot of people who are not religious. We Jews don’t tend to have a lot of converts but we do have converts. In my community, we do have a lot of people – myself included – that did not grow up religious. We just find this lifestyle attractive. I think people of faith – if they live a life that’s very attractive and very communal – will gain a lot of support from other people. It will seem like something people can aspire to.

JWK: That’s great. Any you’d like to say as we wrap up?

SDK: I would just say that our country has many, many challenges – from depths of despair to polarization. We’re not going to address these challenges with policy. I think policy matters. I think government matters. I certainly think it’s important to vote and to promote or advocate for what you think is important but I don’t think we can address these problems by looking outward or looking upward for solutions.

We need to look horizontally. We need to look within our neighborhoods, within our community (and) within our local institutions. I think houses of worship are incredibly important for that. They’re not the only ones. Schools, local officials, philanthropy, nonprofits (have their places too) but, certainly, the more religious organizations look local, the more they build community, the more people look to each other…to help our places be better, elevate our places, look to improve our places, look for practical things to work on (to) be good to our neighbors, to find someone lonely (and) to organize a clean-up in the park (the better).

All these things, they’re not intentional to bring people together but the more we do things together that solve practical problems (the more) we bring people together whether it’s through our houses of worship or otherwise. I think it’s all tremendously beneficial to those who make these choices, beneficial to the neighbors and it’s the best way for us to address all these spiraling, cascading social problems we have in our society.

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.