I read the Op-Ed above with amused interest… interest because matters of Religion always have stoked my curiosity; and amused because I’m reminded of two old sayings — “The more things change, the more they remain the same” and “What goes round always comes around”.
Religion went out of fashion and favour for the last 300 years ever since the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution dawned on Mankind. The idea of God went dead … and large parts populations of the world , especially in the prosperous Western countries, embraced the idea that the “pursuit of Happiness” did not necessarily have to have the permission or blessings of the Almighty.
The fact that religion has generally fallen out of favor with many people in recent history is evidenced by the prevalence of those who identify as “spiritual but not religious” or “nones”. Secularization is a measurable global trend. A major 2023 sociological study drawing on 40 years of data across more than 100 societies shows that many countries have experienced dramatic declines in religious affiliation, attendance, and belief. UK church attendance dropped from 50% in the 1950s to under 10% today. In the U.S., monthly religious service attendance fell from 60% in 1981 to 30% in 2024.
However, today in 2025, and as the above book-review tells us even in the most prosperous and most powerful, most materialistic and militaristic society, America, God Almighty and Religion is making a big comeback!
The reasons why the Western societies by and large turned irreligious, agnostic or secular over the last 500 years have been well explained in the book. The author adduces them as follows:
Religion” is a loaded term with lots of baggage. In 2025, the word often carries a negative stigma. People often associate the word “religion” with institutional or organized religion. The institution of religion has a sordid past, and daily headlines are replete with the abuses, atrocities and scandals of religion.
For example, the Christian religion throughout history has rationalized:
- persecution of heretics
- oppression of women
- religious intolerance
- divine right of kings against democratic freedoms
- institution of slavery
- the Crusades
- victimization of homosexuals
- cruelty to animals
- suppression of civil rights
- white supremacy
- racism
- genocide
- objectification of unbelievers
- opposition to scientific progress
- burning of witches
- violence and war
The book-review goes on further to what struck me was a very valid point about how our understanding of what the word “Religion” is greatly determined by what connotation or attributes we ourselves give it.
It’s important to note that religion is not a monolithic enterprise. What you associate with the word “religion” is unique to you and not representative of all people’s experience of “religion”. Even within Christianity there are over 45,000 denominations worldwide.
You can’t entirely avoid the language problem by using the word “religious” (instead of ‘“religion”) as Douthat does in the title, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. It is well-proven that a person can rationalize the most evil mindsets, actions and campaigns in the name of “God” and “religion”. To “be religious” can mean very different things, ranging from love and compassion to a suicide bombing mission as an act of martyrdom or divine duty.
It’s worth further noting that the word “religious” once carried the same meaning we now equate with the word “spiritual”. Something you discover while reading The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.
In my undergraduate days in college 50 odd years ago , I remember to have read the profoundly thought-provoking book of William James and hence I’m able to very much appreciate the fact that “the word “religious” once carried the same meaning we now equate with the word “spiritual”. And furthermore that “… to be religious” can mean very different things, ranging from love and compassion to a suicide bombing mission as an act of martyrdom or divine duty”.
As an Indian and as someone who believes I’m a “practising Sri Vaishnava”, I know quite well that Westerners have a very faulty or mistaken idea about Hinduism. And it is because the word has no real or substantive meaning that they tend to place the ageless religion of India along with their own. That misplacement and misunderstanding arises half out of ignorance and half out of bewilderment.
To the Western mind Hinduism is seen to be the “Religion” of 1.5 billion people whereas Hinduism is, really and absolutely, not their “religion” at all …
If you ask me, Hinduism is really a terrible misnomer for what today goes by the name of Hindu Religion. This civilisation called Bharathavarsha knew and believed, in fact, in only one tenet: Dharma. Dharma is not really a closed religious system in the typical sense in which we know the other world religions are. Dharma is a broad System of Order … The faith of India is not so much in a set of “religious beliefs” as it is in a System.
Dharma as a System of Order is aimed principally to bring about orderliness in the Three worlds of Bhu, Bhuvan and Suvah… as roughly to be understood as the Order of the cosmos, of the outer (sensory) world and of the troubled (karma driven) inner, private world of Man.
Indians are all aware that all our ancient Vedic chants end with the stirring invocation of “Om Shanthi, Shanthi, Shanthi:” We must ask why ? Because, Shanthi or Peace (within and without) is verily the natural , cosmic Order of Equilibrium or Stasis (as symbolised in the Pranava Shabdha of “Om”) to which all Life forms are constantly aspiring to attain….
There is that famous Upanishad “vaakya”:
“Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya”
It is a Sanskrit phrase meaning “Lead me from darkness to light“. It symbolizes a prayer of Man to be guided from ignorance, confusion, and negativity (darkness) toward knowledge, clarity, and enlightenment (light). The phrase is part of a larger Shanti Mantra from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad.
The term “tamas” also includes “disorder”, “chaos”… “the anarchy” of the outer world and of that which we know also roils within the internal world and affairs of Mankind … which are both indeed a state of Adharma from which the constant struggle of all Life doth seek true liberation.
The above is indeed what to my own understanding is the Religion of Bharathavarsha… if at all it can be called a “Religion” in the ordinary sense in which the columnist of the journalistic OpEd uses it in his book-review of the New York best-seller book : “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious”.
So, it is therefore not difficult at all understand why it is so difficult for Westerners to figure out how and why their notion … their idée fixe… of Religion is so fundamentally and so far removed from what they themselves imagine so-called “Hinduism” to be.
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Sudarshan Madabushi