The church of secularism is probably the fastest growing church in America.  You won’t find it listed among the many churches, denominations or para-church organizations in our society.  You won’t find a local worship center listed in the yellow pages.  Nor will you find even a local business office.  If you look carefully, however, you will find evidence of it everywhere.  The church of secularism is not really a church at all.  It is, however, replacing church in our society.

The following is taken from an interview with our current Secretary of Education, Arnie Duncan, as conducted by Charlie Rose on PBS dated March 11, 2009.  This is what Mr. Duncan had to say when asked about possible change in the school calendar:

CHARLIE ROSE:  What do you think the calendar should be?

    ARNE DUNCAN:  I think our schools -- let me walk through this, because this is a really, really important point.  Let me start with the day first.  I think our school should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day.  So it’s not just lengthening...

    CHARLIE ROSE:  So 8:00 to 8:00 or something like that?  

    ARNE DUNCAN:  Yes.  And let me tell you, not just lengthening obviously the school day, but a wide variety of after-school activities -- drama, art, sports, chess, debate, academic enrichment, programs for parents, GED, EFL, family literacy nights, pot luck dinners.  We attached health clinics to about two dozen of our schools.  

    Where schools truly become the centers of the community, great things happen.  So I think we need schools open much longer hours.  And by the way, we don’t have to do this all ourselves as educators.  You can bring in great non-profits, the YMCAs, the Boys and Girls Clubs, mentoring and tutoring groups to co-locate their services and better serve the community from the school.

    In every neighborhood in our country, you have schools.  In every school, you have classrooms, you have computer labs, you have libraries, you have gyms, many have pools.  Those buildings don’t belong to you or I.  They don’t belong to the unions.  They belong to the community.  We have these great physical resources, and we need to maximize it.  

    CHARLIE ROSE:  So keep them open 12 hours a day, 12 months a year.  

    ARNE DUNCAN:  Yes.  

    CHARLIE ROSE:  Twelve hours a day, 12 months a year.  

    ARNE DUNCAN:  And I would go to six or seven days a week.  Not just Monday through Friday.  

    CHARLIE ROSE:  Seven days a week.  So the school becomes a center of community life.

    ARNE DUNCAN:  Where the school becomes a center of community life, great things are going to happen for those families and great things are going to happen for those children.

    CHARLIE ROSE:  Then tell me why that hasn’t happened before.  I mean, who has stood in the way of that happening before?

    ARNE DUNCAN:  Well, I think this is, again, pushing innovation, pushing change.  

CHARLIE ROSE:  I don’t mean an individual, but has it been an organization, has it been an institution, has it to do with resources, has it to do with the mind-set about education?

    ARNE DUNCAN:  I think it’s the latter.  I think it’s the lack of creativity and it’s a lack of understanding what our children need.  And this is why I think we’ve just been sort of reacting.  If you go back 30 or
40 years ago, the average child could get out of school at 2:30, mom was at home, child would go home to mom -- dad was working -- and get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 2:30.  

    Today, you have more two-parent working families.  You have more single moms working two, three jobs.  You have unfortunately many children going home to almost no-parent families.  

    So our society has changed.  Our schools have not kept pace.  And this is a chance to really create what I think the 21st century school has to look like.  

    This needs to be the norm, not the exception.  Time matters tremendously, and all of our families need our doors open longer hours. (Arnie Duncan - in conversation with Charlie Rose on PBS dated March 11, 2009.)

This, in my opinion, is just one example of a growing ideology in our society that I call the church of secularism.  As Mr. Duncan states, “If you go back 30 or 40 years ago, the average child could get out of school at 2:30, mom was at home, child would go home to mom – dad was working – and get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at 2:30.”  When I was a child, about 40 years ago, the center of our community was not the school; it was the church.  The rule around my house was – if there is an activity planned at church, we are there.  Notice that Mr. Duncan even wants to see pot-luck dinners in our schools.  Sounds like a Baptist church to me.  Some who promote this growing ideology would like to see churches pushed completely out of public life and relegated to the privacy of local church walls.  This is evidenced by the removal of all things religious from schools and public property and sometimes kept from public view altogether.  “Merry Christmas” is replaced with “Happy Holidays.”  And, Christmas decorations in public view are often void of anything religious.  Churches often face conflict with community organizations for creating traffic problems and noise “pollution” on Sunday mornings.  Notice that church was suspiciously absent from Mr. Duncan’s list of community organizations that could possibly provide extra programming in local schools.

The church of secularism is slowly replacing authentic churches as the center of our communities.  It is hard to find families in our society today that make church a priority.  Most people attending church today give to church what little time is left over in their very busy schedule.  Gone is the sense of obligation that used to be a part of local church communities.  When I was very young, my family’s local church did not have any other children in my specific age group.  I was the only child in my age specific Sunday School class.  My Mother, believing that I needed more socialization, would drop me off at another local church for Sunday School and then go to her own class at our church.  Then, she would leave her class a little early and go pick me up and have us both back at our church in time for morning worship.  No one today would be so committed.  Today, if a family were to be so committed to going to church, they would probably just change churches.  Most are getting their sense of community from other sources and simply stay home on Sunday.  Saturday, which used to be family day, has been replaced with Sunday, the new family day.  There is no church day in our modern society.

Churches today are forced to compete with many distractions in society.  What are “successful” churches doing to compete?  Are they truly being “successful?”  Check out the next blog entry where I will attempt to answer those questions.

Pastor, Alan Thomas <><