Christianity in New York City

Any way you cut it, Manhattan is exceptional, especially in its residential composition. Standing at the dawn of the 21st century, Manhattan is almost entirely gentrified. Even Riis’ famous slum houses are on the edge of an up-and-coming neighborhood, and are soon to undergo the standard Manhattan life cycle (from poor to hipster to student to wealthy to yuppie to Trump), with inevitable termination in prosperity. Here in New York City, the rich few from all across America amazingly converge to become the wealthy many. This unique composition does funny things to society… and, also, to religion.

First, there seems to be a conscious attempt by New York Christian organizations to shed their association with mainstream Christianity. Whether it’s true or not (and I take no stance) there is a common belief that the more educated you are, the less likely you are to be religious. Religious groups in Manhattan have taken that assumption, and the assumption that most of Manhattan qualifies as rich and towards the upper end of the educational heirarchy, and run with both. But don’t take my word for it. The results are plain to see.

The above advertisements both attempt to connect with believers by making a distinction between christianity and Christianity, catering to the belief that some elements of mainstream Christianity are odd, and then conspicuously shedding those elements. We have advertisements for church services in a rock theater, and a plug for nondenominational meditation and prayer, both unique methods of religious expression suggesting an attempt to win over the demographic of those New Yorkers who are suspicious of organized religion, but retain lingering spirituality. I imagine that this is Christianity tailored for the educated elites… at least, tailored to fit the theory of what the educated elites want… perhaps as a last defense against a perceived slide into atheism.

To a certain extent, we may be looking at the shape of things to come, at least within a subset of society. While it’s common for people (indeed for whole groups) to become less religious, groups of people only rarely become less spiritual. Especially in the post-religious right era, it will be important for religion to evolve towards a focus on spiritualism over ritual. These elite-centered liberal religious groups seem to be gambling their future on the belief that, while the educated may have become suspicious of organized religion, the spiritual core of humanity is immutable. I don’t pass on whether this is good or bad: I just report. You decide.

And then there’s the Christian graffiti. I’ve seen my fair share of graffiti, ranging from the absurd and terrifying (“The KKK is on the rise,” at a gas station in rural Alabama) to the hilarious (a complex, multi-author discourse on homophobia in America, in a Borders bathroom in Houston). But never before have I seen so much religious graffiti as I have here in Manhattan.

The question is, why? The answer, I think, is that graffiti is emblematic of the outsider. It’s a tool of subversion, by which the common and the ordinary become appropriated to the use of the extraordinary. If religion is changing to be more spiritual and less religious, we’re likely to see the doctrinal, dogmatic elements of religion – the soothsayers, etcetera – go underground. Sometimes literally:

Oddly enough, I don’t see much middle ground here. While I don’t doubt it exists, it’s odd that the most visible aspects of Christianity in Manhattan are the creationist/rapture-ready pamphleteers and the ultra-reform spiritualists.

I wrote about this earlier at RationalWiki.