Uh..aren't the really huge churches in the suburbs?

Jim Kalb offers --- The City of God and the New Urbanism--- both a logically & factually curious reason for supporting New Urbanism and one which concerns me because of its motive.

...post-war sprawl has promoted an inhuman society deficient in religious foundation, whereas traditional and new urbanist geometries support close-knit social interactions, which in turn support religious cohesion in society. What to do about such things is of course a big question. The New Urbanism takes the issues seriously. One advantage it has from a traditionalist point of view is that it forwards traditionalist and religious concerns without demanding that supporters explicitly intend to do so. They need only support things that even today seem obviously beneficial to almost everyone.

I do not believe that there is any empirical support for the idea that "....close-knit social interactions...in turn support religious cohesion in society."

As the title indicates, it appears to me that the really huge churches are in the suburbs. So from the point of view of making society more religious, I don't see the connection, how supporting New Urbanism (NU) even works to achieve that goal. I have no idea why some people are religious and some people are not. But I do not believe that higher density settlements (and NU is not all that high density, btw) promote piety. Is there any empirical evidence to indicate that it does or even might?

NU offers a better way to live in human settlements on this earth. At least that's how I see it for myself. NU is about creating better settlements, not places to convert people. I suggest that folks who want to use it to make society more religious --- and that of course is the motive which I do not care for at all --- may be sorely disappointed in the results. So I am glad that they support NU but I think that their expectations may be a bit high. NU is about deceptively mundane things such as the location of the parking lot. To make NU into a means of reaching personal connection with God is asking more than it can achieve. Thank goodness.

UPDATE: Jim responds here and I respond as follows:

Well, I guess I am a “fan” of the New Urbanism, though I’d suggest that there are some nuances. But I am confused by:

1. Your use of the term “modernist urban design.” What is that, exactly? There is an awful lot of cant floating around when it comes to the terms “modernist” and “traditional” and it would be helpful to understand your definition of “modernist urban design” to see if we are even on the same page. And hey! We might be!

2. What you mean when you say “He would be right if religion were fundamentally the combination of spiritual self-help and mild and wholly voluntary social connections one finds in suburban non-denominational megachurches.” Surely you could not be saying that people who go to “suburban non-denominational megachurches” are not truly religious? Do you presume to define religion for other people?

Comments

[praktike]

I do not believe that there is any empirical support for the idea that "....close-knit social interactions...in turn support religious cohesion in society."

There is. Read City: Urbanism and its End.

To expand a bit, think about what happens to Jewish communities as a result of the suburban diaspora; close-knit communities organized around neighborhood synagogues devolve into more regional and "looser" congregations in the 'burbs. Ditto for ethnic Catholic parishes.

Anyway, read the book.

[Brian Miller]

David: Re: Defining religion. I think that he is indeed very willing to make that definition. There are pretty scary ideas floating around that website.

Of course, the large, usually fundamentalist nondenominational mega churches are as equally ready to attack Catholicism and the "demon antichrist" in Rome, so...:)

(I am an ex-Baptist)