I’ve been thinking a whole lot about social isolation recently. It’s probably because it’s this unspoken concept in a lot of the work that I do and many of the questions that I’m asked about religion in the United States. I swear I bring up Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” about twice a week when I’m doing interviews or giving presentations about data on religious attendance.
Putnam saw an America that was rapidly hurtling toward social atomization. He charted the decline in membership in social clubs and bowling leagues.
You know what he blamed it on? Cable television. And there’s a very good reason for that — he was writing his masterpiece in the mid-1990s, when that was the major entertainment innovation.
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