Heather Mac Donald on what she calls "Drive-Thru Religion":
The religious superstructure of centuries past has been dismantled. Rising in its place is a remake of religion “in the image of mass-consumer capitalism,” according to a sociologist of American religion at the University of Notre Dame. That remake offers up easily digestible bits like the “5 Minute Theologian” and “7 Minutes With God.” Only a quarter of Americans attend church weekly. Yet moral chaos has not broken out; society has grown more prosperous as secularism expands. Empathy with others, an awareness of the necessity of the Golden Rule, survive the radical transformation of religious belief, it turns out. Perhaps because a moral sense is the foundation, not the result, of religious ethics.