A NEWS item in the internet reported recently that more Americans are saying they have no religion.

The lead declared: "A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all."

It was said that fifteen percent of the respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990.

Though we don't have the relevant figures in other places, including our own, it might be safe and prudent to assume that, given our current world conditions, more or less the same downturn in religious interest can be noted in many countries.

This, of course, is not good news, but there's no reason why it should remain that way.

Religion is a very dynamic phenomenon involving intimate and core beliefs of people, and it should be no surprise that from time to time we have this rise-and-fall movements.

This problem of tremendous proportions can be an opportunity to do great things. The current predicament can unleash bolder apostolic efforts of Church people. Of course, it requires of them a higher level of self-giving and sanctity, a tighter consistency of their mind and heart, their words and deeds, etc.

The more important thing the report seems to indicate is that Church authorities have to do some drastic rethinking, retooling and regrouping to cope with the challenge articulated in that report. For indeed the challenge has grown not only in size but also in complexity.

We don't have to think much to realize that with the present global economic crisis, many people can loosen their grip on religion, if not even lose it. That's the knee-jerk reaction of many when faced with a big problem.

This situation can be made worse if questionable ideological influences are made to bear down on it. And in cannot be denied that such conditionings are not only present but also are many.

In the US and in other countries, developed or not so developed, a secularized or neo-paganized outlook in life is getting mainstream. God and religion are considered at best a prop or a decoration, a relic that can be made use of in certain occasions.

What seems to be the prevailing mentality is to be pragmatic, to achieve some useful benefits from anything as long as some semblance of consensus can be counted. There are no more absolute rules and laws anymore. Everything can be made relative.

Thus the concept of power, authority, charism and leadership has nothing to do anymore with one's relationship with God. Everything depends on one's luck, clout, talents, popularity, connections and cleverness. Leaders can have the trappings, minus the substance.

This is the time to remind everyone of God's Word, of his love and mercy for us, and of our ultimate and constant end and purpose in life. We should not allow ourselves to be held captive by purely natural or earthly criteria, no matter how indispensable they are.

This is the time to go deeper into the understanding and development of our proper work ethic, knowing how to find, love and serve Christ and others in our work. We need to convert our faith and love of God into action, developing it in the context of our actual conditions.

God, though he is the farthest from us because he is the Ultimate Other, is actually also the closest to us, since he is at the very core of our own existence. We have to learn to deal with him according to the way he is and to the way we are.

This may involve a longggggg and aaaaarduous process, but I think it's worth it. Truth is we need to graduate from an amateurish kind of Christian life to a more serious and professional one, so to speak. We've been Christians by name for long, but not by actual life yet. We have to bridge the yawning gaps in our life as children of God.

The world at the moment, thrown in such precarious situation, is in great need of this kind of religion, one that we live with utmost consistency day to day, moment to moment.

So from this apparent decline of religion today, let's just gather the momentum to catapult it to its proper place in our lives.

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Fr. Roy Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE) in Talamban, Cebu City. You can email him at:Email: roycimagala@boholchronicle.com