--- title: Rumors of God’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated description: God isn’t the problem—we are canonical: https://time.com/4285837/rumors-of-gods-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/ author: Christopher Hale article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-07T20:50:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:57.209Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Rumors of God’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated og:description: God isn’t the problem—we are og:url: https://time.com/4285837/rumors-of-gods-death-have-been-greatly-exaggerated/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5071f5c08fb298a2/69888e2aa988ca37de6b74f1/is-god-dead-time-magazine-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 400 og:image:height: 225 og:image:alt: is-god-dead-TIME-magazine-cover og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Rumors of God’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated twitter:description: God isn’t the problem—we are twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5071f5c08fb298a2/69888e2aa988ca37de6b74f1/is-god-dead-time-magazine-cover.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Rumors of God’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=48b060b3-d018-4c44-a4e7-5120e7cfdecf&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TimeFrames: Sects, God and Politics [Watch (HLS stream): TimeFrames: Sects, God and Politics](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/yc5UqAJ2.m3u8) (3:49)  _Published 2010-11-22. Howard Chua-Eoan -- news director for TIME and TIme.com -- explores the long history of TIME's reporting on religion and its impact on society_ by [Christopher Hale](https://time.com/author/christopher-j-hale-2/) ## Christopher Hale Apr 7, 2016 8:50 PM UTC  The April 8, 1966 cover of TIME The April 8, 1966 cover of TIME TIME by [Christopher Hale](https://time.com/author/christopher-j-hale-2/) ## Christopher Hale Apr 7, 2016 8:50 PM UTC _Is God Dead?_ With these words 50 years ago, TIME published one of its most famous and controversial covers. The question was placed in distinctive red text against a simple black background. At the time, it was [the first cover during Time’s 43-year history](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/business/media/18elson.html) to appear without a photograph or illustration. Published on Good Friday, backlash from John Elson’s article produced almost [3,500 letters to the editor](http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-john-elson28-2009sep28-story.html), and The Los Angeles _Times_ named it one of the [10 most shocking magazine covers](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-10magazinecovers14-july14-pg-photogallery.html). Elson didn’t exactly answer that famous question in his article, but he seemed imply throughout that German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche might be right, and belief in God was headed for extinction. --- > “” --- Fifty years later, it seems that Elson, a faithful Catholic who died in 2009, and the experts quoted in the article overplayed their hand: Rumors of God’s death have been greatly exaggerated. According to a [Pew Research Center survey published last year](http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/), nearly 90% of Americans believe in God or some kind of universal being. It is worth noting that figure has dropped a bit over the previous decade, and that belief in God is lowest among younger Americans (only 80% of Americans born between 1990 and 1996 believe in God). God most certainty isn’t dead in 2016\. But another idea raised in the article could be becoming true: religion’s impending death. Elson quoted Jesuit theologian John Country Murray who argued that “the great American proposition is ‘religion is good for the kids, though I’m not religious myself.’” The data seems to suggest that is the case today. The number of Americans who call themselves religious is at an all-time low, and is lowest among young people. Nearly one-in-three Americans under 35 are religiously unaffiliated. In fact, the religiously unaffiliated—the “[nones](http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/)”—is the second largest religious group in the U.S. behind evangelical Protestants. In this age of “spiritual, but not religious,” God isn’t the problem. We are. Too many times our faith communities have blamed society’s –_isms_ for today’s lack of faith—consumerism, relativism, secularism and on and on—but have failed to see how we’ve contributed to today’s irreligious society with our own collection of –_isms—_fundamentalism, legalism, sexism, elitism and even racism. When we look in the mirror, perhaps we’ll see our own faith communities too often promote empty rhetoric, systems of ethics lacking goodness and intellectual discourse that’s high on privilege and low on wisdom. In the Christian context, [Pope Francis has diagnosed the problem well:](http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview) “The church sometimes has locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules. The most important thing is the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. … In pastoral ministry we must accompany people, and we must heal their wounds.” The only way to emerge from this crisis is for our communities to get back to basics. A faith without radical mission and service to God’s people at the center is superficial. Too often we have reduced our faith to what [Pope Francis calls](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/europe/pope-bluntly-faults-churchs-focus-on-gays-and-abortion.html?pagewanted=all) “a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.” That isn’t a faith that provides life-long meaning for its people and that stands the test of time. It’s a faith without a future. It’s a faith that’s dead. In the U.S. and throughout the West, there has been a long tradition of people of leaving their homes and going to serve on missions to spread their faith to people across the globe. But in 2016, it seems that Americans don’t have far to travel to find missionary territory. It’s in our backyards. For religion to have a modern renaissance, people of faith must go to these new missionary territories with that timeless message that Pope Francis [communicates](https://joystartshere.com/what-does-pope-francis-really-believe-the-answer-should-fill-you-with-joy/) so well: “God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others.” Perhaps then we can help everyone understand religion for what it really is: God’s invitation to a revolution of tenderness. ## Transcript Religions may feel they are answerable only to God, and, therefore, impervious to time and TIME Magazine. But religion is always timely. Take Islam, for example. Today, the 1400- year- old faith is part of daily debates over assimilation, toleration, modernity, national and global security, neighborliness, the nature of America, nature of Europe, the nature of God, or just the stuff of plain everyday politics. TIME's 2010 cover on Islamophobia in America and the way the so- called Ground Zero Mosque became a totem for controversy was by no means the magazine's first involvement with the subject. In 1979, TIME had been consistently reporting on Iran's then exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and our correspondent, Bruce Van Voorst, accompanied the Iman when he returned to Iran from Paris on a chartered Air France 747. Van Voorst chronicled an astounding religious coup that would turn a Shi'a secularist kingdom into an Islamic Republic, a theocracy whose ambitions roiled geopolitics today. For many Americans, Khomeini gave the enemy a religious face when, in November 1979, Iranian militants took 52 US citizens hostage in what would turn out to be a 444- day long crisis. For rupturing American policy in the Mid East and altering the way the world calibrated power, TIME named Khomeini 1979's Man of the Year. Just 2 weeks after the issue came out, 8, 941 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. Pope John Paul II would not be named TIME's Man of the Year until 1994, a sort of belated honor of being three years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In December 1983, John Paul made the whole world stand still when he visited the prison cell to talk with and to pardon the man who had shot him in 1981. But a whole class of religious leaders would be void if not created by television and the mass media of the 20th century. The charismatic Billy Graham would dominate the age of American television preaching, even though his ministry was more than mere televangelism. His broadcast appearances enhanced an already immense magnetism and popularity, turning him into the unrivalled American Pope. Through six decades, TIME has had extraordinary access to Graham, putting him in the cover four times. TIME not only chronicles religious authority, it questions it as well. The televangelist's sex scandals got two covers in 1987 when Jim and Tammy Bakker went bust. They have also closely followed the child sex abuse scandal and the Catholic Church, and, what perhaps the most controversial covering its history, TIME questioned the ultimate authority. On the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue were the words " Is God Dead ?". It was the magazine's first all- text cover and provoked a firestorm anger, praise, and ridicule of an America that was still devout but also in the middle of a decade that saw no center clothing. And yet, TIME marches on. The end of the following decade, the 1970s, would provide its own answer. God was not dead. Alas, fanatical believers of all cults and creeds were certain that as the battle hymn of the Republican tone, he wields a terrible swift sword. 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