Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

by Robert D. Putnam

The dominant theme is simple: For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago—silently, without warning—that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.

Regular church attendees reported talking with 40 percent more people in the course of the day. These studies cannot show conclusively that churchgoing itself “produces” social connectivity—probably the causal arrow between the two points in both directions—but it is clear that religious people are unusually active social capitalists.

According to George Marsden, “The fundamentalist churches offer far stronger community to their members than do their moderate-liberal Protestant counterparts…. [They] are some of the most cohesive non-ethnic communities in America.”54

In the mid- to late 1970s, according to the DDB Needham Life Style archive, the average American entertained friends at home about fourteen to fifteen times a year. By the late 1990s that figure had fallen to eight times per year, a decline of 45 percent in barely two decades.

If the sharp, steady declines registered over the past quarter century were to continue at the same pace for the next quarter century, our centuries-old practice of entertaining friends at home might entirely disappear from American life in less than a generation.