Excerpt from an interview with veteran Winnipeg Free Press faith columnist John Longhurst on his recent book from CMU Press.

Javier Jiménez: Your book is called Can Robots Love God And Be Saved? Why do you think it’s important to ask such questions? Especially for young people?

John Longhurst:  Whether you are older or younger, almost everyone is engaged in the pursuit for purpose and meaning in life. Spirituality and religion have traditionally helped and continue to play a role in helping people understand what their purpose and meaning is in life. It’s not the only way, but it is one significant way.

Often when you scratch below the surface, you find most people have questions with spiritual undertones. My job as a faith columnist is to be alert to those, and to write about them.

JJ: What are some stories that surprised you most during your career?

JL: What always stands out for me is people who are passionate about some aspect of their life that is motivated by their faith. But one thing that has stood out over the 20 plus years I’ve been writing about faith for the Winnipeg Free Press has been the decline of religion in Canada. And by that I don’t mean decline of spirituality. People continue to say they are spiritual, but affiliation with religious denominations has been falling and my columns reflect that. I’ve been able to watch that change — as churches close, as programs run out of money. There’s lots of impacts that affect Canadian life and Canadian religious life.

I’m mostly talking about decline in traditional white Protestant and Catholic churches. Immigrant churches are doing much better and non-Christian, non-Jewish religions are also doing better. Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism… are doing much better than traditional Canadian churches, because those groups continue to have a good pipeline of immigrants and tend to have larger families...

Mainline Protestant churches have been declining for a long time (but) that’s also happening among evangelical congregations. It’s… not as dramatic, but people are exiting those places as well. That story moves through all of Christianity in Canada today.

JJ: What’s the reason?

JL:  When I was a kid growing up in the ’60s, if I said to my dad, “I don’t feel like going to church today,” (he) would have said, “Listen to me buster, you get dressed and let’s go!” Church attendance was mandatory for me as a kid. Kids growing up today, with parents who don’t go to church, well, they don’t go to church either, right? Going to church is partly a learned behavior, a social behaviour, a family behaviour, and if your parents went to church, you went….

There are a number of reasons why people decide, “No, religion is just not for me.” Most do not become atheist.They simply become unaffiliated. They continue to be spiritual, they may pray, they may privately do some sort of devotions... They haven’t given up faith, but they’ve lost interest in organized religion.

JJ: Do you think the perspective you offer in the book can help people to consider other perspectives (and) serve as motivation for some to go back to church?

JL: I hope if people read my book they will understand there’s no judgment for struggling or questioning your faith. It’s perfectly normal, and they shouldn’t feel bad about it. I do think people who lead churches need to be paying more attention...

JJ: Has your own perspective on religion changed, maybe in unexpected ways, during your career?

JL: One of the really great benefits of doing this has been developing friendships in so many other different faith traditions. There’s so many different ways people think about engaging the divine and approaching God, and figuring out what life means, so my perspective has broadened considerably as I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy different religions and the people who are part of them. If churches can’t answer that question honestly, they need to ask why they exist at all.