Christianity Is Dying in America

As the caption of this post notes and a number of surveys on religion have documented, Christianity is dying in America.  And a leading cause in the decline in religion, especially with the younger generations, is the "godly Christians" themselves  as they daily show Christianity - or at least their toxic version of it - to be principally about hate and division.  True, there are other causes, including scientific progress that undermines the myths set out in the Bible, yet the godly folk refuse to look in the mirror at themselves or changing demographics since it is far easier to blame gays, liberals and "secular humanist" who are alleged to be at war against Christianity.  A piece  The Daily Beast looks at Christianity's much deserved decline and the Christofascists' efforts to deflect blame on to others.   Here are highlights:

Among the Christian Right, and most Republican presidential candidates, it’s now an article of faith that the United States is persecuting Christians and Christian-owned businesses—that religion itself is under attack.   “We have seen a war on faith,” Ted Cruz has said to pick one example.

Why has this bizarre myth that Christianity is under assault in the most religious developed country on Earth been so successful? Because, in a way, it’s true. American Christianity is in decline—not because of a “war on faith” but because of a host of demographic and social trends. The gays and liberals are just scapegoats.

The idea that Christians are being persecuted resonates with millennia-old self-conceptions of Christian martyrdom. Even when the church controlled half the wealth in Europe, it styled itself as the flock of the poor and the marginalized. Whether true or not as a matter of fact, it is absolutely true as a matter of myth. 

[T]he percentage of the U.S. population that identifies as Christian has dropped from 78.4 percent in 2007 to 70.6 percent in 2014. Evangelical, Catholic, and mainline Protestant affiliations have all declined.  Meanwhile, 30 percent of Americans ages 18-29 list “none” as their religious affiliation (the figure for all ages is about 23 percent). Nearly 40 percent of Americans who have married since 2010 report that they are in “religiously mixed” marriages, which means that many individuals who profess Christianity are in families where not everyone does. . . . . The Pew report noted Americans are also changing religions more than in the past, and when they do so, they are more likely to move away from Christianity than toward it.

But no one likes a “constellation of reasons” to explain why the world they grew up in, and the values they cherish, seem to be slipping away. Enter the scapegoat: the war on religion, and the persecution of Christianity.

It’s much easier to explain changes by referring to a single, malevolent cause than by having to understand a dozen complex demographic trends. Plus, if Christianity is declining because it’s being attacked, then that decline could be reversed if the attack were successfully repelled. Unlike what is actually happening—a slow, seemingly irrevocable decline in American Christianity—the right’s argument that “religious liberty” is under assault mixes truth and fantasy to provide a simpler, and more palatable, explanation for believers.

Take, as an example, Christmas. The weird idea that there is a “War on Christmas” orchestrated by liberal elites—Starbucks cups in hand—is, on its face, ridiculous, even if it is widely held on the right.

Unfortunately, even if the war on religion is fictive, the “defense” against it is very real and very harmful. This year alone, 17 states introduced legislation to protect “religious freedom” by exempting not just churches and religious organizations (including bogus ones set up to evade the law) from civil rights laws, domestic violence laws, even the Hippocratic Oath, but also but private individuals and for-profit businesses.

Meanwhile, the “war on religion” narrative appears to be gaining ground.. . . . . 61 percent of white evangelicals believe that religious liberty is being threatened today. (Only 37 percent of non-white Christians believe this, suggesting that what’s really happening is an erosion of white Christian hegemony; the “browning of America” goes hand in hand with the de-Christianizing of America.) They believe they have lost the culture war, and even that LGBT people should now pity them.

Christianity is, in a sense, losing the war—but the fighters on the other side aren’t gay activists or ACLU liberals but faceless social forces of secularization, urbanization, and diversification.

[M]ythic thinking creates a personification of evil who is fighting the war on religious liberty, the war on Christmas, the war on Christianity. These malevolent evildoers are like a contemporary Satan: a fictive embodiment of all of the chaotic, complex forces that threaten the stability of religious order.

Fundamentalist Christianity - and fundamentalist Islam - is a pervasive cause of evil and hatred.  The world would be a far better place if both simply disappeared from the face of the Earth.  For parasitic professional Christians, sleazy televangelists, and religious institutions obsessed with power and control over others (and the flow of money that these bring) , the decline of Christianity is terrifying.  Their free ride and ability to prey on the gullible is in decline and the money flow that enables them to live a comfortable live peddling myths and lies is threatened.  Expect the hysteria to increase as the decline continues and hopefully accelerates.
 

Archbishop of Canterbury: The Church Has Supported Homophobia

While conservative religious denominations continue an increasingly hysterical war against gays in general and the recognition of same sex relations and marriage in particular the irony is that by doing so they are committing a slow moving form of suicide as those under 30 increasingly are simply walking away from such faith traditions.  Justin Webly, the Archbishop of Canterbury(pictured above) seems to be belatedly waking up to this reality, not that his changing views will be welcome among the vitriolically anti-gay African churches that belong to the Anglican communion.  A piece in The Guardian looks at some of Webly's recent remarks.  Most interestingly, he describes homophobia and its perpetuation to be a sin.  Here are highlights:

Justin Welby thinks that it is a huge problem for the church in this country that it is defined by what it's against. "Young people say 'I don't want to hear about a faith that is homophobic'," he told a gathering of leaders from the Evangelical Alliance on Wednesday, many of whom have campaigned hard against gay marriage.

Second, he used the term "homophobia" in an honest way. There are still some evangelicals who claim it is a made-up term that refers to nothing in particular. Not so Welby. Gay marriage was, he said, an attempt to deal with issues of homophobia. "The church has not been good at dealing with it. We have implicitly and even explicitly supported [homophobia] and that demands repentance."

This is, I think, something that he sees as a command from God, rather than an adjustment to the world.
More to the point, he now understands just how dreadful conservative Christian attitudes seem to anyone under 35. "The vast majority of people under 35 think [the church's resistance to gay marriage] is not just incomprehensible but plain wrong and wicked, and they assimilate it to racism and other horrors."

He made clear later that this attitude was found among young evangelicals as well as ordinary people, and that it was reflected in his experience as well as in public opinion polls.

Of course, this isn't really news. It is a recognition of reality much clearer and more forceful than Rowan Williams could have allowed himself, but the only possible audience for his remarks was sitting in front of him. No one outside the church cares in the slightest what its leaders say about sex. Very few people inside care either: according to the YouGov Westminster Faith Debate polls, only 2% of Anglicans take into account the views of religious leaders when making moral decisions.

Some of his evangelical audience will have heard only what he said about voting against the bill. Others will have understood what he also said about how catastrophic this attitude has become for the credibility of Christianity as a moral force in this country.

The perverse side of me hopes the anti-gay zealots continue their homophobic screeds - it is perhaps the quickest way to ensure that over time their denominations will die and lose all credible influence.  All of which would be a very good thing and an improvement for society.

"Nones" - i.e., Those With No Religious Affiliation - Continue to Grow in Numbers

In what I candidly view as a positive development given the toxicity of conservative Christianity in this country and the willingness of its adherents to trample on the rights of all other citizens, a new Pew Center survey has found that 19% of Americans check "None" for their religious affiliation.   As this percentage hopefully continues to grow we will hit a tipping point where Christianist views lose their special status and preferential treatment under the nation's laws. Meanwhile, I'm sure the "godly Christian" crowd will continue their campaign of hate, hypocrisy, ignorance and intolerance that seems to be convincing younger Americans to walk away from organized religion entirely.  It's interesting that "Nones" are disproportionately well educated - a fact not lost on Christianists who seek to dumb down public education and/or rewrite it to bolster their false myth that America was founded as a "Christian nation."   Here are excerpts from a USA Today article that looks at the survey findings:

Unbelief is on the uptick. People who check "None" for their religious affiliation are now nearly one in five Americans (19%), the highest ever documented, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press.

The rapid rise of Nones — including atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe "nothing in particular" — defies the usually glacial rate of change in spiritual identity.

Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the "default category." He says, "Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before."

Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church, the nation's largest religious denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, Methodists and Lutherans, all show membership flat or inching downward, according to the 2012 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches.

Two forces could hold Nones' numbers down. First, they are disproportionately young, often single, and highly educated — all groups with a low birth rate. Second, the number of believers who immigrate to the USA from particularly religious nations, such as Catholics from Mexico, fluctuates with government policies and economic issues, Chaves says.

But the chief way the category grows is by "switchers." A 2009 Pew Forum look at "switching" found more than 10% of American adults became Nones after growing up within a religious group.

"Americans famously say they believe in some variation of God. Over 90% do," Chaves says. "But it used to be 99% decades ago. The change is slow, but we can see it coming."

Conservative Christians remain the best argument against being a Christian.And thankfully, more and more individuals are rejecting their hate and fear based religious dogma.

Atheism Continues On the Upswing in America

Even as the Republican Party races to turn itself into a completely religious based party, the trend in the larger American public is away from religion. True, there are many reasons for the trend, but I continue to believe that no small part of the movement away from religion traces back to the Christianists who are making Christianity into to something truly foul and ugly where hatred of others is the principal hallmark. Indeed, I increasingly find myself not wanting to even acknowledge myself as a "Christian" because of the negative connotation that the word has come to have associated with it. From comments of readers who identify as Christian (not to mention author Anne Rice's widely covered pronouncement some months back), I know that I am not alone in this feeling. I can only hope that the trend either causes a "reformation" on the party of decent Christians not defined by hatred who will retake the Christian brand or ultimately the death of Christianism. Here are excerpts from a Washington Post story that looks at the growing flight from religion:

As the survey results come in, as the irreligious best-sellers sell, and as the scientific analysis gets published, it is increasingly clear that Western atheism has evolved into a forward-looking movement that has the wind at its back, is behind the success of the best run societies yet seen in human history, and is challenging religion as the better basis of morality. Even in the U.S., a religious anomaly in the Western world, atheists are making major gains while Christianity withers, already having lost the mainstream culture to secularism. The least religious regions of the nation are enjoying superior societal conditions.

Religious conservatives commonly contend that only a transcendent supernatural intelligent designer can provide the absolute and perfect morality and the wisdom necessary to run successful societies – it’s become the de facto position of the GOP.

The science-based evidence leaves no doubt that, although very human in its flaws, democratic atheism is proving superior to faith-based mythical doctrines in practical societal and moral terms.

The still-common claim that nine out of ten Americans still believe in God is an outright falsehood. When asked if they believe in God or not, about 90 percent say yes, but when asked about whether or not they believe in God or a higher power or universal spirit, the actual God-believing theists drop to eight in ten. Two Harris polls also show that a fifth of Americans are atheistic to a greater or lesser degree.

Bible literalism is in strong decline, and the religious right, always a minority, is showing signs of distress as an internal report by the Southern Baptists bemoans that “evangelistically, the denomination is on a path of slow but discernible deterioration.” That’s because the churches are losing the digitally connected, traditional organization-averse youth; today’s twentysomethings are twice as irreligious as was the same cohort in the 90s.

The future of American faith is grim as the nation undergoes the secularization process that has already pretty much wrecked the churches in the rest of the West. So what will happen to American society as it too becomes as non-theistic as, say, Canada? My next essay will show how the loss of religion is not the big social/moral deal many make it out to be.

I agree with the conclusion that the loss of religion in public policy - at least the Christianist version that applauds executions, cheers at allowing the uninsured to die, and boos gay military service members - can only be a positive good. I will try to follow up on the next column in this series.

Americans Are Leaving Christianity at Rate Four Times That of Those Joining

There are those who attack me for saying that the Christianists are killing Christianity, but a new survey done by the Barna Group confirms that Americans are leaving Christianity at a rate four times greater than the rate of those converting to Christianity. Not surprisingly, among the driving factors are the perception that religious leaders are hypocrites and disagreement with church positions on specific issues such as homosexuality, abortion or birth control. In other bad news for the Christianists, another Barna study documents the decline in teenagers' involvement in Christian related activities.

*

Sooner or later a belief system that rejects knowledge, encourages hatred towards others, and is lead by pompous, money and power mad leaders is going to run into trouble. To be clear, I do not condemn all Christians or all Christian denominations. However, the far right elements of Christianity in the USA leading the so-called culture wars are the ones getting the media coverage and in the process sending out a truly ugly image to the world. This ugly form of Christianity deserves to die and, frankly, the sooner the better. The Barna study results also show that religion/faith are anything but immutable - something that may yet bite the Christianists in the ass when they argue against civil equality for LGBT Americans. Here are highlights from the Barna survey analysis:
*
Anne Rice is not alone. She shares a spiritual profile with nearly 60 million other adults nationwide. In the Barna study, the matter of faith switching was explored in several ways. . . . nearly one-quarter of adults (23%) had moved from one faith or faith tradition to another.
*
The most common type of spiritual shift was from those who were Christian, Protestant or Catholic in childhood to those who currently report being atheist, agnostic or some other faith. In total, this group represents about one out of every eight adults (12%), a category that might be described as ex-Christians. Converts to Christianity (those converting from another faith or from non-belief as a child to the Christian faith as an adult) represent 3% of the population.
*
The most common reasons for moving away from Christianity included life experiences, such as gaining new knowledge or education; feeling disillusioned with church and religion; feeling the church is hypocritical; having negative experiences in churches; being in disagreement with Christianity about specific issues such as homosexuality, abortion or birth control; feeling the church is too authoritarian; wanting to express their faith outside of church; and searching for a new faith or wanting to experience other religions.
*
With respect to declining teenager involvement, the Barna Group found among other things as follows:
*
Sunday school participation has declined from 35% of all teenagers in 1997 to 30% of teens in the current study; small group attendance was down from 30% to 21%; the proportion of teens who reported donating any of their own money to church has softened from 35% to 26% over the last dozen years; and even the typically ubiquitous practice of prayer has dropped from 81% to 71% among teens since 1997.
*
[E]ven when compared to past behavior among self-identified Catholic teens, today’s young Catholics exhibit diminished religious engagement. The current data show that Catholic teens are less likely to attend Sunday school, small groups, and to donate than were Catholic teenagers 12 years ago.
*
I hope Benedict XVI, James Dobson, Tony Perkins and others who traffic in intolerance and the denigration of others are pleased with their handiwork. People are watching and the nasty, un-Christian, Pharisee like behavior is not going unnoticed.

More Americans Say They Have No Religion

UPDATE: One aspect of this story that I did not specifically address is that the increasing number of people choosing no religion underscores the fact that religion is not an immutable characteristic than cannot be changed. Thus, applying the choice argument used by the Christianists against gay rights, non-discrimination protections based on religion should be repealed since religion is not an immutable characteristic.

*

A new survey reveals that more and more Americans are saying that they have no religion. While many reasons for this phenomenon can be cited, personally I suspect that a significant part of this trend is due to the fact that religion - particularly Christianity as preached by the Christianists and professional Christians - is increasingly a negative influence that incites hatred and intolerance rather than good. Be it the constant message of anti-gay hate disseminated by the Christian Right, the hate of Islamic extremist groups or the brutality of Israel's forces in the Gaza Strip, religion all too frequently has an increasing malevolent image in the minds of many. Instead of disseminating a message of love, the message is one of hate and intolerance. To further compound matters, religion is showing itself to be increasingly at odds with scientific fact and rational thought. Why is it a surprise to find that people are simply washing their hands of the whole sorry mess? Here are some highlights from Yahoo News:

*

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o 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. Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

*

The report from The Program on Public Values at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., surveyed 54,461 adults in English or Spanish from February through November of last year. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. The findings are part of a series of studies on American religion by the program that will later look more closely at reasons behind the trends.

*

The current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.

*

In 2008, Christians comprised 76 percent of U.S. adults, compared to about 77 percent in 2001 and about 86 percent in 1990. . . . Many mainline Protestant groups are riven by conflict over how they should interpret what the Bible says about gay relationships, salvation and other issues.