Less people believe in some imaginary all knowing being who lives in the clouds

[NNN0LHI]

That ain't all bad.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583

The End of Christian America

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 4, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.

"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

[saltpoint]

1. Judeo-Christianity, whether one believes in it or not, deserves better than

the people representing it in the last 2000 or so years.

I'm not a fan of the early Roman bishops. I'm much less a fan of Paul.

Luther strikes me as arguably insane, and certainly obnoxious.

Calvin -- yuck.

In more recent times, there've been the circuit evangelists and the televangelists and the megachurch lizards. All of them suspect and smarmy.

Not enough Francis of Assissis and far too many Jerry Falwells.

[Happyhippychick]

2. I feel badly for the "real" Christians who have been represented by utter assholes since the 70's.

Hopefully they will get back to the roots of charity and helpfulness instead of worrying about gay marriage and guns.

[datasuspect]

3. that is, until we have another 9-11

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. The God concept you describe is becoming outmoded for many

they are turning, instead, to a personal spirituality. God is seen not as a superhuman, but rather as a force that connects everything and keeps it running through the laws of nature. And they see that everything is part of this. Whether you call this force God or not is your choice--see my sig line.

[ZombieHorde]

11. Is this force considered to be self aware? nt

[GoesTo11]

5. I have a problem with your topic heading

"Fewer people" not "Less people"

[charlie]

6. There was a chart

that accompanied the Pew poll that showed declines across the board for all Christian denominations, save one -- the pain-in-the-butt Pentacostal/Charismatics. They're part of the faction that's got to shrink if we're ever going have any peace around here. The last 30 years have shown that conservadroid fundies can cause trouble well beyond their numbers, which is about a quarter of the Christian public.

[Merlot]

7. The conservatives pushing their anti-gay, anti-women agendas

have probably done more than anything to turn people off of religion. People don't want to be associated with the anti - agenda.

I don't see this as a bad thing. People are becoming more willing to think for themselves and question dogma.

[rrneck]

8. These days

it takes technology and infrastructure to have a religion of any consequence. Technology costs money. A great many religious organizations are just as dependent on modern infrastructure as any other corporation. And their investors find themselves in the same fix. As Danny Divito said in Other People's Money, they're, "buying into a growing share of a shrinking market".

Remember Robert Tilton? He was one of the worst crooks in the religion business. I have often wondered how many people sent in their life savings, knelt in front of their TV's and actually lived better lives for it. I'll bet at least some of them did. Tilton was a bottom feeding charlatan but that doesn't obviate the fact that there were people out there that had genuine spiritual needs and somehow had them at least partially fulfilled by this crook.

It seems crass but religious practice is subject to the same cost benefit requirements as any other social organization. The question is always, "how much does it cost a culture in terms of time, energy, and of course actual wealth to support the belief system?" We are in an economic and cultural contraction, and people are making decisions regarding what works and what doesn't.

Unfortunately, we aren't talking about Hummers here. Organizations that make a living off people's core beliefs, (and often as not their credulity) aren't going to give up their cultural market share willingly. They have been cultivating authoritarian personalities for decades, and they will use them to retain their power.

Here's an interesting online book (a freebie) that I found pretty interesting. I flog this book more than any other I have read.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

The studies explain so much about these people. Yes, the research shows they are very aggressive, but why are they so hostile? Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic? Yes, studies show the Religious Right has more than its fair share of hypocrites, from top to bottom; but why are they two-faced, and how come one face never notices the other? Yes, their leaders can give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong, but why do the rank-and-file believe them? What happens when authoritarian followers find the authoritarian leaders they crave and start marching together?

[JerseygirlCT]

9. Fewer. nt

[Occam Bandage]

10. That's what I came in to say.

[JerseygirlCT]

17. I don't know why, but that's

one of the ones that shrieks at me every time.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. Hmph, the God I believe in doesn't live in the clouds

:shrug:

[laconicsax]

13. Where does your god live?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

14. Everywhere

n/t

[laconicsax]

15. Creepy...

So does your god watch me in the shower?

[Occam Bandage]

16. Yes.

Then again, I worship my skeezy uncle.