Americans Are Leaving Religion Behind and It Scares the Hell Out of the Christian Right

[AtheistCrusader]

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about the increasing political polarization in America, which is at historically high levels. There are a lot of reasons for it, including changing demographics, women’s growing empowerment, the internet, the economy and cable news. But religion and religious belief plays an important role as well. There’s no way around it: America is quickly becoming two nations, one ruled over by fundamentalist Christians and their supporters and one that is becoming all the more secular over time, looking more and more like western Europe in its relative indifference to religion. And caught in between are a group of liberal Christians that are culturally aligned with secularists and are increasingly and dismayingly seeing the concept of “faith” aligned with a narrow and conservative political worldview.

That this polarization is happening is hard to deny, even if it’s harder to measure that political polarization. The number of Americans who cite “none” when asked about a religious identity is rising rapidly, up to nearly 20% from 15% in 2007, with a third of people under 30 identifying with no religious faith. Two-thirds of the “nones” say they believe in God, suggesting that this is more of a cultural drift towards secularism than some kind of crisis of faith across the country.

But even this may underrepresent how secular our country really is getting, as many people who say they belong to a church don’t really go to church much, if at all. While Americans like to tell pollsters they go to church regularly, in-depth research shows they are lying and many of them blow it off, putting our actual church-going rates at roughly the same level of secular Western Europe.

Even when people identify with a label like “Catholic” or “Methodist”, that doesn’t mean they consider it an important part of their identity in the way that people used to. Take, for instance, the way that weddings have quietly changed in this country. It used to be that you had a wedding in a church, and only people who were eloping got married by someone other than a minister. Now, outside of very religious circles, it’s more common to see weddings on beaches or at country clubs, and very often officiated by friends of the couple rather than clergy. Indeed, state laws are slowly beginning to change to reflect this reality, allowing more flexibility for people to have the secular weddings they increasingly desire.

More at link:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/americans-are-leaving-religion-behind-and-it-scares-hell-out-christian-right

I say 'break out the bubbly'.

[Turbineguy]

1. Maybe they should try and be

a teensy bit more Christian in that case.

[Cartoonist]

2. Say it ain't so

While Americans like to tell pollsters they go to church regularly, in-depth research shows they are lying
-

Oooh, I bet that hurts the coffers.

[AtheistCrusader]

3. 3500 – 4000 churches close their doors each year in the United States.

I would guess the problem is twofold; concentrating believers in 'megachurches' as well as diminishing attendance elsewhere.

[rurallib]

4. it is almost like Walmart coming to town

and driving the Mom & Pops out of business.
And some of us will just never shop at Walmart or seldom anyway.

ETA - Walmart seems to get out of paying lots of taxes also.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. you should try to restrain your glee

somebody somewhere is hazing a sad because of this.

[jwirr]

6. The Christian right should be afraid. - They are the biggest reason why many of us are leaving the

churches in droves. The preach hate and distrust of the government and then expect people to find comfort in their message?