Christianity declining in the US
Especially among the young. As William Jacobson points out, this is likely to be the result of decades of effort among “progressive” educators and the MSM.
Many people I know consider it axiomatic that religion and science/logic are antithetical, and prefer to cast their lot with science and rationality—although I have noticed that most of those same people don’t seem to be able to talk to me about politics in a rational or well-informed manner. It’s also hard to avoid the impression that liberalism has become a new religion, with its saints and its demons and its entrenched faith.
As for Christianity, the decline is sharpest in the mainline Protestant churches—you know, the ones that have moved further and further to the left. Catholics too. Evangelicals are doing much better, with their numbers actually growing. The Christian-church-affiliated black population has remained fairly stable.
Also interesting is the growth of the “religiously unaffiliated.” It’s not clear exactly who these people are, but they don’t identify themselves as either atheist or agnostic, but prefer “unaffiliated.” My guess is that they are the sort of people who would check off the box “spiritual” if there was one—who profess a sort of vague (or sometimes not so vague, but nevertheless idiosyncratic) belief in something but don’t like churches or synagogues.
Neo: in re the unaffiliated, this is a well-known concept in Judaism. You hear this sometimes, for example, among Jews who haven’t been to synagogue in years, but nonetheless protest against Judaism practiced incorrectly (by their lights). The standard shorthand for this is: “the synagogue I don’t go to is Orthodox”.
I would imagine that a similar phenomenon exists in the various denominations of Christianity.
In short: religion matters to them emotionally, even if they don’t do anything about it themselves in their day-to-day lives. (Houses of worship have a large untapped market here, if they play their cards right.)
“this is likely to be the result of decades of effort among “progressive” educators and the MSM.”
There’s little doubt that this is the case.
Those efforts have not ceased. In fact, they’ve reached a whole new level of opprobrium.
First there’s the military:
“U.S. military ‘hostile’ to Christians under Obama; morale, retention devastated”
“Christians Face Culture of Fear, Intimidation in U.S. Military Today”
“Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith”
“Army Reserve training material: Evangelicals, Catholics are extremist groups”
Then there’s the State department’s recent action:
“U.S. State Dept. Invites Muslim Leaders, Denies Christians”
I suspect that another reason why Sister Diana was barred entry is that they might then have to allow this nun to visit, if she so desired;
“Nun: ‘Islam Is ISIS. Whoever Says Otherwise Is a Liar’ “
The Left is attacking Christians and Christianity because it is the last bastion of resistance to their agenda.
Take away from a thing that which makes it special – in essence, denature it, and then wonder why it is little regarded. In the case in point, sacredness, that most awful of awful things, is done away with; in its place, heaps of anything and all profane.
The type of Christianity that is still allowed in the public square, is just a such a religion; reformed Christianity, anemic Christianity, Christianity without Jesus Christ, Christianity from which pulpit come preachments of social/economic justice — Pope Francis has expended more hot air on the poor (always with us) than on the damnable.
Flannery O’Conner, in Wise Blood made novel the observation of what results from the denaturing of Christianity. She brought to our attention the character Hoover Shoats’ and his Holy Church of Christ Without Christ and another, Hazel Motes’ and his The Church of Truth Without Jesus Christ Crucified. The congregations of both together could not congregate if they wanted to.
Geoffrey Britain
I didn’t investigate all your links but the one about soldiers that MAY be court martialed for sharing their faith is NOT accurate. Snopes has a good write-up on it. Basically proselytizing is not allowed and has never been allowed in the Dept of Defense. But evangelizing is allowed, which is sharing one’s faith. The Breitbart article goes to the extreme [of course] and makes it seem like a soldier will be arrested and imprisoned for expressing faith. That is false.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/proselytizing.asp
“Many people I know consider it axiomatic that religion and science/logic are antithetical…”
This both amuses and annoys me. I have spent Sunday mornings with some brilliant scientists (grew up in a college town w/other scientific and aeronautical industries). I blame the media/entertainment industry as well as our schools for perpetuating this myth.
Christianity is psychologically difficult. It does not mix well with the modern sensibilities – but then again, have charity & pardon & extending good-will to one’s enemies and other such quaint ideas ever mixed well with the human propensity to selfishness, in any times? It is miraculous it has been such a dominant force in history to begin with.
ACtually its not declining..
what is happening, if you bother to read the church stuff and not the liberal news and surveys on it.. (hows that conservative losing in the UK going?)
its in one of those many things i link to that dont seem to be read by most… the reason i keep saying this is that if people DID read it, they would not say the things that they say… [except that in this case, emily latella never finds out and so never says, “nevermind”]
Hitler created the German Christians, whose leading “bishop” Mueller promoted the Nazi ideology in religious language. Rev Jim Wallis is presented as spiritual advisor to Obama. Does he have the same task as Mueller, to fool naé¯ve Christians?
and you have Putin restablishing the church and putting a known spy and kgb man in charge of the world federation of churches.
what is happening has happened before.
when the church tries to act like a business and change and liberalize to get more young people into church, what happens is that they lose people.
so most churches and places are losing people.
i know my church is… once a new liberal priest came, they decided they were going to help homeless lgbt kids… great.. heterosexual kids, of which there are more of, now have no place to go unless they claim or turn homosexual.. if you give to the church, your giving to that cause… (he also makes a point to kiss the gay men)… another thing he has done is make communion for everyone… to which i wonder, what is the purpose of confirmation if he does that?
so what you get is people leaving the organized denominations and when asked, say they dont attend or dont belong to X… others dont want to say they believe as the people longer in the church also know about persecutions and there is no reason to answer what is not reflected by the zeitgeist.
so as before, all that is happening is that christians are going underground… if the chinese communists could not stop it, nothing will stop it… (same goes for the soviets who took over the church then took over world churches).
What Hadaway and Marler, along with Mark Chaves, author of the “National Congregations Study,” discovered was at play is what researchers call “the halo effect” – the difference between what people tell pollsters and what people actually do. Americans tend to over-report socially desirable behavior like voting and attending church and under-report socially undesirable behavior like drinking.
In another study surveying the growth of U.S. Protestants, Marler and Hadaway discovered that while the majority of people they interviewed don”t belong to a local church, they still identify with their church roots. “Never mind the fact that they attend church less than 12 times a year,” Marler observes. “We estimate that 78 million Protestants are in that place. Ask most pastors what percentage of inactive members they have – they”ll say anything from 40—60%.”
Even with a broader definition of church attendance, classifying a regular attendee as someone who shows up at least three out of every eight Sundays, only 23—25% of Americans would fit this category. Olson notes that an additional million church attendees would increase the percentage from 17.7% to only 18%. “You”d have to find 80 million more people that churches forgot to count to get to 40%.”
this has been the way of things since before i was born half a century ago… its always this way in this subject… and the LEFT always declares the progress as some sign of enlightenment.
all it means is the waxing and waning of whether the church leaders follow the religion or for some reason go some other way… when they go another way, they alienate the regulars, get a boost for a short time, the new ones leave as they were not really followers, and the alientated dont return…the church closes or a new pastor comes, returns to the old ways, and lo and behold, over years and decades the thing builds till some priest with a marketing bent says, lets sing rock and roll… get the kids in…
dig a bit and you will scratch the surface and find the sugar coating is just to make the bs palatable..
I am agnostic. However, I got into to physics for the same reason as Einstein: “I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are details.” One cannot get a deep understanding of quantum mechanics and relativity and not somehow be struck by the idea that there’s something much deeper going on. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll be very disappointed if I don’t get the answers on the other side of the grave.
For those who are interested in physicists who have this sort of bent, check out Paul Davies.
MDL,
Yes Breitbart can get into assertions it can’t substantiate. That said, there’s no doubt in my mind that Weinstein and a not insignificant faction of the military is trying to suppress all reference to God in the military.
“About [Weinstein’s] MRFF: The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is the sole nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantee of both freedom of religion and freedom from religion, to which they and all Americans are entitled.” [my emphasis on the keywords above that IMO indicate Weinstein and his org’s motivation. Words that are NOT in the Constitution]
I don’t like to be proselytized, anymore than anyone else. That said, the Pentagon is less than clear.
From the snopes article that you linked:
“On 2 May 2013, the Pentagon clarified its position on this topic. As summarized by Stars & Stripes:
It’s OK to evangelize. But it’s not OK to proselytize.
That’s what the Pentagon said Thursday, attempting to clarify its position on religious speech in uniform as controversy swirled up around press reports over possible prosecutions of troops for sharing their faith.
What it comes down to, officials said, is that discussing matters of faith and religious practice with a willing audience is allowed, but pushing religious beliefs on those who don’t want to hear it is a form of harassment forbidden under Defense Department policies.”
Merriam Webster:
Full Definition of EVANGELIZE
transitive verb
1: to preach the gospel to
2: to convert to Christianity
Full Definition of PROSELYTIZE
intransitive verb
1: to induce someone to convert to one’s faith
2: to recruit someone to join one’s party, institution, or cause
“In response to the Pentagon’s plans, retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), said on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning:
“It’s a matter of what do they mean by “proselytizing.” …I think they’ve got their definitions a little confused. If you’re talking about coercion that’s one thing, but if you’re talking about the free exercise of our faith as individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, especially for the chaplains, then I think the worst thing we can do is stop the ability for a soldier to be able to exercise his faith.”
On Weinstein’s organization’s home page, emblazoned right at the top, immediately listed below his organization’s title is this quote:
“When one dons a US Military uniform, there is only one religious symbol: the American flag. There is only one religious scripture: the American Constitution. Finally, there is only one religious faith: American patriotism.” – Mickey Weinstein
The American flag is and should be a symbol of veneration. It is NOT a ‘religious’ symbol. The American constitution is the finest document outlining the most advanced form of government yet conceived. But it is NOT ‘religious’ scripture. Keeping faith with the obligations and privileges of our citizenship is a noble endeavor. But patriotism is NOT a religious ‘faith’.
Christians, still 70% of our populace, cannot remain Christian, if they willingly violate God’s first commandment, ‘to have no other God’s before me’.
Substituting the American flag, Constitution and patriotism for religious symbolism, scripture and faith is an implicit violation of the first of the Ten Commandments.
Which is exactly Weinstein’s point and motivation. He seeks to force secularism upon the military such that one cannot be in the military and remain Christian.
And the goal of a completely secular military is to have one that will obey the President’s orders, no matter what they might entail.
physicsguy,
I’m not an agnostic, I consider myself one of neo’s unaffiliated Christians. I’m interested in a deeper understanding not the maintenance of dogma. I think all religions, even Islam, contain a grain of the truth.
Dennis Prager provided some information in an article that you may find of interest;
“The current scientific consensus is that, “at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that we live in a “Goldilocks Universe,” in which both the arrangement of matter at the cosmic beginning and the values of various physical parameters – such as the speed of light, the strength of gravitational attraction and the expansion rate of the universe — are just right. And unless one is frightened of the term, it also appears the universe is ‘designed’ for bio-genesis and human life.”
“The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bulls eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.” Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab
,i>“The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly.” Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University
Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at its creation is “one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123.” That is “a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros.”
Steven Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and an anti-religious agnostic, notes that “the existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places.
This means that if the energies of the Big Bang were, in arbitrary units, NOT:
100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000,
BUT INSTEAD:
1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
0000000000000001, there would be NO life of ANY sort in the ENTIRE universe.”
In the face of all this, to claim that, “these so-called ‘theories’ have no basis in scientific fact, and have absolutely zero evidence pointing towards these conjectures.” (creative intelligence) is to purposely engage in intellectual dishonesty.
But then, when has the left ever let ‘ a little lying’ stand in their way?
The simple fact remains, NOTHING that has NEVER existed before, cannot [by definition] create itself into existence. Absent a creative intelligence and will, the ‘big bang’ cannot be explained, as nothing cannot of itself, come out of nothing.”
Put more simply, how does something of vast complexity, arise… out of nothing at all? For atheists to say ‘well, it just does’ is intellectual avoidance and dishonest, since they first posit that there is no creative intelligence.
The Catholic Church has an ongoing *history*
of Western, Judeo/Christian Civilization that it has been *keeping* for 2,000 years. ( There are even written observations about the genesis of Islam, described by a monk, fascinating to read).
In this history they refer to *times* when the faith was poor & lacking among the people,
when people acted & treated each other badly.
And times when there was a re flowering of faith.
So I don t find this especially perturbing.
Fairly certain that my three kids who attended the best Catholic grade school and the two best Catholic high schools in Omaha (single sex) don’t go to church any more. We also took them to church every Sunday. Maybe it will change when they get married and have kids.
All the Christian churches of which I’m aware are hard-Leftist and being abandoned, as they should be.
GB,
I’m well aware of the phenomena/arguments that you cite; and they are compelling. As I said, there is something much deeper going on, I just don’t know what it is…hence the agnosticism. For myself, the idea of a “God” however defined, is a possibility.
However, Christianity bothers me in several ways: 1) it hinges on the resurrection which, for myself, I would need some actual physical proof. And no, the Shroud of Turin doesn’t cut it for me. 2) Why us? From the results of the last several years, it’s obvious that every star has planets, so the number of possible planets with environments suitable for life is skyrocketing, and that’s just our galaxy! There are hundred of billions of galaxies. The universe is vast beyond imagining, so why would the God of this universe decided that this one species on this one tiny planet out of, most likely, uncountable intelligent species, send His Savior to us?
The exact opposite is *perfectly plausible* too
PG. Because we are made in the image & likeness of God why would he NOT send
the Savior to us ? God is striving to perfect us.
We are the crown jewel of his creation but we
need to get the kinks out, something we should strive to do in our individual lives here.
For Christians we have the example of Christ to aspire to, other Faiths have their path to follow.
To me it makes much more sense for *us* to be an intended creation instead of a happy accident.
Cornhead. That was our experience, at least to the extent of getting back into church when married.
What used to be called mainline Protestantism is now called Sideline Protestantism and is declining in numbers and influence.
It is the evangelical side and the high-demand churches, which are flourishing.
It would be hard to find a theological issue which could be said to be required or forbidden for membership on a sideline church. If there’s no difference between not being a, say, Methodist and being a Methodist, why be a Methodist? Same could be said for any other denomination of unlimited acceptance. One church in our area took down the cross because it might have been offputting. Nobody goes there any longer.
A corollary is that the remaining folks are more sincere and committed believers, simply as a matter of subtraction when the casual are subtracted, and they are motivated even further by the sense of being othered by larger society.
Neo wrote:
“Many people I know consider it axiomatic that religion and science/logic are antithetical, and prefer to cast their lot with science and rationality…..”
If those were the choices, I would also go with science and rationality. The fact that the Christian church embraced Greek philosophy from the beginning and that science arose from the bosom of the church makes that Hobson’s choice invalid. Unfortunately, many people have so lost contact with philosophy that they don’t realize that science began as one branch of philosophy – natural philosophy – and has never been the repository of all truth.
physicsguy Says:
Why would God send a savior to any intelligent species? What role does the multiplicity of intelligent species play in any such decision? What role – conceptually- do distances play within a creation, relative to a God which maintains the being of the creation, in the first place.
I cannot tell you what a well informed Christian would say, but just to ramble on for a moment, it appears to me that some of what is often claimed for or held of the Bible in the way of propositional content by some people, is underdetermined at best; and the result of not very well derived inferences. And these specious premisses or faulty assumptions, or incautious extrapolations, force us to deal with a number of pseudo-problems.
For example, although the Scriptures say certain things about creation and man in Genesis 1, the inference [not yours] that creation was for man in particular, and alone, seems to me to be unwarranted and based on overwrought homiletic horatory than clear and distinct propositional content.
Genesis says that man formed from the dust of the earth had Divine life breathed into him; was made some way in the image and likeness of his creator. It does not say all Creation was made for man, nor that he was the centerpiece of it.
That should then, never have been an issue – to later be “debunked” or viewed with skepticism – in the first place. The debunking is a denial of what is not textually asserted.
Then, there are initially trivial seeming things, such as the placement of man in a “garden”. It is a thing which does make a kind of rude narrative sense. As opposed say, to the kind of fantasy vision which seems to be the concept entertained by many. of the entire universe as a primordial Candy Land until “the Fall”.
Clearly, and even if you are a literalist, and even on the telling in Genesis 2, the world outside of the special or protected environment for the man who was made of dust and ensouled via direct action, is by weak implication likely much the world we now know.
“The whole world fell with the sin of Adam” line is something we might have heard said, or read as being said; but where in Genesis 1 or 2 is that found?
Similarly, the Catholic notion of original sin, (and you need only reference a 1940s Baltimore Catechism to see it) has more to do, in fact all to do, with “our loss” of superior powers due the/our origins as part of the lineage of “Adam”, than it has to do with some inherent guilt over an ancestral act. The line is posited as estranged from it’s once superior state, and now merely in it’s natural, clouded, striving, death ridden state …
Of course, the size of the universe in relation to man means noting to a classical theist. God is not conceived of a king on a throne “someplace” far away and just outside of the place we conceive of as the expanding bubble of the universe.
I’m not personally sure that we even have a very clear public idea of what constitutes matter, anymore.
Finally, insofar as the question of the physical proof of the resurrection goes, what would you consider as actually constituting adequate proof or as establishing a supernatural event? Would it be material remains on the order of the shroud, but better attested?
Would it be something else along the the empiricist lines of our ability to conjure up Jesus at one’s command; as if he were a Genii in a bottle which needed only to be heated to so many degrees in order to drive him out? I think it’s a hard problem there: made harder by the very concept of God, a concept which excludes the notion that “It” has the attributes of a plaything or material to be toyed with experimentally.
In fact, I am not sure how any event occurring or entering the natural would, no matter how public, could establish its supernatural provenance. Suppose a beam of light predicted by a saintly visionary to appear on a certain day, and to last forevermore, did appear, initially accompanied by the sound of choirs of “angels” and seen and heard by all including skeptics. And further suppose that this luminous shaft of mild light remained, untouchable, unblockable, visible both day and night, for years.
What would that prove to the committed naturalist?
But if the resurrection were proved, would that necessarily mean that you would then care?
C.S. Lewis wrote, ” Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Until I read and contemplated that, I was a member of the “moderately important” viewpoint. Lewis’s remark started me on a spiritual journey of immense personal value, away from being a nominal Protestant, and I am today blessed to be a Catholic.
physicsguy’s problem is that he seems to view God as a physics issue. His spirituality is physics, but God created the order that is physics. Were it not for God’s creation of heaven and earth, there would be no physics, no order to be discovered by physicists.
trying to post
I am a life-long Christian. My husband and I have raised our children in the church…and all of them, at this point in their lives (teens/20s) are still church-going Christians. However, I do think part of our success has to do with the community you raise your children in. We live in a very well-churched area. Most, if not all, of their friends go to church or consider themselves Christian. That makes a huge difference when you have children growing up and wanting to be independent from their parents.
I, on the other hand, grew up in a relatively liberal state with a lot of immigrants. I don’t remember having many regular church-goers as friends. Our church didn’t have much of a youth program by the time I went to high school. It is hard to be the ‘weirdo’ amidst everyone else in your school. I felt a little old-fashioned and odd.
Although I remained Christian throughout college, I admit there was a struggle there and a serious contemplation about my faith and why I went to church.
Then, I had my own children…and realized the burden was on ME to raise them in Christianity. Boy, did that bring me around.
Most people I hear from who no longer attend church usually point to the fault of other members or a pastor who wronged them in some way. Sinful behavior among sinners! Who would’ve thunk it? People seem to think that church goers should somehow be better than the average human being and be ‘kinder’ or ‘less sinful.’ Sorry, folks, if you’re going to church to find less evil people, it’s not going to happen.
Perfection is impossible. Just because Christians KNOW they should be like Christ, doesn’t mean they ever will be…and likely will NOT be much of the time. Don’t hold that against Christianity…that is why Christ came to earth…to deliver us from our sins because we could not do it ourselves…and still cannot.
If you don’t find sinners in a church, then something must be wrong.
A few observations:
1) It is impossible to separate logic and truth from God; everything that is true is ‘of God’ because God is Truth. Rather, the misunderstandings in Christianity originate in man’s misinterpretations of the Bible. Too many people mistake biblical allegory for literal truth. This has been especially true for the last 500 years under the influence of the Reformation, which erroneously encouraged people to start interpreting the Bible for themselves—every man his own theologian. Most of the time these interpretations have been wrong. (As evidence, I submit 26,000-odd variations of Protestantism.) The Bible is not a book of scientific truth but a book of moral truth.
2) If you take the transcendent out of the church, then all that’s left is a concert, a lecture and a snack. God is transcendent, and the Transcendent calls us to struggle, to aspire to understand greater mysteries, not to consume God in handy 8-oz. servings. A ‘user-friendly’ church that leaves men self-satisfied in their delusions is a dead church.
3) Science and logic can give us a lot of things, but they can never give us wisdom. For wisdom, man needs God.
4) If you accept the premise that a Prime Mover (God) exists, then a) He is by definition all-powerful and, being all-powerful, b) He is therefore able to do things like manifest Himself on earth if He wishes. That is, once you accept the idea that an all-powerful God exists, then the premises of Christianity don’t seem quite so irrational.
5) From a philosophical standpoint, the essence of Christianity is that we humans achieve our highest expression, and conquer suffering, when we subsume our selfish desires to the precepts of God and do not act as our own deity; i.e., we participate in God’s energies and exercise ‘lovingkindness’ toward our fellow man.
Read church history; the primitive Christian church was self-sacrificing and ascetic. In one sense, Christianity is like Buddhism on steroids, and Jesus is the Ultimate Bodhisattva. (Christianity might be more interesting to seekers if they recognized this.)
As an aside, a study of Eastern Orthodoxy and the church fathers would be worthwhile for those who have become disenchanted with the pandering and self-idolatry of the contemporary church. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is still a valuable institution.
Science and Christianity is only incompatible based on the premise that science is a religion like Christianity thus one cannot be a Muslim and Christian at the same time, after all.
So if science wasn’t a religion, then there would be no barrier to co mingling of aspects.
It’s as if logick is something people are incapable of using. They use something they call logic, but it’s more like dogma.
when we subsume our selfish desires to the precepts of God and do not act as our own deity
Mortification of the flesh. Exerting Willpower over the instinct, such as fear, hunger, anger, or lust.
If religion is the organized control of humans to alleviate guilt, then spiritual practices are designed to help humans self regulate their issues.