Christianity is dying in America

[pecksniff]

I don't mean religious-right politics, I mean the Christian faith as such. At least 25% of Millennials are self-ID'd atheists or agnostics -- that's more than in any elder generation -- and among the rest you'll find many who call themselves "spiritual but not religious," i.e., not affiliated with any church or doctrine. Certainly you'll find very few who believe non-Christians go to Hell and Christ is the only way to Heaven -- a belief that has sustained the expansion of Christianity for 2,000 years.

 

[Wrong Element]

"Dying" is a little strong, but it's definitely weakening.

I would add that even among those who don't identify as atheists, agnostics, or just "secular," you've got two other fairly large groups: people who call themselves "evangelicals" as a cultural and political identifier, but don't go to church or observe religious practices in any real way; and those who attend these newfangled megachurches that are serving up entertainment and a sense of belonging to something, without any content that feels particularly Christian.

 

[pecksniff]

As we have seen in "post-Christian" Europe, this process can only work in one direction. There will never be a "Third Great Awakening" that revives Americans' faith in Christ to any statistically significant extent. Any increase in the believing Christian population can only come through immigration.

 

[ll74]

Jeebus needs friends y'all

 

[pecksniff]

Jeebus needs friends y'all

Jesus loves you physically.

 

[pecksniff]

"Dying" is a little strong, but it's definitely weakening.

Well, look at Europe. Only a minority of people still believe in the Christian claims, but they still are shaped by a Christian civilization in their moral sensibilities and in their traditions. If the same process ever happens in the Islamic world, we will find that post-Islamic culture is still very different, in important ways, from any post-Christian culture.

 

[ll74]

Jesus loves you physically.

Dirty bastard

 

[RobDownSouth]

"Dying" is a little strong, but it's definitely weakening.

I would add that even among those who don't identify as atheists, agnostics, or just "secular," you've got two other fairly large groups: people who call themselves "evangelicals" as a cultural and political identifier, but don't go to church or observe religious practices in any real way; and those who attend these newfangled megachurches that are serving up entertainment and a sense of belonging to something, without any content that feels particularly Christian.

"Dying" may be too strong a word, but "definitely weakening" would seem to me to be an understatement.
Church attendance has plummeted 50% in my lifetime alone, that's quite a drop.

I think "church" attendance numbers were artificially inflated over the past 2 decades by conservative misogynist bigots using "church" as a fig leaf for their true agenda (codified second class status for women and non-whites). These folks have discarded the church like a used condom as they are no longer compelled to disguise their true positions.

Absolutely agree with you on the megachurches-as-entertainment point. Prosperity Gospel is probably the most corrupt interpretation of Scripture yet.

 

[pecksniff]

Prosperity Gospel is probably the most corrupt interpretation of Scripture yet.

Certainly Jesus would not have thought well of it. See the story of Lazarus and Dives, the camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle* thing, etc. He was quite the social revolutionary. There's a reason why early Christians practiced a congregational form of communism.

*In medieval Europe, the priests claimed there was a low-topped gate in Jerusalem called "the Needle," and a heavy-laden camel could only get through it if some of the load were taken off -- therefore, that verse means a rich person can get into Heaven, so long as you give some significant part of your wealth to the Church.

 

[Philthy_Phil]

I never understood people's need for religion.

Ever since I was a kid religious people weirded me out. I could never be good friends with a devout christian. Fuckin weirdos.

 

[ll74]

I never understood people's need for religion.

Ever since I was a kid religious people weirded me out. I could never be good friends with a devout christian. Fuckin weirdos.

You're totz goin to the bad place with the fire and stuff

 

[pecksniff]

I never understood people's need for religion.

There are several distinct needs people feel, needs answered by the following:

1. God the Maker: Explains the existence of things in general. (Does not explain the existence of God.)

2. God the Provider: The one you pray to when you want something. Probably the most important of all, in all human cultures.

3. God the Judge: The one who puts some justice into the scheme of things. If bad things happen to good people or vice-versa, what other force can set that right, in this world or the next?

4. God the King of Heaven: Provides a personal afterlife. Many people want one.

5. God of Ecstasy: Appeals only to a certain kind of person, the mystic, who seeks some sort of personal union with the divine.

 

[PaxNurgle]

There was an article in our local paper (which incidently is dying faster than Christianity, but it's still a good article) In the article, the writer states that one of the biggest problems with Christianity in America is how it is sold. That is, Christianity with a good salesman, who sells the positive attributes of Jesus and Scripture, is almost irresistible.

But the problem is, you have people like Donald Trump, Rick Santorum, and the modern Religious Right being the face of Christianity. Of course, many millenials who associate those people with Christianity will be turned off to it!

To them, they see Christianity as two things, neither of which are appealing: 1) A list of hard rules and things you can't do (have sex, read or watch erotic literature such as this website, drink, be gay, etc.) And 2) repression and intolerance. Intolerance of gays, transgenders, and (increasingly) non-whites. And they see Trump and his followers as the face of Christianity and that presents a whole other host of problems- greed, dishonestly, lust for power, contempt for the poor, contempt for the health and safety of his subjects, contempt for the natural world. Much of which, incidently, was outright condemned by Jesus Himself in the scriptures.

So, this is the religion that millenials are being sold. Is it any surprise that they don't want any part of it? If Christianity was presented as a loving, accepting religion with altruistic aims, and as a way to overcome one's own flaws and attain immortal spiritual bliss, then of course more people would accept it.

 

[icanhelp1]

I don't mean religious-right politics, I mean the Christian faith as such. At least 25% of Millennials are self-ID'd atheists or agnostics -- that's more than in any elder generation -- and among the rest you'll find many who call themselves "spiritual but not religious," i.e., not affiliated with any church or doctrine. Certainly you'll find very few who believe non-Christians go to Hell and Christ is the only way to Heaven -- a belief that has sustained the expansion of Christianity for 2,000 years.

The left is at war with christianity. Christianity is antithetical to the progressive marxist agenda.

 

[pecksniff]

The left is at war with christianity. Christianity is antithetical to the progressive marxist agenda.

That is no argument for the truth of any Christian doctrine. And is no argument for Christianity in any other sense.

As lifelong socialist George Orwell wrote in 1940:

Mr Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was a good caricature of the hedonistic Utopia, the kind of thing that seemed possible and even imminent before Hitler appeared, but it had no relation to the actual future. What we are moving towards at this moment is something more like the Spanish Inquisition, and probably far worse, thanks to the radio and the secret police. There is very little chance of escaping it unless we can reinstate the belief in human brotherhood without the need for a ‘next world’ to give it meaning. It is this that leads innocent people like the Dean of Canterbury to imagine that they have discovered true Christianity in Soviet Russia. No doubt they are only the dupes of propaganda, but what makes them so willing to be deceived is their knowledge that the Kingdom of Heaven has somehow got to be brought on to the surface of the earth. We have got to be the children of God, even though the God of the Prayer Book no longer exists.

The very people who have dynamited our civilization have sometimes been aware of this, Marx's famous saying that ‘religion is the opium of the people’ is habitually wrenched out of its context and given a meaning subtly but appreciably different from the one he gave it. Marx did not say, at any rate in that place, that religion is merely a dope handed out from above; he said that it is something the people create for themselves to supply a need that he recognized to be a real one. ‘Religion is the sigh of the soul in a soulless world. Religion is the opium of the people.’ What is he saying except that man does not live by bread alone, that hatred is not enough, that a world worth living in cannot be founded on ‘realism’ and machine-guns? If he had foreseen how great his intellectual influence would be, perhaps he would have said it more often and more loudly.

 

[pecksniff]

There was an article in our local paper (which incidently is dying faster than Christianity, but it's still a good article) In the article, the writer states that one of the biggest problems with Christianity in America is how it is sold. That is, Christianity with a good salesman, who sells the positive attributes of Jesus and Scripture, is almost irresistible.

I am sure there is no shortage of priests and ministers who meet that description. It makes no difference.

 

[icanhelp1]

I am sure there is no shortage of priests and ministers who meet that description. It makes no difference.

What makes a difference is that the left is a secular movement consisting primarily of agnostics, atheist and non-religious entities which are in direct conflict with our judeo christian culture. That's why the left hates american values and hell bent on tearing down our republic.

 

[KeithD]

I think Covid's restriction to in-person church attendance and curtailing of group support activities has pared church membership down drastically. For many denominations, it gave folks pause to look at where many of the churches aren't as far as beneficial social institutions and led lots of people to say "why bother." The ideological split in the Methodist church and relevance anymore had already caused me to leave the year before Covid.

 

[pecksniff]

What makes a difference is that the left is a secular movement consisting primarily of agnostics, atheist and non-religious entities which are in direct conflict with our judeo christian culture.

No, it isn't. There is a long and honorable tradition of Christian Socialism.

That's why the left hates american values and hell bent on tearing down our republic.

You are an idiot. Eugene Debs was at least as good a patriot as Theodore Roosevelt.

 

[pecksniff]

I think Covid's restriction to in-person church attendance and curtailing of group support activities has pared church membership down drastically. For many denominations, it gave folks pause to look at where many of the churches aren't as far as beneficial social institutions and led lots of people to say "why bother." The ideological split in the Methodist church and relevance anymore had already caused me to leave the year before Covid.

An Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with a trust fund.

A Presbyterian is a Methodist with a college education.

And a Methodist is a Baptist with shoes.

 

[neuroparenthetical]

As we have seen in "post-Christian" Europe, this process can only work in one direction. There will never be a "Third Great Awakening" that revives Americans' faith in Christ to any statistically significant extent. Any increase in the believing Christian population can only come through immigration.

The only way I can agree with this statement is if you additionally posit that secular/religious hybrid right-wing extremism will essentially supplant "Christianity" per se as the likely winner when, to put it glibly, "shit starts getting bad."

Given the climate change data, we're due for shit to start getting bad across a much, much wider swath of the planet. Even second-order consequences, like a flood of climate refugees towards the areas that aren't as hard hit as quickly, will be enough to shift pretty much everybody to the right. That's fertile ground for religious revivals.

 

[pecksniff]

The only way I can agree with this statement is if you additionally posit that secular/religious hybrid right-wing extremism will essentially supplant "Christianity" per se as the likely winner when, to put it glibly, "shit starts getting bad."

Given the climate change data, we're due for shit to start getting bad across a much, much wider swath of the planet. Even second-order consequences, like a flood of climate refugees towards the areas that aren't as hard hit as quickly, will be enough to shift pretty much everybody to the right. That's fertile ground for religious revivals.

Things going bad can with equal plausibility be taken as evidence of 1) God's wrath, 2) God's indifference, or 3) God's non-existence.

 

[neuroparenthetical]

Things going bad can with equal plausibility be taken as evidence of 1) God's wrath, 2) God's indifference, or 3) God's non-existence.

Yes, that's a great example of the kind of rational thinking that's already quite rare in the human population, and is due to get much rarer when shit gets really bad.

Did you think my comment was forwarding any kind of truth claim about the supernatural? I sure hope not.

 

[PaxNurgle]

The left is at war with christianity. Christianity is antithetical to the progressive marxist agenda.

That statement is probably the most idiotic thing I have read on here in a long time; stupid even by the abyssamally low standards set by the likes of Busybody. I mean, seriously, what in the actual fuck??

I mean, I don't know where to begin, but first of all- "Progressive marxist agenda." What exactly do you mean? What "marxist" agenda do "The left" have? And if you read what Jesus said- compassion for the poor and lower class, healing the sick, taking care of the less fortunate- those are, in fact, progressive values- things that the Right (not the left) is at war with.

And where in the fuck do you get the idea that the left is at "War" with Christianity? How, exactly? Are Democrats trying to shut down churches? Round up Christians and spirit them away into re-education camps? Make it illegal for Christians to practice their faith? Okay maybe they are- in China and North Korea; if that's what you mean, I'll give you that, but certainly this is not happening in the United States.

I say this because I'm so sick of the persecution complex some of these extremists seem to have. No, nobody in America is "At war with Christianity" and at it's root- it is complementary to, not antethetical to, a progressive agenda which by the way is still a far cry from "Marxism."

I feel sometimes like trying to educate the willfully ignorant is a waste of time and bandwidth, but at least I can try.

 

[pecksniff]

The War on Christmas should be fought with guns.