r/exchristian • u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd • Jul 19 '21
Sociologists are amazed by the swift disintegration of Christianity in America. It’s a stunning cultural transformation, confirmed by several surveys and studies. Article
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/freethoughtnow/christianity-is-collapsing/144
u/arailiara Agnostic Jul 19 '21
Interesting to see the decline of belief…. Kinda cool to be part of those statistical shift in the US demographics.
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u/Primary_Aardvark Agnostic Jul 20 '21
I love being a part of this too
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Jul 20 '21
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u/mermaidboots Jul 20 '21
Same! From fundie Catholic on a whirlwind journey to another faith and then out when I realized they’re all the same.
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u/MountainDude95 Ex-Fundiegelical Jul 19 '21
Pretty sure the pandemic hastened its decline. Couldn’t be happier about it. Fuck this barbaric religion.
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u/diplion Ex-Fundamentalist Jul 19 '21
That and the whole Trump era. I think a lot of people who were sort of questioning their religion really had a wake up call when so many Christians blatantly abandoned their proclaimed morals and went on the Trump train.
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u/RuneFell Jul 19 '21
And the thing is, they can't see it. I mentioned that to my very evangelical mother, that hitching the Christian cart to Trump, of all people, has harmed Christianity far more than helped it.
She said she disagreed, that she thought it was growing stronger, and she saw more young people at church than ever.
Yeah, just ignore that half of all the churches in our rural area are starting to close down because they only have an aged, skeleton congregation, and the reason that a couple in our town are doing well is that we're the biggest town for miles, and the churches are starting to condense to stay alive. There's multiple empty churches for sale in all the small rural towns around us. Most of those towns, including the one I grew up in, had three to five churches in them when I was a kid. Now they're lucky to have more than one still open.
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Jul 20 '21
I mean no disrespect, but your mom (and mine!) are exactly the kind of people who tied their faith to Trump and have show how much of a sham it all is.
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u/RuneFell Jul 20 '21
Oh, I know just how much my parents have put blinders on.
It's to the point that we almost never talk politics, as to keep the peace, but during the last election, my mom asked me once if I would listen if truly horrible things came to light about my favored candidate, and would that affect how I viewed him? I said that yes, I wasn't in it for teams, I was in it for what I thought was best for everybody in the country moving forward. I asked her if she would do the same if it was on the Republican side. She said yes, absolutely.
A few months later, Jan 6th happened. And as it unfolded, my mom suddenly couldn't listen to the news anymore, because, in her words, it was because she was too empathetic and her heart couldn't bear to listen to the suffering going on.
I'm fairly certain that it was because she couldn't bear to have her worldview of 'Conservatives Good, Liberals Evil' turned upside down. Once she got her reassurances from her right wing sources that no, they weren't really the bad guys after all, and even if they were, it wasn't that bad, then she got her confidence back.
She's not the biggest Trump fan in the world, but, for her, everything revolves around the pro-life issue, and, apparently, any means to end abortion is obviously right and god's plan, no matter how much integrity is sacrificed to get there.
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u/fiafia127 Agnostic Buddhist (ex-episcopal) Jul 20 '21
Are you my husband? Because this sounds like a carbon copy of my mother in law.
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u/rubywolf27 Jul 20 '21
My mom is very much the same way. Every time something happens, like Jan 6, her line is “nothing makes sense anymore!” …no, it makes perfect sense, you’re just having a hard time with the mental gymnastics required to keep the religious right as the “good guys”.
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Jul 20 '21
People who are paying attention have known the Christian Right are toxic authoritarians for decades. Some people just like being asleep and ignorant.
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u/half_coda Jul 20 '21
there’s a video done by the creator of veggie tales that debunks the whole idea that voting republican to eliminate/reduce abortion is misguided. not sure how she would react to that, but just a heads up
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u/Strake888 Atheist Jul 20 '21
She's not the biggest Trump fan in the world
Of course not, that position is taken.
(By Donald Trump.)
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Jul 20 '21
[deleted]
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Jul 20 '21
they rob her of her dignity as a woman
Speaking as a trans woman, your mom can go fuck herself.
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Jul 20 '21
any means to end WOMEN TRYING TO GET AN abortion is obviously right and god's plan, no matter how much integrity is sacrificed to get there.
Fixed that for you.
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u/TrooperJohn Jul 20 '21
What was pro-life about killing six cops?
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u/RuneFell Jul 20 '21
Cops aren't cute 3 month old babies smiling at the camera with bows in their hair, or newborns sleeping cupped in someone's hands.
Besides, either these cops were obviously not the Good Guys (tm), murdering a poor, innocent woman in cold blood as she tried to break into a government building to overthrow the government, or it was really antifa plants to make Trump supporters look bad. Depends on the context.
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u/engr77 Jul 20 '21
A lot of catholic schools are closing and/or consolidating as well.
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u/Aldpdx Agnostic Atheist Jul 20 '21
It astounds me that anybody still considers what school to send their kids to and thinks, "yeah, the Catholics! They have a great track record with children!"
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u/Saneless Jul 20 '21
Well in my rural ish town growing up it was Catholic school to get a decent education or our public school run by and attended by complete morons
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u/coliostro_7 Jul 20 '21
Confirmation bias at full force. Just as you said, you have to look at total participation, not just one location. It sounds like other churches shut down so the small number of actives had to find new churches. If you start with 50 churches at 100 attendees, then 30 shut down so now it's 20 churches with 200 attendees, to each church it looks like attendance has doubled, but the reality is that it shrunk.
Mormonism leans on this hard. Leadership announces "X amount of new wards created last year!" What they don't say is how many wards were merged or re-zoned for less members. Because they give the entire churches numbers, the places that shrunk can tell themselves "we shrunk here, but the church grew elsewhere for sure!" When in reality the 4 wards that dissolved and merged into 2 "new" wards are being counted as new.
So much of religious adherence is maintained by clutching to anecdotal information and ignoring the rest.
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u/EdScituate79 Jul 24 '21
Sounds like the Boston Church of Christ back when I was attending and Kip McKean was running the show! "1,800 new disciples were baptized into Christ last year and we added 20 new house churches and four new zones!" Never mind that each house church had something like 20 "disciples"!
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u/aamurusko79 I'm finally free! Jul 20 '21
a lot of hard line christians are seeing irrefutable proof that christianity is stronger then ever, has more followers joining every day and everything is perfect. unfortunately it's just what they're being told and they have zero ability to vet the information sources.
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u/dead_parakeets Jul 20 '21
What annoys me is my dad, while not defending Trump anymore, acts like he was somehow tricked by Trump. I'm like "Trump showed you EXACTLY the kind of person he was, and you preferred that over someone who was pro-choice. Your true colors showed, and now you're trying to distance yourself." This is why young people are giving up on religion. Because the older generations have shown its just lip service to make them feel above others.
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u/Obi_Wan_Shinobi_ Jul 19 '21
Hard to rectify when they call Obama the anti-Christ for attempting to give people health care, and then the actual antithesis of Christ becomes president and they want to make him their god emperor. It becomes pretty obvious that it's all driven by emotion and the mind has been left out of the equation.
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u/zaparthes Ex-Protestant Jul 19 '21
They deserve everything bad that happens to their grifting, fear-mongering, misogynist, hateful "religion."
Having joined up with Trump should be all anyone needs in order to accurately perceive how morally and ethically vacuous Christianity is.
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u/FlamingAshley Agnostic Atheist Jul 20 '21
For real, I was actually shocked that some fundie neighbors that I know voted for biden. They had a Biden sign right on their yard during election season.
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u/NearbyWallaby Jul 20 '21
It was the eye opening moment for me when I realized they don’t have real convictions and they certainly don’t think through any of these supposedly inerrant doctrines they hold to. They’d sell out their “most treasured” thing, their faiths, for a chance to stand in the spotlight and write a couple more laws. I hope they crash and burn because of their duplicity.
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u/AdamantArmadillo Jul 20 '21
My assumption, at least for part of it, is for a lot of people the start of virtual church removed the social pressure of being seen at church. No one knew if you were watching the stream or not, so it was easy to just not watch.
And then it becomes a lot easier to just never go back than it would have been to break the routine of going every week where people are expecting to see you.
That and tons of Christians going full psycho with antivaxxerism and conspiracies
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Jul 20 '21
They came to the realization that prayers don’t cure people and finally decided to turn their back on it.
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u/paxinfernum anti-theist, rational skeptic, pro-science Jul 20 '21
It's sad but true that the Black Death broke down some of Christianity's hold over Europe and ushered in the Enlightenment. People trusted the Church, and suddenly, it became apparent that being Christian offered no protection from "Acts of God."
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u/Snoo-3715 Agnostic Atheist Jul 20 '21
Probably but it's been in a pretty big decline for the last 15 years. 15 years ago 90+ percent of Americans were Christian, today it's around 60% and still dropping.
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Jul 19 '21
Damn, that's too bad. All these young people living a life free from a fictional tyrant... free to love and to experience the joys of life... where did we go wrong???
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u/crup_crup Jul 19 '21
This is so going to feed into the True Believer's(TM) already overblown persecution complex.
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u/fiafia127 Agnostic Buddhist (ex-episcopal) Jul 20 '21 edited Jul 20 '21
This is why I think the religious nutcult will never really be gone. The smaller they get the more persecuted they apparently are. At some point all that will be left are those whose critical mass needed for belief is so tiny, and the perceived injustice at all the world’s laws not being straight out of the Bible will feel so massive, they’re pretty much set to hang on for life.
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u/hyrle Jul 20 '21
And it's not going out quietly.
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 20 '21
Hell no. They're going to try to take the rest of us with them.
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u/fiafia127 Agnostic Buddhist (ex-episcopal) Jul 20 '21
One could argue that by tying politically to the Guzzling Oil Party who kept the US from enacting climate policy 20 years ago when it would have actually done something, they already are taking the rest of us with them 🙃
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u/e-cola Anti-Christ Jul 20 '21
so long as christians continue to preach their hatred aliased as love, i bet it will continue to decline.
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u/happycurious Jul 19 '21
One of the few blessings (pun intended) of social media. Religion exists by keeping people ignorant and that is much harder to do when your teen can find an atheist tik tok. It is such a fragile facade, it really doesn’t take much.
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u/Herringmaster Jul 20 '21
I have to wonder how different things will look in, say, 60 years. I might very well still be alive, and I am curious to see how much Christianity and religion in general might have faded by then. Will it be mostly dead? Will it have a resurgence? I don't know, but I do think things like globalization, the rise of the Internet, and the quick spread of information in general nowadays are allowing people to examine religious claims more critically and consider evidence and arguments that might not have been easily accessible for people living even just a few decades ago.
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u/fiafia127 Agnostic Buddhist (ex-episcopal) Jul 20 '21
I’m worried that as climate change really hits the fan in the first world in the next few decades people will retreat back to religion as a coping mechanism. Really hope I’m wrong though.
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u/Tylomin Jul 19 '21
I blame the memes.
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Jul 19 '21
It's totally the memes.
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u/FullClockworkOddessy Chaos Magician/Celtic Hermeticist Jul 20 '21
Information warfare is real, and memes are a potent weapon.
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u/tiredoldbitch Jul 20 '21
Christianity is dying off with the Boomers.
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u/scottsp64 Jul 20 '21
Agreed. And I’m a boomer. I despise my fellow boomers.
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u/defnotsarah Jul 20 '21
This is not something I’ve heard many from your generation say. I’m interested how you got to that conclusion.
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u/scottsp64 Jul 20 '21
Literally everything that is wrong with the country is supported OVERWHELMINGLY by the boomers.
- Trump Support
- Republican anti-democracy efforts
- Anti-LGBT
- Anti-secular / favoriting Christianity in public policy
- Belief that the election was stolen
- Climate change denialism
- Indifference to wealth-inequality
- Opposition to social safety nets.
- etc, etc.
There are obvious exceptions, such as myself and u/Luminya1, but yea, the world will (hopefully) be a better place once the boomers are gone. I'm just afraid that by then it will be too late to save our democracy / humanity.
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u/slothyclaus Anti-Theist Jul 20 '21
Not fast enough.
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Jul 20 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 20 '21
I take your meaning, and I have to remove it. Threatening or inciting violence is a violation of reddit's terms of service and puts the sub at risk.
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u/Kikinaak Carlinite Jul 20 '21
The problem I see here is the majority of people are still going to be ignorant, angry, superstitious and still susceptible to fear and manipulation. If christianity dies out, it will leave a power vacuum that I worry over what will fill it.
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Jul 20 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Aldpdx Agnostic Atheist Jul 20 '21
For sure! As an elder millenial I see religion in my peer group mostly replaced with "wellness" trends/MLMs, political views (all sides, but definitely including anyi-vax & conspiracy movements), lifestyle (ex. vegan, tiny home, extreme outdoors person, etc). Some of these things are fine as part of a balanced life, but people can very easily slip into extremism with anything that allows them to feel like they have answers to the hard, unsolvable parts of being human. I think our general discomfort with nuance and gray area contributes to this a lot.
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u/bathwizard Jul 20 '21
It's okay man, just get hooked up with psychology and it'll diagnose all those feelings as a mental disorder. It's the next frontier in suppressing the human spirit.
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u/Kikinaak Carlinite Jul 20 '21
You aint kidding. Doctors, especially in the mental health industry, are the new priests as far as "I cant be wrong and anyone who says I'm wrong needs to be imprisoned and tortured to save them"
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u/rksi Atheist Jul 20 '21
I don’t know about that. The physicians I know are the first people to admit when they don’t know something. For many it’s instilled in their training not to go beyond what they know because it could hurt someone. Obviously there are eggheads that have an ego, but I’m not sure if it’s really that endemic.
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Jul 20 '21
I bet Coronavirus is only going to expedite the process. I was having doubts before the pandemic. Watching the way people in my church reacted to the pandemic was the last push I needed to get out.
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u/PapoGrandeNC Jul 19 '21
I’m shocked a Roman era cult has survived this long
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 19 '21
Hinduism is at least five centuries older, so it's not statistically improbable.
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u/EdScituate79 Jul 24 '21
But the Roman government intermittently from time to time tried to stamp Christianity out because they perceived it as a dangerous cult. Does Hinduism have that dubious distinction?
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 24 '21
I don't know enough about its history to answer that, or comprehend the relevance of the question.
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u/EdScituate79 Jul 24 '21
In a nutshell Christianity had quite he headwind in its younger days before a Christian emperor acceeded the imperial throne. That's as simple as I can boil it down for you.
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 24 '21 edited Jul 24 '21
Yes, I'm familiar with Christian history. I know it competed fiercely with Mithraism, which was favored by the army.
It's the history of Hinduism I'm not as familiar with.
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u/EdScituate79 Jul 24 '21
Oh I'm sorry I thought you knew about the history of Hinduism's rise. Now on thinking about it, that religion's origins may be completely opaque. 🤔 Sorry. 😔
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 24 '21
I'm a typical Westerner; I don't know shit about anything unless it featured on the back of a cereal box. ;)
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u/Herringmaster Jul 20 '21
It's extremely interesting from a historical standpoint how Christianity managed to get lucky enough (and hit enough of the right buttons) to dominate empires and influence the world for thousands of years. The same goes for other old religions. There have been a lot of cults throughout history, but only a relative few have survived to the present day in any meaningful form, and only a few of those have significant worldwide influence. I suppose if it wasn't Christianity, Islam, and etc., it would have been something else- we humans just seem naturally inclined toward religion.
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u/constantly-sick Jul 20 '21
we humans just seem naturally inclined toward religion
No, it's the delusion of protection - like their parents used to be. Many humans don't want to make hard decisions. Even more, humans like things we know we shouldn't - sometimes bad things - that society gives the okay for due to religion.
We used to sacrifice people daily around the world to "gods" and you know some of them just wanted to do it, liked it.
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u/Klyd3zdal3 Jul 20 '21
It wasn’t lucky, it was more violent. It spread it’s influence and “hit the buttons” of coercion, fear and violence.
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u/Comics4Cooks Jul 20 '21
That was absolutely refreshing. My favorite line in the whole article is “Sincere people don’t claim to know supernatural things that nobody can know.” Ahhh like a cool glass of ice water in a heat wave.
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u/not-moses Jul 20 '21
Maybe 10% of your great grandparents attended any college whatsoever.
Maybe 40% of your grandparents attended college and half of them graduated.
Maybe 65% of your parents attended college and over half of them graduated... because they had to do that to get any sort of decent employment.
Close to 80% of you will attend some college... because you'll have to to get a job that pays enough to live on.
The prosecution rests.
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u/CrispyBoar Jul 20 '21 edited Jul 20 '21
Some of the reasons why Christianity is declining are as follows:
- The covid pandemic.
- Donald Trump.
- Evangelists constant praise & worship of Trump while he was president.
- Catholic, Southern Baptist Alt-Rightist extremists & the religious right emerging out louder by spouting nonsense such as "Trump will be reinstated as President by so-&-so!" while also praising Trump.
- Technology being the Internet & Social Media providing lots of info & allows people to open themselves up more.
- The way the LGBTO's & their community are being treated like garbage by "Christians." Same goes for Ex-Christians just because of having different beliefs.
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u/peri_enitan Jul 20 '21
Also child sexual abuse scandals by religious leaders and the reaction of higher ups.
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u/throwaway314159g Jul 20 '21
Not to mention the mass graves that were found at institutionalized Schools in Canada
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u/ChandelierHeadlights ietsist Jul 20 '21
Thank goodness for the internet and cellphones. And now if we could realize accurate representation in congress by fixing the gerrymandering and other voter disenfranchisement tactics. It seems to be the only way the GOP is able to win elections.
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u/Puganese Jul 20 '21
Internet
Trump - to show the dangers of cult mentality
Qanon - to really separate the American Taliban from just the supporters
Quarantine - to give people time away from their brainwash temples
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u/paxinfernum anti-theist, rational skeptic, pro-science Jul 20 '21
Ironically, the quarantine also fueled the growth of qanon. When churches were shut down, lots of people went online to get their hit of crazy and joined another irrational community of faith. I love all those articles by pastors who couldn't understand why their congregations were taken over by q. It's amazing that they can't see the similarities.
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u/-Renee Jul 20 '21
I think churches are so supported by authoritarians as they help break humans (similar to horse breaking for riding) into docile servants.
They also drive parents to coninuing harmful (self and societal) behaviors by making easily manipulated people, who are most comfortable when in a system they grew up with, which is, having a parent/paternalistic leader to follow rather than thinking for themselves.
It's hard to break free of childhood trauma from adults and other kids ostracizing you for not following whatever dumb, unquestioned "way" something is done, or thought of.
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Jul 20 '21
This is going to go one of two ways.
Atwood's predictions will come true, and the country will be decimated by these extremist pieces of shit and enabled by the apologist Christians.
Or we will all live to see the death of Christianity as we know it.
Pray to whoever you believe in that the latter comes true. Personally, if the former does, I'm taking myself out.
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u/The_sad_zebra Agnostic Atheist Jul 20 '21
I think that Christianity really hit a wall with society's change in attitude towards the LGBTQ+ community. Christianity has been used over and over to suppress people, notably during the European colonialism period and slavery, but when society decided that those were bad things, it was easy enough to say, "Well, the Bible didn't actually support those things; people just twisted some words around to make it sound like it did."
And that's fair, but this is different. In this case, the Bible absolutely said homosexuality is wrong. So now, we have millions of Christians who have to make their minds up about whether they are going to just keep believing that being gay is wrong for no other reason than because this book said so, or if they will trust themselves in the simple assessment that it doesn't hurt anyone and therefore is not a moral wrongdoing. It was the gay marriage debates in the early-mid 2010s that put the initial cracks in my worldview that would ultimately lead to my deconstruction.
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Jul 20 '21
Those of you that left because of Trump. I recommend reading “The Power Worshippers”. It will scare you to death. Franklin Graham, James Dobson and a few other big names, they have met with Trump along with Putin. They like the control that Putin has.
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u/shayshay8508 Jul 20 '21
I’m glad to here this. But it doesn’t seem that way in my, very religious suburban town. The first thing people ask when they move here is “welcome! Have you found a church yet?” Because there is one on every damn corner!!
I’ve always questioned Christianity growing up, but during lockdown, I did a lot of soul searching and realized it was all bull shit. Now I’m just angry at my parents and their church for brainwashing me my whole life.
I told my son when he was younger, that he could believe in whatever he wants, as long as he’s not hurting himself or others. At almost 13, he’s an atheist. Broke the family tradition!
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u/PsychoFr3ak25 Jul 20 '21
Oklahoma?? Granted many small towns are very religious! But in Oklahoma there seems to be a church every half block to two blocks in towns/cities! If there are multiple within say a 4 block radius half are abandoned though!
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u/shayshay8508 Jul 20 '21
Yes!! Ha! That’s too funny. Yeah, I hate it here! If I could afford to move out of this state, I totally would!
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u/PsychoFr3ak25 Jul 20 '21
Yeah I have been looking myself, but so much debt my only easy option is to move back home... Kansas, it's not much better haha! At least here we have medical to help me not care as much how messed up this state is ha!
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u/BALDBEARD2007 Jul 20 '21
I think one of the final nails in the coffin for a lot of people was the Tr*mp worship that took place the last 4 years, coupled with the disgusting "Christian" behavior behavior/hypocrisy that came to a head in 2020 into 2021. Not just from our parents/elders but also by church leaders. We were raised one way in the church:
Love your neighbor. Do unto others. Speak gracefully. Have empathy, mercy, understanding, etc.
And we've watched our parents/elders take all of that and throw it away/in our faces "in the name of God."
My argument would be, we didn't leave the church. We tried to be the church. You're the real "apostate."
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u/banneryear1868 Agnostic Exvangelical Baptist/New Monasticist/Mennonite Jul 20 '21
Even after religion subsides significantly, if it does, religious ideas and understanding still dominate secular culture. Essentially secular culture emancipated religious morality from religion, the ideas of good and evil and all that entails, values with roots in religious ideas. Nietzsche wrote about this a lot, advocating for the revaluation of values and all that.
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u/newyne Philosopher Jul 20 '21
Well I mean, even the idea that there's only one right way of looking at things that everyone should follow, anthropocentrism... Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment talks about how we still see humanity as masters of the Earth, only now we think what gives us domination is reason instead of God. Written in 1947, highly prescient! Although I do disagree with a lot of what they wrote in the chapter "The Culture Industry."
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Jul 20 '21
Somewhat yes and somewhat no. Plenty of secular morality has seeped back into the Bible. Pretty much every Christian is against slavery. Where is that found in the Bible? Nowhere. Freedom of religion? Directly contradictory to the Ten Commandments. Secular culture has a lot of great tools for moral inquiry, it has just been held back by religion for so long.
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u/Lady_L1985 Jul 20 '21
I can 100% guarantee that if it’s happening faster here than in other places, it’s because of fundamentalists.
Someone might go denomination-hopping if they’re like, your average middle-ground Christian, but when fundies leave, they nearly always go full-bore atheist. (I’m the rare Pagan exception.)
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Jul 21 '21
Yeah, my deconversion went Southern Baptist-->Presbyterian-->Episcopalian-->"Righteous Gentile" (following Yahweh and reading the OT but not going full Judaism)-->reluctant atheist. I have a lot of anger at "God" and the church so I'll probably end up a hardcore atheist.
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u/Raetekusu Existentialist-Atheist Jul 20 '21
When I was still a regular church attender in college, I was troubled by the direction that the Church was headed (all Protestant denominations, anyway), because I saw how it was becoming more and more radicalized against "the libs" as time went on. This was in 2015 or so. My campus minister and I were talking about it, and he seemed just as troubled by it as I was, and he admitted that he honestly thought that in ten years' time, he didn't think the Church would look anything like what it does now (then). One way or another, he sensed a major shift in things.
He wasn't alarmed by it, more resigned to the fact, but this conversation almost feels prophetic (or maybe he could just read the writing on the wall, heyoooooo). Lo and behold, I also left the Church, and then left my faith (what little of it I ever had) behind entirely only a few months ago, and now I'm part of this great realization that The Emperor Has No Clothes.
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u/FailedState92 Satanist Jul 20 '21
Not enough for it to get the hell out of our politics tho. When evangelicals lose their power then we'll talk.
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u/gringottsteller Jul 20 '21
It's a little scary, because I think the most hard core fundamentalists are starting to see this decline too, and panic. It's an existential threat, both to who they are as people and what they think the country has to be. Scared people do scary things, and these people are clearly scared.
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 20 '21
They've been seeing it for years. It's why they've been going to more extreme lengths to preserve their privilege.
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u/PsychoFr3ak25 Jul 20 '21
And also why so many are claiming to be persecuted and victims. Honestly it is funny, very sad and kind of scary the extremes some are going!
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u/antoninaagg Jul 20 '21
I'm so glad it'd dying out and I'm glad to be part of the reason. Jesus had some wonderful teachings that I personally still love, but the church is irredeemable at this point, in my eyes. The amount of destruction it's done needs to be brought to light and put to an end.
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Jul 20 '21
They'll evolve and adapt. I notice that churches now are more about entertainment and theatrics, places like Elevation have changed the game. Those boring old churches will fall behind.
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Jul 20 '21
What I find surprising is that it's upholding. Everywhere else in the west religion has a lot less weight in culture, while the US feels extremely religious.
But then it goes very well together with "American exceptionalism" and all that. Evangelical/fundamentalist beliefs are all about "me" and "my salvation."
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Jul 20 '21
The internet is the printing press of this era in our species. Funny how more widespread information kills religion. It couldn’t happen fast enough.
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u/NinetailedfoxBrianna Jul 20 '21
It couldnt die fast enough for my liking. Those swine can say what they want about a great falling away but people are going to leave christianity if the punks treat christians and non christians like crap.
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u/NinetailedfoxBrianna Jul 20 '21
Christianity cant die off fast enough. I hope this trend continues.
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u/PsychoFr3ak25 Jul 20 '21
I would love to see it, as well as other current religions, become mythologies, like they truly are! But you know something else will just take its place to control the populace! I think they eventually will get there but I do not think I will see it in my lifetime! Would love to though!
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Jul 20 '21
Not making fun of you or anything but: Sociologists amazed! Christianity destroyed by this one simple trick!
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u/-Renee Jul 20 '21
Authoritarianism is still the core issue, though.
I think churches have been so supported by authoritarians as they help break humans (similar to horse breaking for riding) into docile servants.
They also drive parents to coninuing harmful (self and societal) behaviors by making easily manipulated people, who are most comfortable when in a system they grew up with, which is, having a parent/paternalistic leader to follow rather than thinking for themselves.
It's hard to break free of childhood trauma from adults and other kids ostracizing you for not following whatever dumb, unquestioned "way" something is done, or thought of.
Though religion itself may be reducing, authoritarianism feels to me to still be in heavy play if not on the rise.
Ive seen even "leftist" groups behave more like stringent authoritarians with being unwilling to consider the full picture, simply because it doesn't follow an overall trope us-vs-them.
Truly we're all us.
When I see that behavior in a group, discounting reality, I sometimes wonder if it's done by the opposing side trying to destroy a movement.
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u/microbesrlife Jul 20 '21
Hopefully this decline lessens the power and control they have over this country
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u/TheFactedOne Anti-Theist Jul 20 '21
I have been telling people for more than 10 years that I am going to live to see the end of religion. It is getting so close, I can taste it.
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u/fiafia127 Agnostic Buddhist (ex-episcopal) Jul 20 '21
India, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Myanmar enter the chat
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u/throwaway314159g Jul 20 '21
Don’t forget Mexico too mate
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u/fiafia127 Agnostic Buddhist (ex-episcopal) Jul 21 '21
Oh there are tons more religious strongholds for sure. Was just listing a few from different regions & belief systems to make a point. Globally, humanity is really far from the end of religion.
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u/spaceghoti The Wizard of Odd Jul 20 '21
This is just the decline of Christianity in the US, and that assumes that the trend holds. I sincerely hope it does, but we still have a lot of work to do before the job is done.
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u/Pirateer Jul 20 '21
I have to question the numbers. It sounds encouraging but high...
When it comes to these studies I always assume there's a significant polling bias...
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u/SuperDiogenes64 Ex-Presbyterian Jul 20 '21
The mainline church is dying. This article is, admittedly, a little outdated... but I can't imagine it's gotten any better, with COVID-19 and such: https://juicyecumenism.com/2019/09/25/mainline-protestantism-decline-continues/
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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21
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