In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

[quote]Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009.

[quote]Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population – a group also known as religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009; agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

Organized religons--all of them, including and beyond Christianity--will only become more extreme and politicized in this country as their numbers decrease.

They are not going down without a massive fight. "Handmaid's Tale" could be right around the corner.

Unfortunately the vast majority of remaining Christians aren’t Christmas and Easter types who like Christ, but nutcase Evangelicals.

More atheists. More atheistic attitudes.

But also more fence-sitters: 'agnostics', 'love christ but not the churches', 'personal jesus', or even deists that seem to be constantly seeking for a perfect church to fit their sensibility (and not finding it, because....)

...There should also be expected to be even more intense religiosity in the remaining religious. We shouldn't count out over Christo-fascist violence to be not rare (sorry for the double negative) in the farther off future. However, barring a bizarre aligning of factors, or a very surprising revivalism, it'd require a downright Handmaid's Tale to bring the irreligiousity of USA to its knees.

Up to around 3/4 of USA is religious in any sense. This was 4/5 and 6/7 not that long ago. It'll be 2/3 before we know it, especially as baby boomers and older die off. It'll can be 1/2 in this century, sooner than many would expect. It can be distinctly less than 1/2 within the lifetimes of at least some of us alive today. Christian tradition isn't going away anytime soon, but the powers that wield it are NOT happy with the trend.

The decline of Christianity is almost all attributable to the collapse of nominal and liberal Christianity. The center of Christianity today is strongly Conservative. Evangelicals and Pentecostals not only have overall numerical growth, but they are the face of modern Christianity. Liberal churches are nearly extinct.

Atheists aren't doing well either. They're a negligible percentage.

[quote]Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009.

Protestants are haemoraging more than Catholics.

religion in its modern form is about control.

This is also important to keep in mind when you're asking people whether they're gay or atheist -- the stigma (still) attached to both.

[quote]Way More Americans May Be Atheists Than We Thought

Religon has ALWAYS been about control.

r7 Good! Those bitches are especially crazy.

This comment under the article at r9 is infuriating.

[quote]I lost a job for being an atheist. I was a First Sergeant in the US Air Force so my records showed me as an atheist. I was up for a Medical Group First Sergeant job and had to interview with the commander. The commander asked for me personally because I had just won the First Sergeant of the Year award. A few weeks later he cancelled the interview and told the Command Chief he did not want me. The outgoing First Sergeant told me that the commander pulled my records and saw I was an atheist and decided against me. He was a very religious man.

A morally bankrupt set of fictions.

So 26% aren't religious? Still too low, but we are getting there.

r14 Up from 23% just last year. We definitely are getting there.

I’m more than happy to see protestants lose their numbers

Happy to see Catholics lose numbers as well. I honestly don't know how anyone could still follow the Catholic Church in the 21st century.

A freakout by a conservative outlet.

[quote]Read The Benedict Option. It’s important. We don’t have all the time in the world to think about this, and to work out a response. The crisis is here. The crisis is now. What we have been doing is not working. [bold]Donald Trump is not going to save us.[/bold]

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.

They see the writing on the wall r18.

Religion is a dying entity. Among Millennials in that survey it is gettinf close tob50-50 between religious and non-religious.

As-Saalam-Alaikum

In case you were wondering how strongly Trump feels about religion (performatively of course), wonder no more. Starts at 18:50.

We're apparently trying to hound them out of the workplace and indoctrinate their kids.

The only devout Catholics I know are a few Boomers. Nobody who's younger than that who call themselves Catholic are particularly devout. They just go to church on Easter and Christmas, that sort of thing.

Evangelicals, although they continue to be a complete pain in the ass, will never get back to the influence they had in the 1980s. The Moral Majority and all that shit. That time has passed, thankfully.

[quote]We're apparently trying to hound them out of the workplace and indoctrinate their kids.

Many "Christians" swallow this hook, line and sinker -- like the columnist at R18, who thinks Trump is terrible, but nevertheless maintains that any Democrat would be worse, because he believes Democrats want to erase "religious liberty."

From the article at r18

[quote] Just yesterday I heard from a reader who teaches in a school in one of the most conservative, religious parts of the US. He told me that he discussed the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision the other day in class as they were discussing the Supreme Court. He said every one of his students thought that the cake baker ought to be crushed. We will not long have religious liberty in America without religiously observant Americans.

So gay wedding cakes are still the sign of the Apocalypse for many Christians? Couldn't the writer he get upset about something more substantial, like the fatherless child rate, divorce, etc. instead of buttercream frosting confections?

Sorry r21 I couldn't get past him talking about radical left wing (whatever) seeking to destroy the constitution and the principles the founding fathers. . .

Like literally just about everything he's done since he got in office has been to destroy the government and constitution. It's Robert Mercers bedtime story and the bedtime story of all the Oligarchs. The only legitimate authority in the minds of those insane billionaire is THEM.

Well over 50% of people aren't religious in a lot of European countries. It's just taking a bit longer in the US.

These are false religions to begin with. Jesus is a myth like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. If you want to keep it going you are going to have to become relevant, and that means you stop spreading hate, intolerance and superstition.

Globally, Islam and Christianity are growing rapidly in numbers and influence, and this growth is fueling a global revolt against the godless West

R28 The Muslims have always hated us.

Where are the revolting Christians? (apart from bible belt USA)

r28 Godlessness isn't really the main thing that would motivate entire countries to revolt against "the West." That's just extreme extrapolation from certain fundamentalist pockets onto the entire non-Western Other and it's kinda gross.

[quote]Where are the revolting Christians? (apart from bible belt USA)

Did you not heat Barr's speech at Notre Dame last week? They're busy in the White House, blaming atheists for crime because we lack morals, or something.

Oh, and here's the article.

I'm from the UK, the howls of laughter would have been palpable if anyone here gave the same speech

As horrid as the Catholic Church has been, it’s currently got nothing on the US Talibangelicals getting their way. These neo-anderthals need to be exterminated or at least shut out completely once sanity returns to America.

I would take a wild stab in the dark and say that maybe the reason Islam enjoys so much growth the world over is that it is a misogynistic religion.

In theory men and women are supposed to be equal and this is written as fulfilling ideal male and female roles, giving each other mutual respect, under a god loving household, and I'm sure it happens in some instances. And in others it's just more literally god given reason to subjugate and oppress women.

Exterminated? Talk about evil

If you look back into ancient history religions seem to peak after about 1000 years and then begin to splinter and decline.

The USA is a bit of an anomaly as it was founded fairly recently by religious nutcases who most of Europe were glad to be rid of.

The Australasian continent didn't turn out anything like the US.

The world’s most committed Christians live in Africa, Latin America – and the U.S.

BY JOEY MARSHALL

An Ethiopian Orthodox priest celebrates Epiphany. Levels of religious commitment are particularly high among Christians in sub-Saharan African countries like Ethiopia. (Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images) Christianity is the world’s largest religion, with a big presence in most parts of the globe. But not all Christians share the same levels of religious commitment.

Christians in Africa and Latin America tend to pray more frequently, attend religious services more regularly and consider religion more important in their lives than Christians elsewhere in the world, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. At the same time, Christians in the United States also have comparatively high levels of commitment to their faith.

r37 Religions of the ancient world also didn't exist in a globalised world, connected by the web among other things. Even seeing a list of the current world religions on Wikipedia is important, because it tells you there's more than one religion and they all claim to be the true one. And then there's atheist, ex-Mormon etc. subreddits and message boards that people can access and see it's possible to leave their religion behind. Exposure to that alone does wonders over time.

The people of the Ancient world were aware of other religions, The Romans were famously good at absorbing them into their own from the people they conquered. They never went to war over religion, that began with Christianity and later Islam.

The only real upset documented in the ancient world was when Akhenaten (Amenhotep) abandoned the worship of Egypt's traditional gods in favour of the worship of one god - The Aten (Sun), and built Amarna. It didn't last long though and seems to have been resolved without any fighting.

It's frightening to think of so many people roaming around without a religious foundation to keep them in check. With nothing to lose, the atheists will treat every day as The Purge.

Funnily enough the reverse is true, the homicide rate in Europe (per 100,000 of population) has been in a rapid decline as Atheism has been growing.

Good!

Good for us, I thought non-religious were stuck at 10%

Their replacements are being supplied now

The only thing that needs purging is your idiotic ass r41.

r40 Being merely aware of other religions is not the same as religious studies (aka comparative religion) as a scientific discipline that exists in the world. And also, please don't try arguing that most people of the ancient world had an easy and instantaneous access to knowledge about other religions as we do now.

And, within Protestantism, the share who consider themselves born again or evangelical actually rose, from 56 to 59 percent over 10 years.

So you will end up with a majority of non-believers and a few religious nutters like every other country.

40 percent is not “a few”

Not "religion", R19. Christianity in particular.

There is still a stigma in the US to admitting that you are atheist or non-religious, the true numbers of non-believers are probably much higher.

Of course

Millennials killed Christianity.

More people are finally waking up to the massive con that religion is. Religion is just another form of business than survives on profit and loss results. They primary objective for every denomination is making as much money as possible. People are also finally realizing some important things about God. They're waking up to the fact that there is not one shred of proof that such an entity exists now or ever and that God is more likely just something made up by morals long ago to hornswoggle people into following them (and ultimately supporting them financially). The "fear of God" has always meant to force people into subservience and people are sick and tired of it.