To their credit even the RW media doesn’t seem to be picking up Marg the Bounty Hunter’s claim that mask wearing is like the holocaust. Which she doubled down on.
Though GOP leadership has been silent on it too, so it’s one of those things that is too crazy to pick up and run with, but good enough to say nothing about.
But anyway, the crazy will self-immolate and smoke away part of its core that wants to join the adults in the process. To me it happening in the church now is a positive step forward to sidelining its influence in the future.
Back on topic, yeah, though the decline was greatly increased in 2020, it was such a weird year what with Covid, that I would wait to see if the next few years show either a rebound or a continuation of the trend.
It’s like the overthrow of Communism in East Europe- there was a great increase in the number of people openly proclaiming their faith, but it took a few years to discover not that many more people were actually going to church.
It’s certainly more than churches embracing right-wing views that are driving folks away, though it is part of it- a lot of the strongest Trump supporters aren’t particularly religious.
I think not having an established church paradoxically helped the American churches. If you were from a Catholic country- Spain, France, Italy, Ireland- and you rejected Catholicism, for historic nationalist grounds you weren’t likely to turn to Protestantism; likewise in northern European Protestant countries. As well, the priest and pastors were effectively civil servants, who weren’t obligated to round up their own congregation. Thus, when Americans were dissatisfied with their church, they were more likely to just choose another church.
This may have broken now, with Americans joining Europeans ans Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders (back when, you could just say “white Commonwealth”)as more secular.
Biden’s policies are banning CRT in schools in Tennessee and Texas? This reminds of the obsession over Sharia law and banning Sharia law because we have so many Muslims in Alabama pushing for Sharia law.
Seriously of all the things that matter. Secularization is just another example of the demographic shift away from conservativism. But keep telling me I’m the one baiting…ok.
Agree. I don’t think the long-term trend is in doubt, and Evangelicals will be along for the ride. I think they will continue to do better than the mainstream religions as they offer more of a close-knit community approach. I’m skeptical they in particular will see some kind of politically-driven exodus, but maybe that will happen in this new and different younger generation.
Maybe. It’s a different place than Europe. I think we’re just behind them on the curve as far as secularity goes. We’ll still be some time in catching up though.
As demonstrated in the link I shared, it’s not the number of evangelicals, it’s the fact that they turn others off from religion with their short-sighted political power plays.
I doubt it. This has been happening for a long time, and we’re following in the well established footsteps of other rich countries. There’s lots of obvious avenues for religious practice that don’t suffer from the political problems you mention, and they’re doing even worse than the Evangelicals, so I don’t see how it could make sense. That sounds like a not very compelling type of religion in that case–or maybe that’s just the problem.
As you noted the trend goes back decades, I would argue the increased demonization of the Republicans by a certain crowd has led to large shift in ratios of Democrat to Republicans in schools and higher institutions of learning that people are afraid to publicly show their support to Republicans out of fear they might be attacked and ostracized by their peers, hence the very high level of secularization with the young crowd.
You see this a lot, in surveys of Democrats their top fear is Trump supporters or Republicans, because the MSM and Democrats are on a non stop demonization tirade. When the mask rule was recently changed I saw many Democrats say “Im keeping it on , I don’t want to be mistaken as a Republican”.
For Decades Democrats went after the Christian churches and Republicans who pushed back against gay marriage (wrongly in my opinion in both cases) or going after a bakery who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding.
Cause and effect, with Christians being targeted by the woke left, people are scared to be associated and distance themselves.
Good because that would be kind of hard right now Lots of people do, like the Pew Research Center most notably. What I’m saying is in line with their stats as far as I can see. What do you mean exactly? I read the one blog post, but political factors are mentioned only as part of a picture consisting of several more obviously overarching factors (but ignoring some others IMO) and without any kind of statistical backing I could see. So where are the results of these interviews that will shed more light on this situation? I’m sincerely interested.
Oddly enough this doesn’t seem to be turning into any significant shift at the ballot box. Not like the shift to Democrats after Goldwater in the GOP. Democrats are still leading popular vote by wide margins forcing Republicans to rely on increasingly questionable means like increasing restrictions on voting and gerrymandering.
Lets not pretend the woke left has a monopoly on cancel culture. The Republican party is where diversity of ideas go to die. It’s a barren wasteland of Trumpism, and if you believe any differently, whether as a politician or in your own family, you will be cancelled.
The ones increasingly acting in a secular way are the younger generation which are emerging from institutions of learning that are not exactly known as hot beds of Republican thinking.
They are reacting mostly to a liberal stimulus. Which is what exactly? Maybe it’s Ted Crus is an entitled white male thumping his bible. Or maybe it’s Christians are opposed to gay marriage. Or they are learning speaking out against processive ideology is likely going to get them cancelled.
It’s not a Republican/right leaning environment, increasingly less so over time and the reason for that is fear. Students in that environment can clearly see identifying as Christian paints a target on their back. Intimidation, bullying and yes cancel culture have led to the imbalance and I would suggest the main reason for the trend in secularization of the US.
Ted Cruz being the Zodiac killer may have added to it.
seriously, if diversity of ideas were allowed instead of dogma one would be able to have conversations such as why is being transexual ok but transracial is not. if someone is only willing to call this out on one end of the political spectrum and can’t see it on their own side, that is blind faith right there. religion, America has lots of them.
Lots of people do, like the Pew Research Center most notably. What I’m saying is in line with their stats as far as I can see. What do you mean exactly? I read the one blog post, but political factors are mentioned only as part of a picture consisting of several more obviously overarching factors (but ignoring some others IMO) and without any kind of statistical backing I could see. So where are the results of these interviews that will shed more light on this situation? I’m sincerely interested.