AP Photo/Noah Berger
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a group of prominent atheist scholars dubbed “The New Atheists” set about demonizing religion, and Christianity in particular. Books like
The God Delusion,
The End of Faith, and
God Is Not Great argued that “religion poisons everything,” inspiring hatred, intolerance, war, you name it. Yet as America has become more secular in the last two decades, partisan rancor has
increased, not decreased.
U.S. church membership held roughly steady at 70 percent or higher from 1937 through 1976, according to Gallup. The average dropped slightly to 68 percent from the 1970s through the 1990s. Yet in the past 20 years, church membership has dropped precipitously. While 77 percent of Americans identify themselves with an organized religion, only 50 percent say they are a member of a church or synagogue.
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Voces de Libertad: El declive de las religiones typepad.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from typepad.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Is Religion Changing?
I believe speaking to matters of Social Justice, Economic disparity, and Environmental degradation are indeed consistent with a faithful biblical religion, indeed consistent with other religions as well including Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism.
This may be a somewhat controversial subject, and it depends on how one define’s “religion” but I’ve wondered about this for some time. We’ve all seen the Gallup polls regarding the decline in worship attendance, but we’ve also seen a rise in people’s passion for an evolving set of values namely politics on the left and the right, sports fanaticism, and idolatry of consumer capitalism to name just a few. The article link below to a Boston Globe article spells this out pretty clearly.
The Atlantic. Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Founding editor of
Wisdom of Crowds. (@shadihamid)
Casper ter Kuile, co-founder at Sacred Design Lab and Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. Co-author of “How We Gather” and “Care of Souls,” two reports profiling new forms of social and spiritual connection. (@caspertk)
Joseph Bottum, professor of philosophy and Director of the CLASSICS Institute at Dakota State University. (@JosephBottum)
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Kelsey Ogbewe, sophomore at Montgomery College in Maryland; writer and poet who writes about his past experiences with religion and on social justice issues. (@KOgbewe)
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Axios: America is losing its religion The accelerating trend towards a more secular America represents a fundamental change in the national character, one that will have major ramifications for politics and even social cohesion.