Newsweek: "The end of Christian America"

[Philosoraptor]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.

"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

[SoCalDem]

1. Perhaps their "faithful" are tapped out, and the funds are running dry these days

to gin up some fervor, they have to crank up the "poor persecuted us" machine..

The hyper-religious prosper when they define themselves as a beleaguered, misunderstood band of righteous people, being unjustly persecuted..:puke:

[Mari333]

2. there was a huge groundswell

right before the year 2000..people buying into the hype of the rapture..and at the time I was fascinated by it, and checked out the websites devoted to it..people were all ready to meet jesus in the sky
as the years passed and people became disappointed, I watched the sites fall into disrepair..seems they fooled themselves once again...
I expected the disappointment would turn a lot of them away..

[formercia]

8. The coup

They knew the trends and the fear and longing for the 'Rapture' and the 'second Coming' gave them many more recruits for the coup that installed Junior into the White House.

[Fumesucker]

9. From what I understand, millenial fervor did not hit its peak the last time until

Twenty or so years after the turn of the millenium..

Perhaps cultural changes have accelerated in the last thousand years.

[izquierdista]

3. A good start

When the fundies despair, I rejoice! :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

Maybe in my lifetime, believers will fall to a minority of the population. Maybe they will shut up and quit pushing religion 24/7. Maybe I hope for too much.

[spoony]

24. Why do you equate fundies with believers?

[Ladyhawk]

4. Yea! And may the number continue in this direction. nt

[chimpymustgo]

5. This is being discussed on C-SPAN now 9:57 am EDT.

[lostnotforgotten]

6. Why Would Anyone Want To Affiliate With War Mongers And Oppressors Of The Middle Class?

One presumes that R. Albert Mohler Jr. does not understand that his message is tired and aging.

[checks-n-balances]

18. And don't forget about the message of "prosperity theology"!

I'm not suggesting that Mohler pushed that one, but it's been popular with televangelists for awhile. At any rate, I don't think that philosophy will survive much longer, with the economic picture as it is. That would be one casualty of this economic situation that I could actually rejoice about, since it's such a perversion of what Jesus lived and taught.

If U.S. rightwingers (in politics and in churches) had understood Jesus as champion of the downtrodden, the powerless and the vulnerable, perhaps so many people wouldn't be rejecting what's been passing as Christianity for "lo these many" decades...

[SpiralHawk]

7. If God is dead, it's because the Fundamentlists killed Her

By refusing to live and respond out of Spirit, and instead clinging to the cold, morbid pages of a book that has been rewritten and rewritten and rewritten by venal, mortal men, and misinterpreted a thousand ways.

[Ilsa]

15. I tend to agree with you. The religion

these fundamentalist people push is binding and creates guilt with no peace. They are fearful and want to fight anything that doesn't meet their limited and unforgiving standards. It seems like the churches that are doing better are non-denom or Unitarian. There is more freedom of thought and variation in spiritual experience. I think people want a spiritual community and acceptance, but they won't get it in those judgmental institutions.

[jesus_of_suburbia]

21. Well said.

[scarletwoman]

10. I hope this is a trend that continues, and that eventually we'll hear the end of such nonsense as

"America was founded as a Christian nation."

I appreciate the Bible at the level of literature, as a rich source of metaphor and myth with a sprinking of useful aphorisms. As such, it is woven throughout the fabric of Western culture, much like the works of Shakespeare. I would hope that the literary, and to some extent, the philosophical (as distinct from the theological), contributions to our culture will continue to be recognized and appreciated.

That being said, the sooner we can root out theocratic tendencies in our society, the better. These people are intellectually stunted literalists with absolutely no appreciation of metaphor and myth.

sw

[rhett o rick]

11. Statistics can be misleading. 30 years ago non-Christians were frowned upon. Being an atheist

was not cool at all. Many people that didn't go to church called themselves Christians just to blend in. With the exposure of the whacko-Christians, many of these same people now don't want to be called Christians and rather call themselves atheists, agnostics, deists or nothing.

[NC_Nurse]

12. Gee, maybe it's because they were so angry, hateful and harsh towards those

who didn't believe exactly as they did. Ya think???

Personally, I find these developments very reassuring. Let's hope the trend continues.

[Silent3]

13. The author seems to want to consider this a temporary setback for religion.

America, then, is not a post-religious society—and cannot be as long as there are people in it, for faith is an intrinsic human impulse. The belief in an order or a reality beyond time and space is ancient and enduring. "All men," said Homer, "need the gods."

American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other.

For the most part the author is talking about movements like the current Religious Right, and how gaining power is often precisely what leads to the loss of power. To that extent, I agree.

What I don't necessarily agree with is the implication that after such a loss of power future resurgence is inevitable, part of a natural rhythm that must be expected.

When I look at Europe, I see that a long-standing sustained rise of secularism and decline of religious influence is possible. That shouldn't be ruled out for the US. We're a long way from that point, but I look forward to the day when an openly atheist candidate can win high office in the US, and when it will actually seem odd thing, not a de rigeur expectation, that a major Presidential speech ends with "God bless the United States of America".

[madamesilverspurs]

14. There are many "faithful"

who are unaffiliated with any denomination or other formal religious organization. I am one of them. We gather informally, spontaneously. By simply living our faith we carry a better message than can be shouted through mis-named microphones; we believe that having to tell others what we believe means that we're doing it wrong. There is recognition that the mega-pulpits have purloined the name and turned it into a highly profitable facade for a business that trades in philosophical commodities with no bearing on or any resemblance to the original message.

My own long-considered decision to walk away was confirmed when political demands became more common than altar calls, when issue pamphlets had equal space with pew bibles, when hymns were regularly replaced with decidedly martial anthems, when money given by the poor was used to build lavish temples dedicated to the owner of the microphone, and when sermons became lessons in why some children of Abraham are more favored by God than others.

There are some people of genuine faith who long to sing a hymn that celebrates all of God's children, not just those who reside within our geographical and political borders. We may be unidentified, but we are not extinct.

[ArbustoBuster]

16. One statement in this struck me as completely incorrect.

"American public life is neither wholly secular nor wholly religious but an ever-fluid mix of the two. History suggests that trouble tends to come when one of these forces grows too powerful in proportion to the other."

How has a powerful secular movement ever harmed the country? There's no history to back that statement up, and in fact a lot of data to contradict it - we're not getting civil-rights-violating laws like Prop 8 out of secular movements, that's for sure...

[scarletwoman]

17. It's just the standard "fair and balanced" nonsense that's infested all public discourse.

If one side does bad things, you have to point out that the opposing side does bad things, too, even if it's total bullshit. And those who employ this fallacy can pretty much count on not be called on it, because so many people now think that such "balance" must be self-evident and therefore true.

[ArbustoBuster]

23. Yeah, I agree.

I was trying to extend politeness to the author of the Newsweek article. He states that he's religious, and the entire article has a "oh noez we are doooomed" feel about it. He obviously doesn't like the expansion of the secular mindset, and in sentences like the one that bothered me, it becomes quite apparent what his feelings are. He masks his feelings behind faux fairness.

[Warren DeMontague]

19. It's The End Of The World As We Know It.

And I Feel Fine.

[Raster]

25. Ditto!

Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves mind.
Free your mind. The rest will follow.

[ColbertWatcher]

20. Since when was America a Christian nation?

In order for this to be the "end" to Christian America, shouldn't America have been Christian at some point in the past?

[ksilvas]

22. The "Rapture" has finally arrived!

"....This is not to say that the Christian God is dead....".
Uh,,, when was the Christian "God" alive. Can a god be alive or dead.
When a god dies does it get buried in a giant coffin or simply
vanish from the mind that believed in it?

[mitchum]

26. Now THAT'S good news for THIS modern man!