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US religious membership falls below 50%

Started by Hydra009, March 29, 2021, 08:40:33 PM

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SGOS

Quote from: Cassia on April 03, 2021, 09:37:06 PM
We got fun-die channels, cath-o-lick channels, the yid-dish channels, oy vey.  Sometimes I will tune in for a laugh.
I do that too.  When I'm driving through new territory, and I'm searching for NPR on my radio, if come across some Hellfire and Brimstone Southern Baptist, I'll tune in and listen.  When he says, "Ga-wad," in Southern Baptist dialect, I'll repeat his words while I put every fiber of my being into the intonations.  Every time they speak about the fury of Ga-wad, they make it sound like it's the end of the world.  And when they get to the part about plagues, earthquakes, and swarms of locust, I shout out, "Praise Jee-zuhs."  I don't do it at stop lights where people would be watching me.

Mike Cl

When channel-flipping I will, at times, stop and listen to the jesus groups.  That fat toad for a guy, Hagee, is good for a chuckle with almost everything he says.  Tammy Faye's husband is still at it, as well, but he now adds survival food to his comedy routine.  There are sooooooo many ways the sheeple are sheared.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Blackleaf

I've spent enough of my years unironically listening to pastors like that. It just makes me cringe now.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

SGOS

Quote from: Blackleaf on April 05, 2021, 12:48:41 PM
I've spent enough of my years unironically listening to pastors like that. It just makes me cringe now.
I was a Lutheran and much to solemn to carry on like that, so I guess I never got it out of my system.

Blackleaf

Quote from: SGOS on April 05, 2021, 01:11:28 PM
I was a Lutheran and much to solemn to carry on like that, so I guess I never got it out of my system.

I was Pentecostal, then Lutheran, then Baptist. The Lutherans are definitely the least cringey of the bunch, and Pentecostals are the worst.

Hey, listen! I can speak in the tongues of angels! Baba luka, jimmy bo babba lick do! Tatatatatatatatatatatatata crish nu!
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

SGOS


GSOgymrat

I think the author has a good point. It appears when many people lose religion they look for something else to give their lives purpose, namely political causes. It reminds me of how people quit one drug by substituting another.

America’s Losing Faith, and That Makes the Next Trump All But Inevitable

... During the 2016 GOP primary, for example, one of the best predictors of whether a person would support Donald Trump was regular church attendance. Self-identified Christians might have supported him, but as The Washington Post noted at the time, “Trump does best among evangelicals with one key trait: They don’t really go to church.”

Church membership also denotes community and social connection, and these were also key predictors of Trump supporters in 2016. Parts of the nation with low social capitalâ€"places where people go bowling (or worshiping) aloneâ€"were more susceptible to Trumpism. As conservative writer Tim Carney noted, “Given two different counties with the same demographics and economics, the one with weaker or fewer community institutions was more likely to support Trump.” To be sure, this didn’t translate to supporting Hillary Clinton (white evangelicals overwhelmingly backed Trump in the general election), but it did correlate with their opposition to Trump in the primary. If more evangelicals had attended church, Trump would have never won the Republican nomination.

Of course, this correlation between church attendance and Trumpism might also be part of a larger trend. Yes, Americans are losing faith in almost all institutions these days (it should be noted that Gallup’s findings are not exclusive to Christians, they apply to the decline of Americans “belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque”). But the reduction in church attendance is arguably the most important, with reverberations that will last. The truth is that there seems to be something hardwired in the human spirit that causes us to want to worship. I’ll let you decide whether God created this hole in our hearts that only he can fill, or whether it’s the result of some evolutionary adaptation that makes us yearn in vain for a creator. The result is the same. Bob Dylan famously told us “you gotta serve somebody,” and he was right.

This deep-seated impulse cannot be subsumed. It will eventually come out. I’m not the first to suggest that the thirst for transcendent purpose and meaning is often channeled into our politicsâ€"often to our detriment. It’s hard to compromise with someone you view as not just wrong, but also heretical. ...

If you think our politics has gotten better since 1999 (before the decline of church membership started to drop off a cliff, Republicans were pearl-clutching about Bill Clinton’s sins and stressing “family values”), then go right ahead and ignore this warning. As conservative columnist Ross Douthat put it: “If you dislike the religious right, wait till you meet the post-religious right.”