Newsweek: The End of Christian America

It’s funny… maybe it’s because it’s newsweek. But the article seems to be concerned primarily with the shift in political power. And then somewhere in the middle he sticks a bunch of bible quotes.

I guess after reading the whole thing… I’m not sure what he’s saying. It’s like he’s mentioning a whole bunch of things happening, but he’s not actually saying much.

I don’t actually see anyone in the story saying what I see from my perspective: Bush was an unpopular president who messed things up royally, and he wore his evangelicalism on his sleeve. As such, people saw that Right-wing evangelical-led politics fails to actually deal with getting sandwiches and milk to people in the disaster area.

I think we’re in an era where you cannot say that religion gets us out of the financial crisis, or the recession, or the lack of medical care, or the war or whatever. And the voodoo bullshit of “God’s punishing us for abortions” isn’t working anymore. People see that the problem with the financial crisis was not caused by God, it was caused by man.

I would also like to see something written from the perspective of the non-religious. The perspective that was missing from the article was one of “Hey, this actually might mean more public policy might be based on empiricism rather than mysticism.”

I know. Fat chance. But I can dream, can’t I?

You sure this isn’t just a polarization of the American public?

Remember Jesus Camp?

I’m interested in the collapse of the religious middle. Mohler and the religious right did a lot to further that end. Some of it was the insistence and success in portraying Christianity as anti-gay, ant-science,. The religious right’s rise made Christianity something to be overcome, not something to religiously relate to, for millions.

But Mohler was also involved in a personal way. He was part of the purges of the religious center in the Southern Baptist Convention, getting whole swaths of professors fried at the seminary he leads, locking out moderate voices with convention fight after convention fight until the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention was complete. They spent so much time defining who a “real Christian was” that they succeeded in narrowing it. So now Mohler looks around and despairs at a smaller tent? He should be congratulating himself, it’s results of a lifetime of work.

The End of Christian America
The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

10 points!!!! THE END IZ NEAR!!!
*eyeroll*

Next time someone whines about the death of traditional reporting, I will recall this article (and thousands of others) and think “Why should I care about an industry that paid functional illiterates to pick the title of each every article?”

Still, in the new NEWSWEEK Poll, fewer people now think of the United States as a “Christian nation” than did so when George W. Bush was president (62 percent in 2009 versus 69 percent in 2008).

A tiny drop in the huge portion of Americans who still believe in the American history equivalent of Flat-Earth theory. Amusing that Jon Meacham seems to think this small victory for historians is a threat to Christianity. Does he believe Christianity is inherently ahistorical?

But that project has failed, at least for now. In Texas, authorities have decided to side with science, not theology, in a dispute over the teaching of evolution.

That’s not what I read .

And the final page is filled with trite bromides and bible quotes whose context had to be amputated in order to suit the deeply confused needs of the article.

Hopefully awaiting post-Christian America!

Something I’d like to throw out there for discussion: In all the various discussions of the “New Atheism” and the ARIS survey, nobody has mentioned the role of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent Iraq war.

I think a lot of people who, 10 years ago, would’ve been reluctant to call themselves atheists or to criticize religion, have looked at the actions of Muslim fanatics, and then seen the response of Christian fanatics, and concluded that there’s not much difference between them, nor does either have much to offer.

Meanwhile, I think, those whose power and influence derives from religion see the world becoming more secular, and so they dig in their heels, and that’s why what seems like entrenched power coupled with stupidity is really just desperation and overreach.

On the other hand, this stuff is cyclical — secularism and religiosity rise and fall in waves, so I don’t think we’re seeing anything permanent. I fully expect another wave of rising religiosity in 25-30 years.

People are not going to stop being religious any time soon, but they might buy a magazine that implies everyone else is going to become ATHEISTS and therefore EVIL.

This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 4/6/2009, at The Unreligious Right

The number of evangelicals or “born-again” Christians is on the rise (now over one-third of America) while the number of Christians on the so-called mainline denominations that tend to be more liberal is shrinking. Thus the overall number of people identifying themselves as Christians is less, but the conservative element is growing.

Poll after poll bears that out. However, I don’t know if there is any data on the following idea: People a decade ago who were marginally religious were afraid to call themselves non-religious. But that stigma has disappeared and those who at one time who never attended church but would not call themselves agnostics, now feel quite fine with saying they have “no religion.”

In fact, there is also a tendency among young non-denominational “born-again” Christians to eschew the term “religion.” It’s partly the result of the post-modernist mindset and partly due to the growth of these large non-conventional churches that got started in the hippie “Jesus movement” of the 1970s.

I think we can all agree this NW cover is meant to stir controversy. Controversy sells.