Newsweek proclaims end of Christian America

[DMB]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583/page/1

Seems a bit premature to me, but it's a reasonably interesting article.

[Ronin]

I'll bring the Guinness, grub and the grill!

We're going to need someone to bring fireworks.

:cool:

[lpetrich]

I'll believe it when I see it. The "Church of God the American" Religious-Right crowd has not exactly gone away. They have continued to act as if they speak for all Americans who profess Xianity, despite a remarkable lack of outrage from American Xians who disagree. Why isn't there a loud Religious Left to counterbalance the Religious Right?

[Jobar]

I expect if there was an organized Religious Left, we'd stand an unpleasantly large chance of the two going to war. Be careful what we wish for... :(

[Barefoot Bree]

Did anybody else catch this sentence buried midway down?
(Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.)

Well, duh. Not that they voted for Obama, but that Obama is Christian. So was the other guy! When we're faced with a candidate who isn't, then you can make the distinction!

***

Don't you just love those doom-and-gloom types who can read a statistic like "the number of people identifying themselves as Christian has fallen from 86% to 76%" and go into despair that their way of life is fast being wiped out? Hello? You're still the vast majority!

And the stat that got this whole thing rolling was that there are more non-affiliateds in the Northeast than in the Northwest. OMG! The fact that there are more people, period, in the NE is of no consequence whatsoever.... :rolleyes:

I love puncturing statistics. It's one of my favorite hobbies.

***

ETA: I do love this paragraph; marking it for posterity here.

By the time of the American founding, men like Jefferson and Madison saw the virtue in guaranteeing liberty of conscience, and one of the young republic's signal achievements was to create a context in which religion and politics mixed but church and state did not. The Founders' insight was that one might as well try to build a wall between economics and politics as between religion and politics, since both are about what people feel and how they see the world. Let the religious take their stand in the arena of politics and ideas on their own, and fight for their views on equal footing with all other interests. 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.

[tjakey]

What happens as more and more people start to figure out that there is no god? What happens to this "ever-fluid mix of the two?" If we ever get there (and I'm not saying we will) I suspect the religious remnant will go the apoplectic route and take as many with them as they can.

[lpetrich]

I expect if there was an organized Religious Left, we'd stand an unpleasantly large chance of the two going to war. Be careful what we wish for... :(
I can understand that, but I'd prefer them fighting each other than fighting us. And I'd love to watch right-wingers become born-again secularists.

Don't you just love those doom-and-gloom types who can read a statistic like "the number of people identifying themselves as Christian has fallen from 86% to 76%" and go into despair that their way of life is fast being wiped out? Hello? You're still the vast majority!
If you count support of their positions are likely smaller, but as I've pointed out, the "Religious Left" is strangely quiet.

And the stat that got this whole thing rolling was that there are more non-affiliateds in the Northeast than in the Northwest. OMG! The fact that there are more people, period, in the NE is of no consequence whatsoever.... :rolleyes:

I love puncturing statistics. It's one of my favorite hobbies.

I've gone to this ARIS site (http://www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org/) and found these numbers for "Nones":

Division / Region | States | 1990 | 2008
New England | CT MA ME NH RI VT | 08 | 22
Middle Atlantic | NJ NY PA | 06 | 15
Northeast | - | 07 | 17
E N Central | IL IN MI OH WI | 08 | 15
W N Central | IA KS MN MO ND NE SD | 07 | 15
Midwest | - | 07 | 15
S Atlantic | DC DE FL GA MD NC SC VA WV | 07 | 13
E S Central | AL KY MS TN | 05 | 10
W S Central | AR LA OK TX | 05 | 11
South | - | 06 | 12
Mountain | AC CO ID MT NM NV UT WY | 12 | 19
Pacific | CA OR WA | 15 | 20
West | - | 14 | 20
Nationwide | - | 08 | 15


New England is now beating the West Coast in the percentange of Nones. And in New England, Vermont leads the nation with 34% Nones.

On the other side of the fence, the South continues to live up to its reputation for being the Bible Belt, though even there, the number of Nones has increased to 12%. The state with the fewest Nones is Mississippi at 5%, though even that state had had an increase.

[DMB]

I suspect that this trend will continue. It's a matter of momentum. There may not in reality be a huge increase in unbelievers, but more a movement to emerge from the closet. With the "new atheists", "four horsemen", or whatever you want to call them, attention has been drawn to the legitimacy of unbelief and to the fact that there are a lot of unbelievers around.

In the Britain of my childhood in the 1940s and 1950s, comparatively few people admitted to atheism, although there were always plenty who didn't go to church. I was treated quite unpleasantly by fellow pupils and by teachers once I came out as an atheist (the only one in a school of 800). Since that time I have seen a huge social movement. People are no longer afraid to speak out about their own atheism and many are ready to attack religion and religious privilege openly in a way that used to be very rare. I think this could happen in the States too.

[Notta]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583/page/1

Seems a bit premature to me, but it's a reasonably interesting article.
I read that online, and my first thought was "You cowards would NEVER have written something like this while George Bush was in office!"

For a long time after 9/11, Newsweek seemed to parrot the administration's position on just about everything. I canceled a subscription I had had for over 30 years. I just re-subscribed again a little over a year ago, and was surprised to see some of their journalistic ethics reassert themselves.

But I still think this article would have never even seen the light of day while Bush was President. They've even invited Karl Rove to be a columnist there. What next? Rush Limbaugh on the editorial board?

[tjakey]

I quit reading both Newsweek and Time a long time ago when both appeared to be nothing more than Sunday School papers run by religious fanatics.

[patchy]

I quit reading both Newsweek and Time a long time ago when both appeared to be nothing more than Sunday School papers run by religious fanatics.

Yup. I canceled my subscription to Time after one too many cover stories about fictional characters.

I think the last straw was something like, "The REAL Mary: what was she like?"

:bang:

Umm...how 'bout "made-up bullshit so that Jesus would sound just as cool as all the OTHER man-gods of the time who ALSO could brag of some sort of virgin/miraculous birth?"

That's what she "was like."

[tjakey]

I remember that Cover patchy, and I'm pretty sure that was the last time I touched a Time.

[lpetrich]

For a long time after 9/11, Newsweek seemed to parrot the administration's position on just about everything. I canceled a subscription I had had for over 30 years. I just re-subscribed again a little over a year ago, and was surprised to see some of their journalistic ethics reassert themselves.
This is pure speculation on my part, but I would not be surprised if the Bushies had threatened the Newsweek management with lack of access to the White House as a penalty for reporting stories the Bushies did not like. And the same with other mass-market journalism companies, like Time and the TV networks.

I suspect that this trend will continue. It's a matter of momentum. There may not in reality be a huge increase in unbelievers, but more a movement to emerge from the closet. With the "new atheists", "four horsemen", or whatever you want to call them, attention has been drawn to the legitimacy of unbelief and to the fact that there are a lot of unbelievers around.
It also helps to be well-represented in the educated and chattering classes. I recall from somewhere that in past decades, that had helped the Jews, by allowing non-Jewish columnists and the like to become acquainted with them.

Since WWII and possibly earlier, there has more-or-less been a social consensus of don't ask, don't tell about religion. That's now been breaking down, with the Religious Right being eagerly involved in doing so and with there being no politically-active Religious Left to challenge them.

Four years ago, Salon magazine released What would Falwell do? (http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/03/10/religious_left/index.html), introduced as
After years of near-invisibility, religious progressives want to regain their vanished political clout. But with conservatives claiming a monopoly on godliness, it's going to be a struggle of biblical proportions.
It came out four years ago, and I've seen no notable change.

I think the last straw was something like, "The REAL Mary: what was she like?"
Did anyone here bother to read that article? Was it anything more than hand-waving speculation?

[Ronin]

I remember that Cover patchy, and I'm pretty sure that was the last time I touched a Time.

My MiL brought me the Time that dedicated the entire theme to "End Times any day now" because of 9/11.

She went into a LaHaye enhanced delusion about how "we'll see soon" who was right or wrong about the "after life" and the rapture.

I told her that I was going to keep this magazine for ten years and bring it to her again "in this one life" so that she can recalibrate her end times prophecy to the "next big thang" that happens.

I'm sure she's long since forgotten that conversation, but I'm short timing it with only two years to go.

Yes, I am like that for a mere half second of satisfaction...it's what makes me so damn charming.

:cool:

I'll scan and post the cover later.

[Ronin]

Here it is, for your time-traveling pleasure:

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/3/3/a/6/600_8053222.jpeg

It's the end of the world as we know it...and I feel fine.

Inside is an morass of moronic mumbo jumbo, including the "Rapture Index" (http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html) and a little old lady dressed as a "handmaiden".

Earth is so much fun.

[VoxRat]

Blackwell vs. Hitchens on Hardball (http://reasonweekly.com/christopher-hitchens/april-8-2009-video-of-christopher-hitchens-and-ken-blackwell-on-msnbc) on this topic.

[Copernicus]

Blackwell vs. Hitchens on Hardball (http://reasonweekly.com/christopher-hitchens/april-8-2009-video-of-christopher-hitchens-and-ken-blackwell-on-msnbc) on this topic.

Hitchens is replacing Dawkins as the most salient public atheist in the US. He is a master debater, and he left Blackwell sputtering most of the time. I wish that they could have had someone more interesting than Blackwell on the other side, though. Blackwell is just a fairly ordinary conservative politician, not someone who has experience in these kinds of discussions.

[lpetrich]

Ebonmuse in A Passionate Atheism (http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/04/a-passionate-atheism.html) noted a recent Pew poll (http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=312) that gives some insight as to what is happening. The fraction of Nones (atheist, agnostic, no religion) in each generation is approximately constant, but each succeeding generation has a larger fraction of Nones than its predecessors.

Generation | 1987 | 1997 | 2007
Pre-Boomer (<1946) | 05 | 04 | 05
Boomer (1946-64) | 10 | 09 | 11
Gen. X (1965-76) | -- | 14 | 14
Gen. Y (1977-) | -- | -- | 19
Total | 08 | 09 | 12


The numbers are not good enough for testing fits to curves, like linear or logistic, so it is difficult to extrapolate from them. But if the trends continue, the US will reach where Europe is today in a few decades to half a century.