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Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

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Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#191

Post by p_l »

aeneasmackenzie wrote: post #139
p_l wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also the official doctrine of Catholic Church since Vatican II... Thing is, application of it by clergy is not exactly universal :(

This is false. It is true that the church teaches that you can be saved without going through the church, but this does not apply if you are aware of the church. Invincible ignorance does not apply to those who are not ignorant.

I believe the main issue is whether one refused god or not (i.e. catholic who renounced the faith). Being aware of faith but not practicing while still fulfilling the requirements does count, iirc.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#192

Post by toomuchtodo »

justaman wrote: post #186
toomuchtodo wrote: post #145

Late 30s here who was dragged to church by parents and grandparents but who isn't exposing our kids to religion. It’s pretty straightforward for us: you don’t need fairy tales to be a good person and to come to terms with death (which comes for everyone). “Be happy, be kind.” If others choose to observe, that’s their choice.

It goes beyond fairy tails. There is a sense of community that (for the most part) only religion has been able to maintain in the information age.

Yes, we’ve had to create our own social fabric that a church would’ve been, but as our loved ones and friends are spread across the country and world, a weekly gathering would do us little good.

The challenge is to build community without the judgement that comes along with the beliefs required to attend a church. We strongly support LGBTQ+ folks, the idea of ethical non monogamy, people who elect to be child free, etc, which through our travels and experiences with religious believers, we’ve found incompatible with any church social fabric.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#193

Post by Applejinx »

CountDrewku wrote: post #10
Applejinx wrote: post #3

Now let's tax churches, like Frank Zappa suggested :)

Ehhh Christian churches are some of the largest charitable donators in the world. Unless those taxes are going to the same places to help people I'd vote no. The government isn't going to spend it on things that help people and we know that.

Who is 'we'? Sounds like you are a strongly political church advocate making a political argument.

I don't grant you the unilateral right to decide what places 'help people': that is a political question, and I didn't vote for you. You may not be particularly representative. In fact, according to the OP, you're not a majority here, so your attitude is not democratic, though it is still political.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#194

Post by gwbas1c »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #123
gwbas1c wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is, consistently, what I hear from friends and family as to why they have drifted away from the Catholic church, and is solidly my own reason as well. I was raised Catholic and decided, as a teenager, that I didn't want to be Catholic as an adult. > My theory is that people have always felt that way, but it was harder to nail down these awful people before social media. IMO, two things: 1: The changes in the 1…

At least the abortion thing makes sense: Catholics believe that the soul enters the body at the moment of conception, so abortion is effectively murder. It would be odd for the church to not openly oppose it.

Well, when I went to a steakhouse in India, I didn't need to cross a picket line. Nor did I see billboards condemning me for eating beef.

> It would be odd for the church to not openly oppose it

There's a difference between politics and religion. Getting back to my point, my opinion is that treating abortion as a political issue is one of the many reasons why people leave.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#195

Post by baryphonic »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #46

Having the Church community while growing up was great. But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. Frankly, growing up in the church left me with a broken moral code. It was only once I left it in my teens and had to work things out for myself that I feel like I could properly ground myself ethically. Having a moral system imposed on you can do that.

> Frankly, growing up in the church left me with a broken moral code. It was only once I left it in my teens and had to work things out for myself that I feel like I could properly ground myself ethically. Having a moral system imposed on you can do that.

How did you derive your moral code yourself? Any action you take has side effects in the outside world, and so some minimal, common understanding of morality is necessary for any beneficial interactions with the world and especially other people (I'll leave God aside for a second). Did you rely on the authorities of non-theistic moral authorities in the past, and if so, how did you examine the bases of their moral beliefs? Were you just relying on personal feelings and maybe some experiences? Did you discover the joys of hedonism?

I want to understand.

Edit: looking at some other comments, it seems you might be referring more to "fire and brimstone" preaching? I never experienced that growing up, despite being on the conservative end of mainline Protestantism and still practicing today, so I can kind of understand the reaction.

I'm still curious though.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#196

Post by CedarMills »

cwwc wrote: post #111
CedarMills wrote: post #93

As a believer and someone who attends church regularly, this is sad but not unexpected. From my own personal experience - if the church cannot answer questions clearly, their members will look for answers somewhere else. A lot of churches unfortunately are so elementary in their teaching or turn to "feel good preaching" (see Elevation Church). The longterm effect is that a person ends up being tired of getting the sa…

I get this, but wouldn’t the flip side be the brightness and relief that hypocrisy is being culled through this? Just a thought — but if you stop acting in a way (attending church) that doesn’t jive with what you believe, that seems to be revealing truth (something which all ca rejoice over, even if it’s a tough truth). On the other hand — if it is people that are losing their faith, that is perhaps different, and I…

I think the word hypocrisy is thrown around easily. I think churches have made mistakes and there are no excuses for them - but painting every single church and every single believer with a broad brush and calling everyone a hypocrite is intellectually dishonest.

My personal worldview - at the end of the day, we're human and should see others as humans who make mistakes and give enough grace for them to try to improve.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#197

Post by tyxodiwktis »

wussboy wrote: post #159
nly wrote: post #35

For comparison, UK church membership is Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60% depending on region. 38% don't believe in God or any higher spiritual power. The interesting thing is people will identify as Christian on the census while also not claiming to subscribe to any particular religion in other surveys. 2021 census (just completed this month) results will be interesting http…

I think part of the problem is that there is no clear tradition of “cultural Christian” like there is for “atheist Jew”. I don’t believe in God. I love the high church and choral traditions. I attend a church where the minister feels the same. Am I a Christian? No. And yes.

This isn’t necessarily true outside the US. The running joke about Greeks is that they are 98% Greek Orthodox (official stats from a while ago) and 40% atheist. You might be atheist and communist (a fairly common combo in Greece) but will still probably roast a lamb on Easter with your family.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#198

Post by tim333 »

speeder wrote: post #100
Applejinx wrote: post #3

Now let's tax churches, like Frank Zappa suggested :)

I am from Brazil... To be honest this would be a complete disaster here. 1. My city main hospital, belongs to Catholic Church, same applies to many other cities. 2. Many of our leading universities, doing research and important work, belong to Catholic Church, notably PUC-RIO, the creators of Lua language. 3. Protestant churches here are the major organizations driving away drug dealers, some took the donations to bu…

You could have tax exemptions for hospital and universities.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#199

Post by klmadfejno »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #143
psychometry wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most "solid" theology is just shaky philosophy, though.

It's a question of whether or not you buy into the set of assumptions. If you do, you can avail yourself of any one several strong, coherent, self-consistent philosophies and world-views, which many of history's great minds have reasoned about and scrutinized. Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam: all of them spend a lot of time on this stuff. It's the on-the-fly, off-the-cuff, brand new, modern theo…

Appealing to history's greatest minds is a weak appeal to authority. Several of history's greatest minds also spent significant time on pursuits such as alchemy. It does them no disservice to suppose that given modern tools and knowledge they would have formed different opinions. But now we have the ability to explain evolution, brains, astronomy, energy, weather, etc.

Whatever your take on religion is, pointing to the opinions of people living in a much more inscrutable world is not good evidence.

Personally I fall into the camp that omniscience omnipresence and omnibenevolence are just logically incompatible with the christian belief of a good god.

Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time

#200

Post by pratik661 »

nly wrote: post #35

For comparison, UK church membership is Numbers for those claiming to be of "No religion" range from from 50 to 60% depending on region. 38% don't believe in God or any higher spiritual power. The interesting thing is people will identify as Christian on the census while also not claiming to subscribe to any particular religion in other surveys. 2021 census (just completed this month) results will be interesting http…

UK has historically had low church membership. Even novels from the mid 1800s (Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy) talk about how village churches lay mostly empty due to lack of adherents
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