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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

#231

Post by jordanpg »

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.

While I agree that there is something important to be said for maintaining a sense of community, it obviously does not require any kind of supernatural belief to do so.

I would argue that the cost paid by society due to the institutionalized anti-intellectualism embodied by the church and largely embraced by the government far exceeds whatever communitarian benefits the church itself contributes to society.

Let's find those benefits elsewhere.

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

#232

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

sarabad2021 wrote: post #147
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And truly it already has. I don't think you're arguing that it's the same motivation as the French revolution, so it would help to elucidate your point if you said what you think that new thing is. It would also help to explain how you think that enforced philosophical adherence by all of western society applies as there are still 47% of Americans who DO belong to a religious institution.

I agree that it isn't the same motivation but we're on trend to seeing a similar result. If we do get to that extreme then by that time, we'll have a new moral system which won't allow these types of conversations, in the same way certain extremist sects of christianity didn't allow dissidents to live. However, the form of christianity that we have now simply hurts peoples feelings. Hardly cause for such outrage. Tho…

You're still avoiding saying what you think that trend is.

> However, the form of christianity that we have now simply hurts peoples feelings. Hardly cause for such outrage.

I believe there are still abusers hidden in Catholic Church are there not?

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

#233

Post by m0llusk »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #102

So many of the comments here are affirming what I have long observed: much anti-religious sentiment (“much”, not “all”!) is actually a reaction to fundamentalism, which is the bad theology of scriptural literalism, which brings heresies like hating LGBT, insisting the Bible is also a science textbook, superstitious views of certain Middle Eastern lands, and more. Growing up as a mainline Protestant, I thankfully didn…

My own experience being raised mainline Protestant was a bit different which might be illustrative: My parents were not at all devout, but still took wisdom and moral lessons from the Bible, especially from the teachings of Jesus. At the same time the preachers in town leaned right in their beliefs and focused on reading and interpreting more obscure passages. This resulted in a modest ongoing tension about what exactly it all meant. Then one Sunday School a conservative leaning preacher taught the kids how to spot witches. That was the last straw and we never went back to Mass or Sunday School and gradually withdrew from everything else with Easter and Christmas being the final holdouts. So I drifted to atheism but still find wisdom in the Bible and dare to compare the passages that focus on Jesus to stories of the Buddha. Culturally there is still quite a bit of influence there, but the fundamentalist component is a massive division like a great wall.

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

#234

Post by folkrav »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #211
paulryanrogers wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After being raised in a non-Fundamentalist denomination I'd say the progressive ones are more insidious and no less harmful. Their foundations are all the same text, no matter how literal or figurative they interpret it. IME they usually also teach the same bad ways of thinking: emotion over logic, testimony over hard evidence, authority beyond your understanding, etc.

I suspect you're setting up a false dichotomy. There are more choices on theology than ones that require you to check your brain in at the door, such as 1. fundamentalism and 2. feel-good pop psychology. I am not taught emotion over logic. In fact, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral (a framework derived from but not described by him) has you evaluate beliefs with reason being a co-equal base. In confirmation and later in-dep…

As much as I appreciate your level headed approach of the whole thing, the very basis of most religion is based on _faith_ that [insert relevant scriptures] are holding some truth about the very existence and power of [insert omnipotent entity]. I'll be honest, I have a hard time putting this very fundamental point as having any basis in logic and reason. Even putting beliefs at the same level as reason is rather questionable, IMHO.

Edit: I'm not here to tell you you're wrong or to question your beliefs. You're very much free to hold them. I'm just having a hard time equating religion with objectivity when they are fundamentally rooted in something subjective by nature.

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

#235

Post by f38zf5vdt »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #189
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #102

So many of the comments here are affirming what I have long observed: much anti-religious sentiment (“much”, not “all”!) is actually a reaction to fundamentalism, which is the bad theology of scriptural literalism, which brings heresies like hating LGBT, insisting the Bible is also a science textbook, superstitious views of certain Middle Eastern lands, and more. Growing up as a mainline Protestant, I thankfully didn…

After being raised in a non-Fundamentalist denomination I'd say the progressive ones are more insidious and no less harmful. Their foundations are all the same text, no matter how literal or figurative they interpret it. IME they usually also teach the same bad ways of thinking: emotion over logic, testimony over hard evidence, authority beyond your understanding, etc.

Not sure I follow. If the religious outfit is teaching things like:

- This book is a set of moral guidance aimed to cause favorable social outcome.

- These stories are myths.

- We should analyze these books to critically determine their relevance to our modern lives.

- Your personal understanding of spirituality is unique to yourself.

It seems only productive? It seems a much more dangerous stance, one even paralleling a fundamentalist stance, that there might be nothing to learn at all from scripture and millennia of human organized religion and so it must be completely discarded.

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

#236

Post by bopbeepboop »

throwaway0b1 wrote: post #230

This may be a very bad idea. But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA. I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most church…

Thanks for doing this!

(Don’t have questions; just encouraging more not-mega church public Christianity.)

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

#237

Post by busterarm »

drewg123 wrote: post #182

I used to think that the lower church membership went, the better off we'd be as a nation, because we'd be more rational on average. I still think so, but I'm less hopeful now. The events of the last few years have called that idea into question, as the rampant irrationality that I used to associate with fundamentalists seems to have moved from the pulpit to the airwaves and now to social media.

Sadly, fundamentalism does not limit itself to religion. Yet no matter how much you draw the obvious parallels in the social/political sphere, the teams are decided and criticism of any kind labels you a heretic.

Fundamentalists lack critical self-awareness.

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

#238

Post by fennecfoxen »

klmadfejno wrote: post #199
fennecfoxen wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Excuse me. You will notice that I am not talking about authority. I'm talking about self-consistency in the theology of major world religious.

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

#239

Post by jimhefferon »

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.

> a sense of community

I'm sorry to see the downvotes since this as an intelligent point. I'm not religious but one thing I do envy in my church-going friends is fellowship.

I'm a man in my 60's, and maybe all this is not applicable for the majority of folks here. But people don't have groups like clubs or bowling leagues very much anymore. Watching TV at home is fine, but not enough. (I'm in a club that is now breaking up, as these things do, and I think there is a very good chance I will not see these friends regularly again, which is too bad.) Of course, I could volunteer at a food bank, etc., but people I know that are in a church seem to find it more natural.

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

#240

Post by api »

AuthorizedCust wrote: post #102

So many of the comments here are affirming what I have long observed: much anti-religious sentiment (“much”, not “all”!) is actually a reaction to fundamentalism, which is the bad theology of scriptural literalism, which brings heresies like hating LGBT, insisting the Bible is also a science textbook, superstitious views of certain Middle Eastern lands, and more. Growing up as a mainline Protestant, I thankfully didn…

I've talked to people of the younger generations (in the USA) who are not even aware that there is anything other than fundamentalist literalism. Either the Earth is 6000 years old and Jonah literally rode in the belly of a whale, or there is no God.

This sets up a situation where you have to be willfully ignorant or lie to defend the existence of God, since this stuff is bollocks.

In reality fundamentalist literalism is a relatively recent (19th century) theological development, but it's taken over completely in many US denominations.

A further wedge has been driven by the total politicization of religion. Many also believe that you must be a far-right Republican to be a Christian. If you'd asked me as a teenager or early 20-something what it meant to be a Christian I'd have thought "you have to support the military and vote Republican."

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