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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

#261

Post by busterarm »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #217

I see religion as being a useful counterbalance to government power. I'm a little concerned how cultish politics is getting in the US. Racism is the new original sin. You can just call anyone racist to publicly condemn them as unforgivable sinners. I was very concerned about Churches being burned down in last year's Riots, the cult of personality around Trump, and the new woke culture that sees individuals as only me…

There's some interesting points made here. At the very least, I think there would be an immense value to society to add to our school curricula education about liking and taking care of our bodies.

Not just Health and Gym classes.

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

#262

Post by bopbeepboop »

subpixel wrote: post #140
Freak_NL wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There does not seem to be a shortage of church variety to choose from. It's not about churches not being able to answer questions clearly; the reality is just that fewer people believe in gods. For comparison: in the Netherlands we already dipped below 50% in 2017, and the number of religious people keeps dropping steadily. In 2019 the remaining religious minority was composed of 20.1% Roman Catholics, 14.8% protesta…

Even if one believes, the notion that these often corrupt, sometimes malignant control organizations we call churches are a necessary expense of both time and money is a harder sell in the modern world. The social role that churches play is where the opening raises real concern. What comes after organized religion may well look more like conspiracy theory.

I would argue several modern problems trace to the collapse of churches as a social institution:

- loneliness

- lack of dating/marriage

- lack of community infrastructure

- lack of elder care

If you look at existing charities, much of the rubber meets road work gets done by churches or church affiliated groups.

You don’t have to like the message or the people, but I think it’s pretty obvious ditching churches without a replacement was a mistake.

Edit: reply here since rate limited //

> Yes, this can obviously vary by church--but it's a fallacy to claim that churches as a whole prevented loneliness.

No, you’re the one making a fallacy: your mothers singular bad experience doesn’t refute that churches made a statistically positive impact, which was my claim. You just told an emotional anecdote then declared that I’m wrong due to a straw man. (I never made a universal claim.)

> an entire generation growing up in the shadow of the 2008 financial collapse, as well as unprecedented debt from college

Okay?

The downwards trend in dating and marriage didn’t start in 2008 and doesn’t seem to hold across cultures — there’s a clear cultural component related to social changes in the US.

If you’re saying you think the collapse of churches is on par with excessive college debt as to why two-ish generations aren’t flourishing: I agree.

That’s my point.

> it's a self-selecting population that inherently echochambers, making it difficult to relate to outside groups, thus further damaging community

This sounds like a stereotype more than a fact — and is exactly counter to my experience, where multiple churches collaborate on things like homelessness charities.

That fine grained social structure is a necessary layer of how governments distribute resources effectively, one very poorly replaced by private actors. (In my experience.)

> you don't give any supporting arguments for them

I must have missed yours.

> you quite nicely fit the churchgoer stereotype in that way

Here’s the crux of it: you’re making faulty arguments because you need me to be wrong for your stereotypes to be right.

Eg, calling me a “churchgoer stereotype” when I don’t attend church and you made similarly unsupported arguments.

You’re just a bigot: factually wrong and stereotyping people.

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

#263

Post by soco »

dagw wrote: post #209
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 grew up attending church, and on the whole have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. It gave me both spiritual and moral support when I needed it the most and some of the best people I have ever known, I got to know through church. In fact in ways I mourn the loss of both my faith and my 'church'. However once I realized that, on a very fundamental level, the core of what they where claiming a…

I feel and felt the same. As many other commenters mentioned, a church must be a few elements in order to be sustainable: a community, a set of beliefs, an organization... and each one of these can be more or less important for the individual, and each on of these can go awry in its own way, often without affecting in the same way the other individuals or the other elements. Thus the discussion becomes even more difficult, when individuals have different experiences on each one of those dimensions. I think calling the debate "comparing apples with oranges" is a massive understatement.

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

#264

Post by praisewoke »

jordanpg wrote: post #231
justaman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

> it obviously does not require any kind of supernatural belief to do so.

How is this so obvious? Where's the counterexample? I've never lived it

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

#265

Post by dagw »

nonotreally wrote: post #224
justaman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a lie that religions keep perpetuating. Many social groups exist that are just as fulfilling. My gym for example is full of people who actively work in the community, help each other and gather multiple times per week to better themselves and encourage their community. Religion has nothing to offer that secular society cannot offer. It does offer a lot of downsides though.

Religion has nothing to offer that secular society cannot offer.

While this might be true in theory, I have not found it true in practice. I am no longer religious and I have not attended church for 20+ years, but despite trying many of these secular 'alternatives' to church I have yet to find anything as open, welcoming and socially supportive as I found church.

edit: Yes, I know this isn't everybody's experience, and yes some churches can be extremely bigoted, exclusionary and downright evil to people they perceive as 'others'.

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

#266

Post by tenacious_tuna »

bopbeepboop wrote: post #248
dagw wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up attending church, and on the whole have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. It gave me both spiritual and moral support when I needed it the most and some of the best people I have ever known, I got to know through church. In fact in ways I mourn the loss of both my faith and my 'church'. However once I realized that, on a very fundamental level, the core of what they where claiming a…

What would that be? I’ve encountered this claim more often than I’ve encountered actual fundamentalist churches I think are making any sort of strong claim about the world. So I’m curious to hear what people think is wrong.

> What would that be?

not OP, but I would presume "the claim" is that (a) there is a God, (b) the church knows which one, and (c) they know what he wants.

For comparison, I (atheist) normally state my position as "There is insufficient evidence to conclude there is a God," so any statement about there being any god, or about what influence they should/do have on our lives I treat as a "claim," which requires supporting evidence.

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

#267

Post by luxuryballs »

api wrote: post #240
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 literalis…

Well given the logical definition of God 6 day creation and riding in a whale are not a problem at all, anything is possible. I never saw a 6000 year old Earth in the Bible though.

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

#268

Post by yalogin »

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…

Interesting. Can you give a few examples of what questions these are?

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

#269

Post by malwarebytess »

Edgy opinion: religion is useful for guiding the human inclination to look for causes and reasons. All people will believe all kinds of nonsense, some people fanatically, so it's useful to make sure these people have healthy outlets. Lower church membership may not be the atheist utopia one desires, especially in the west with our rampant and unapologetic individualism.

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

#270

Post by at_a_remove »

ubermonkey wrote: post #101

I suspect one factor in the declining membership is shared with other mid-century social groups that have also dwindled (e.g., men's lodges): it's easier to find community elsewhere. For my parents -- born in 1940 -- church and men's service clubs/lodges were the primary areas of social interaction outside work. Dad ran his own veterinary practice, so his social interaction there was limited (I mean, everybody worked…

Men's lodges, fraternal organizations, and so on around here tend to have a religious underpinning of specific faiths, or seem to be charities of some kind with a connection to religion. As such, I think declining church membership would drag them down as well.

I wonder if men's clubs exist which are neither, just completely secular. I haven't been able to find any when searching, aside from The Club, which technically fits but as a bathhouse for hookups, wasn't really what I had in mind. I know lodges centered around professions more or less fell apart, and perhaps the last vestige of secular groups would be country clubs.

It's hard to tell how much of this is just "people aren't joiners anymore" and how much is declining church membership.

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