the church i belonged to growing up rejects my basic personhood.
good riddance.
Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
11–20 of 1001 posts
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#12Now 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.
[deleted]
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#13first time in 80 years, anyway.
for rather more of the 19th century than we think, regular church attendance was more like 35% of the country.
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#14There's a great discourse in one of Dan Brown's books about whether people leave religion because they have found better answers elsewhere, or because they have stopped asking the questions.
Separately, I observed that that the areligious are much more likely to have few or no kids while the religious folks put a much greater emphasis on it. As the secular world moves towards a place where there's no pressure to marry and procreate at all, how long before it is once again relegated into a demographic minority?
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#15The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.
They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods [...]
They choose no religion.
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#16The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.
They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods [...] They choose no religion.
Religion is a way of life. You surely have one, it's just not very ritualistic.
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#17The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.
They have chosen new religions and a new elite priesthood, they just have different names.
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#18The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.
> They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods Do you have an example of such in the modern age? I don't really see many people I know "choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods"
Quakerism would fit the bill, though I don't know how many people are choosing it these days.
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#19Curious about how high that number is for ethnic minorities. Anecdotally, minorities (black, Asian, Hispanic) tend to be more religious.
They also tend to be more conservative and I think that's starting to change their voting habits. A lot are leaving the left. Edit: Ok just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. Minorities in this country are highly religious. Take a look at how many blacks and Hispanics voted for Trump this election.
You're being downvoted, but this can be true in the Hispanic community. One must realize that a third-generation Cuban American in Miami lives a totally different experience than a naturalized Colombian carpenter in East Boston, both of which might struggle to relate with the trials and tribulation of a Mexican or Guatemalan teenager who crossed the border alone during the past four years.
So yes: some fractions of the Hispanic community are highly conservative (the Cuban abuelitas and abuelitos playing dominos on Sundays LOVE to vote) and others are quite literally the opposite. One thing to note is that Spanish-language media leans conservative -- I think this is what you're talking about. Previously immobilized voting blocks in South Florida are leaning conservative partially because the news coverage of 2020 has been from a conservative angle.
Re: Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time
#20The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.
They have chosen new religions and a new elite priesthood, they just have different names.
So deep