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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

#141

Post by thinkingemote »

Milner08 wrote: post #114
thinkingemote wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Holy Week this week (the week before Easter starts) and every day there is a service in each parish. UK, Roman Catholic churches. You have to book online to reserve a place. A quick look at a few parishes in an area for big and small churches shows that all the services for each day of the week and weekend are booked out in advance. Obviously the numbers able to fit in the churches are capped because of Coronavi…

Roman Catholic... in the UK? That makes up a very small number of churches...

It's bigger than you think, it's about the same size as the Church of England.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/11297461

https://faithsurvey.co.uk/uk-christianity.html

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

#142

Post by pmiller2 »

bko wrote: post #126
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…

What are those questions for which you seek answers that you believe some churches are not adequately addressing?

Take a look at the popularity of "prosperity gospel" with poor and middle class individuals. This is as a response to the inequality and social immobility brought about since the mid 70s. I'll leave out explicit mention of the "C word," because I'll get downvotes for it, but the sociological analysis is fascinating on its own.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology#Socioecono...

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

#143

Post by fennecfoxen »

psychometry wrote: post #105
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…

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 theology/philosophy which tends to end up shaky, simply because it's been done with fewer resources and has seen far less attention.

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

#144

Post by kickout »

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.

I also enjoyed the Church community while growing up. It was important and no really 'religious' at the same time. Its hard to replace now that I have my own children. We don't go to church but are most certainly not 'anti-religious'. Like other comments, the sense of community was strong. I think society will be worse off as these communities erode or lose favor

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

#145

Post by toomuchtodo »

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.

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

#146

Post by veddox »

Renaud wrote: post #88
gabythenerd wrote: post #4

I am impressed that numbers are that high, looking from the outside the US doesn't look particularly religious. It might be lower still, I don't think young people answer cellphone surveys all that much.

>looking from the outside the US doesn't look particularly religious. I am genuinely wondering how you can get to this feeling about the US where religion permeates a lot of the social and political spheres. For a Western country, I am actually quite amazed at the prominence of religion in the US, and by religion, I mean Christianity and its various incarnations. Looking at it from the outside it's actually really we…

> For a Western country

That's the key. For a Western country, the US has a remarkable level of religious influence on social and political life. Many non-Western countries, on the other hand, are vastly more religious - the state is often officially aligned with a certain religion, and religion is permeates all parts of society.

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

#147

Post by sarabad2021 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #103
sarabad2021 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. I don't think it's bizarre at all. With the church removed from western society something will fill the vacuum. And truly it already has. Our society requires complete unquestioning philosophical adherence to its new religion. What happened during the French revolution? They turned the churches into "Temples of Rea…

> 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. Though today hurting someones feelings is the equivalent of violence and there is no way to be forgiven except a life of apologizing and groveling. Exciting time to be alive.

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

#148

Post by beaconstudios »

gabythenerd wrote: post #4

I am impressed that numbers are that high, looking from the outside the US doesn't look particularly religious. It might be lower still, I don't think young people answer cellphone surveys all that much.

you're probably thinking of the main metropolitan and coastal cities, which I also associate with atheism. The heartland and southern states on the other hand are more religious.

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

#149

Post by boudin »

sarabad2021 wrote: post #66
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.

> But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre. I don't think it's bizarre at all. With the church removed from western society something will fill the vacuum. And truly it already has. Our society requires complete unquestioning philosophical adherence to its new religion. What happened during the French revolution? They turned the churches into "Temples of Rea…

You have to put things in their context though. Not saying that the years of chaotic and arbitrary killing that followed the revolution was great, but religion was a different thing in France back then. It was also (and foremost) politics and a system of power before being a religion. I wouldn't attach the world "moral" to the catholic church back then because it definitely had none.

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

#150

Post by eloff »

bko wrote: post #130
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.

Having an imperfect moral system imposed is better than having no moral system imposed. You have a context for which you can deviate, but if morality is all relative, many will be lost. You need something to ground yourself to. That's where familial culture and religion come in. One isn't necessarily better than another, but its useful to have as a starting point

I completely disagree that religion is the only moral system.

If you are not religious you still have a moral system. In the West this had been heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian values, but if you look at countries without that influence you still see a lot of similarities in morals.

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