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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

#491

Post by xioxox »

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…

Yes, reading this thread as someone from the UK makes me realise the US is very different culturally from the UK. I'm sure the proportion of people for whom religion is important in their lives is much much smaller in the UK than the US. I think most British people only encounter religion at Christmas and weddings, unless they're of a religious minority group.

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

#492

Post by throwaway0b1 »

thrww20210329 wrote: post #446
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…

What do you think of the many miracles that the Catholic Church has received? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun

I don't know enough about those events to make a judgement. Is this intended to lead to a broader question as to my views about the Catholic church?

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

#493

Post by hacknat »

Correction: Since the 1940s

"For the first time" is probably not true. This is since Gallup tracked this number. Post WWII church attendance really sky rocketed for reasons that are still not fully understood, but a lot of people think the emergence of the Evangelical movement bears a lot of the responsibility. It's much harder to track pre-WWII numbers, but according to the "Mapping America's Past" authors[1] church attendance was as low as 35% in the 19th century (sometimes).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805049274/?coliid=I38DOW2LIAPT9J&...

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

#494

Post by gonehome »

rayiner wrote: post #476
gonehome wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up mainline Protestant too before throwing it away (I was young ~12 which makes it easier). My objection is to the broken nature of the reasoning and how that tends to corrupt evidence based reasoning elsewhere most of them time (though weirdly not always - people are inconsistent). If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals? Obviously religious people remain the vast m…

As someone who went in the opposite direction, I observed as I got older that “evidence based reasoning” is less useful than I had assumed. Nearly everyone has beliefs about the world that are based on faith whether they call it that or not. Very few political premises are based on scientific evidence that’s well established as say anthropogenic climate change. For the most part the data is mixed and hard to interpre…

I don't disagree really - there's still space for intuition and making a guess in places with limited information. I also agree most people are using evidence to drive motivated reasoning for a pre-existing conclusion rather than using it to try to struggle towards whatever the truth may be.

The god question is pretty old though, and most of the religious arguments are pretty clearly wrong/bad. They've lost most of their ground to actual experiments and the scientific method. I suspect this is why we see church attendance continuing to decline.

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

#495

Post by AuthorizedCust »

sethc2 wrote: post #470
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals? That line would only hold if fundamentalists have correctly identified the fundamentals. I wage they have badly missed it, which is why their theology is so bad. > being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness Being a good person is not the primary point of religion. It is rather a hoped for outcome. Religio…

Exactly. Fundamentalists miss the actual fundamentals. People mistake the American Evangelical Christianity that is a few hundred years old for the church established by the apostles nearly 2000 years ago. That church was it which considered the weak as equally valuable as the strong, that insisted on helping the poor, that believed men and women both to be of the utmost value. That established hospitals to care for…

> People mistake the American Evangelical Christianity...

Hell, people mistake American Evangelical Christianity with "true Christianity". Far too many allow themselves into being duped into thinking that the loudest, most odious, and most forceful are the most legitimate claimants to Christianity.

Barf.

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

#496

Post by mikepurvis »

coliveira wrote: post #349
m0llusk wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exac…

This demonstrates the big flaw of Christianity. Even thought there are millions of sincere, loving and friendly Christians around the world, the whole thing is based around a book that espouses views that are exactly what you call fundamentalism. Sooner or later someone will be confronted with the fundamentalist ideas about women, non-christians, and sexual diversity (for example), and start spreading the hate ideas…

> the whole thing is based around a book that espouses views that are exactly what you call fundamentalism

But I think your degree of fundamentalism-ness is defined by your relationship to that book. If you see it as completely inerrant, then yeah, you're instantly in trouble because it can be trivially shown to be in self-conflict.

If you're willing to examine the book critically and in context, you do a lot better. Obviously the risk with this is that those doing that interpretation are entrusted with a lot of power over what people believe. But I think there's a middle ground here between the medieval Catholicism that the reformation reacted against (where the Word is obscured to the point that even the secondary texts like the liturgies weren't given in the vernacular) and the rugged individualism of modern evangelicals (where it's Bible-or-bust and writers like Rob Bell are excommunicated for daring to suggest that universalism might actually be consistent with the character of Jesus).

I would see this wide middle ground as a place where we agree on a very short list of actual fundamentals (something like the Nicene Creed, basically), and other than that people are free to study and believe what they want, as long as it isn't hurting others.

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

#497

Post by throwawaygal7 »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #339
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. Our society requires complete unquestioning philosophical adherence to its new religion. Obviously, since speaking heresies like this will get you killed. /s Take a step back, disengage from the culture war, and take a look at what is actually happening.

But it can cost you a job, and your place in society

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

#498

Post by tablespoon »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #287
CedarMills wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it heavily depends on the church and community. One of the reasons we are staying in our current church is because we're open to a wide community (multi-ethnic) with the same core values. Our kids grow up in this community but at the end of the day, it will be their decision if they decide to no longer attend.

I also grew up in a Christian house and am now atheist--I never understood how people could reconcile "church shopping" for a community that aligns with their views (e.g. not homophobic) with the notion that the core religious concepts are supposed to be infallible. If you disagree with various churches on some doctrinal/sociological point, how do you know that your current church is correct on God existing, or knowi…

> I also grew up in a Christian house and am now atheist--I never understood how people could reconcile "church shopping" for a community that aligns with their views (e.g. not homophobic) with the notion that the core religious concepts are supposed to be infallible. If you disagree with various churches on some doctrinal/sociological point, how do you know that your current church is correct on God existing, or knowing what he wants?

That doesn't actually seem like a problem specific to religion, but a problem with truth, generally. If anyone believes their beliefs are true, they have to reconcile that with the fact that people disagree, which usually proceeds by believing those people are in error or that the differences aren't significant. I don't think Christians actually believe that the truth is something easy to access, given the emphasis on faith and belief that everyone is flawed, etc.

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

#499

Post by offtop5 »

Even though I'm an atheist this concerns me since Church is one of the last remaining civic organizations.

People need to be apart of an community. In the before times that's how you made friends and meet partners. Now every single indicator of courtship is at all time lows , mental illness is off the charts and we're all miserable.

I don't have a solution but I'm afraid of the future we're entering.

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

#500

Post by freewilly1040 »

sethc2 wrote: post #470
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals? That line would only hold if fundamentalists have correctly identified the fundamentals. I wage they have badly missed it, which is why their theology is so bad. > being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness Being a good person is not the primary point of religion. It is rather a hoped for outcome. Religio…

Exactly. Fundamentalists miss the actual fundamentals. People mistake the American Evangelical Christianity that is a few hundred years old for the church established by the apostles nearly 2000 years ago. That church was it which considered the weak as equally valuable as the strong, that insisted on helping the poor, that believed men and women both to be of the utmost value. That established hospitals to care for…

To take a counter example, do you believe that the Catholic Church has had a pattern of covering up for pedophiles in its clergy? If so how far back does that pattern go? Why shouldn’t we assume it goes back hundreds of years, or the full 2000 year history of the church?

By the way, that same old church taught wives to obey their husbands and to this day does not allow them to be clergy. The notion that women are not worth as much as men was not recently introduced.

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