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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

#641

Post by mixmastamyk »

nikolay wrote: post #631
anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

It's weird how many Americans are completely unaware of the second largest branch of Christianity (or better call it "the trunk" and everything else - "a branch") - the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is the original Christianity without a pope, indulgences, inquisition, and other things, which have nothing to do with the early Christianity.

Yes, also Christians in the US are mostly Protestants, which purposely moved away from the things you mentioned.

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

#642

Post by peferron »

hkarthik wrote: post #563
brobdingnagians wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet our society is more polarized than ever. From your anecdote, one would think that declining religion would result in peace and love overflowing in society, but we see the opposite. Public morality cannot be maintained without religion; we will sadly see the end result of that in coming years.

It's an interesting argument that you lay out, and as agnostic that came from a religious family, it's something that I've personally grappled with. In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass? I wasn't raised atheist, and when I ask atheists this question they often dismiss it as not important or obvious. I feel like that's half the reason religion persists, because they actually…

I'm atheist, and my answer is simply empathy I guess? I just try to treat others in the same way I want to be treated.

People who say that morality can't exist without religion are scary. If they suddenly lose their faith, are they going to start hurting others? What if their religion has blind spots that doesn't tell them how to behave in a specific situation, or tells them that groups like gays and non-believers are fair game?

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

#643

Post by Rule35 »

germinalphrase wrote: post #553
ceilingcorner wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a somewhat funny joke but it doesn't actually map to reality. Inter-Christian conflict is almost nonexistent in 2021 and has been so for probably a generation. Edit: by “conflict” I mean actual real violent conflict. Not people arguing on Reddit. People literally killing each other (or pushing them off bridges) because they are “heretics.” This doesn’t happen much at all anymore in the Christian world. Even t…

Idk, man... about two years ago, I heard an evangelical dude say Catholics aren’t even Christians. As a Catholic, I found it a bit startling to learn that I am - by default - going to hell.

You don't know, they might be of the opinion that a good life dedicated to Jesus may be enough, regardless of how you dress it up.

But, from outside, they appear to be at least half right.

The catholic church seems to be less CHRISTian and more ... Trinity-ian. I assume it's a fairly large difference on the ground as one is all about a single person, born a regular man, who brings forgiveness for unintentional sins. The other, a story about a much more conscious god who manifests himself in a young body and proceeds to lecture on morality and the afterlife.

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

#644

Post by zdbrandon »

randcraw wrote: post #629
dcolkitt wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously religious people remain the vast majority and being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness. Religiosity is highly inversely correlated with criminality amount Americans.[1] Religious people also donate significantly more money to charity. To a large extent religious participation does seem to make people behave more pro-socially. It's certainly not the only way to promote ethical…

Does that include war? Throughout history, religious leaders have very rarely opposed killing "the enemy". Likewise it's a rare soldier in a time of war who is insists on obeying, "Thou shalt not kill". Yet if this is true, then how do you define religiosity if it overlooks willingly acting in contradiction to the most essential laws that a faith and its faithful claim to believe?

> Throughout history, religious leaders have very rarely opposed killing "the enemy".

The 20th century would like a word with you.

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

#645

Post by jkingsbery »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #256
baryphonic wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "good person?" And do you really think people who believe in God are just listening to "fairy tails (sic)" so they can be face the reality of death? Is that really the best portrayal of Christians you can come up with?

Christians base their belief system on a collection of stories from 2000+ years ago and the idea of a deity and other planes of existence (edit: “Heaven” and “Hell”) of which no proof exists. Please correct me if any of the above is inaccurate.

That was the premise that an investigative journalist had in mind when he started an investigation to demonstrate precisely what you said to the rest of the world. Rather than starting with his assumptions and arguing against a strawman, he went to verify every fact he could and went to talk to experts. Instead of proving Christianity is a sham, he ended up converting to Christianity and writing a book about it: https://www.amazon.com/Case-Christ-Journalists-Personal-Inve... .

TL;DR: Christians wouldn't say that we base our beliefs on a collection of stories. We base our beliefs in the historical fact of the Resurrection. Perhaps we'll find out we're wrong some day, but having considered the best evidence we have (and the book I linked to walks through why that evidence is compelling), Christianity is a reasonable position to hold.

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

#646

Post by simonh »

RhodoGSA wrote: post #612
anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

Rarely does anyone ever ask my religion but when people do i tell them Hellenism (Belief in the greek gods). People often give me a quizzical look - but when you study the 'religion' you find interesting beliefs that help you in modern day. For instance, claiming you don't have 100% complete faith in the myths and gods wasn't a heretic offense. Everyone respected the fact that the stories were arch-types that display…

>Also, if someone else came up to you from Egypt and believed in an entirely different pantheon you respected their opinion and could see similarities in your own religion.

More than that, they believed each others gods were cultural representations of the same actual gods. After all there is only one sky. It doesn't make any sense to think that our sky god is different from their sky god, or our sun god is different from their sun god, though being gods they can manifest in different forms.

But then it's shocking how many people seem to think that Christians, Jews and Muslims worship different gods. There's only one god of Abraham, which arguably Hindus call Brahman. They're all just names and stories, there's only one reality*.

* citation needed

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

#647

Post by austincheney »

gonehome wrote: post #428
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 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…

> If the fundamentalists are a problem, maybe there’s a problem with the fundamentals?

That is pretty ridiculous. It’s like saying if there is bad science the scientific theory is broken.

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

#648

Post by cjameskeller »

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…

Agreed. This was a major component in my switch from Protestant/Baptist to ("Greek"/Eastern) Orthodox. Having thousands of years of prior religious & philosophical discussions to draw from, as well as the experiences of people living under all manner of political regimes provides a much-needed grounding against whatever may be the current, trendy topics.

And a direct result of that history is that the Church mandates certain practices to shape one's willpower: fasting (roughly half the year, in total, though "fasting" here means small vegan meals), some form of tithing &/or charitable work, explicit self-examination (not only standard prayers, but also Confession with a priest, who helps make a plan against bad habits, as well as an annual event where everyone in the parish asks forgiveness of each other) etc.

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

#649

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

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 internet and the ability to discuss these issues anonymously has exacerbated irreligion faster than communism ever could. And unlike stalinist/maoist regimes, people are doing it on their own free will.

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

#650

Post by commandlinefan »

nikolay wrote: post #631
anonAndOn wrote: post #514

The comedian Emo Philips has a well-known joke about religion that may explain some of the decline in membership... "Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me…

It's weird how many Americans are completely unaware of the second largest branch of Christianity (or better call it "the trunk" and everything else - "a branch") - the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is the original Christianity without a pope, indulgences, inquisition, and other things, which have nothing to do with the early Christianity.

So it's like the relationship between modern agile methodologies and the original agile manifesto then?
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