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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

#691

Post by elmomle »

rmah wrote: post #687
lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

In that quote, Wallace is just morphing, conflating, and fudging the definition of the word "worship". He says people "worship" (with a variety of subtly different meanings) a variety of things and then, implies that because we can use the same word, "worship", to describe those activities, they are equivalent. I despise this rhetorical technique. I find it both insulting, intellectually dishonest and useless.

It's pretty clear that that "worship" here refers to where we practice focusing our heart's yearnings, not to a set of religious rites. Synonyms of this meaning of "worship" include "revere" and "venerate".

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

#692

Post by randcraw »

eslaught wrote: post #400
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'm not sure the narrative you're trying to paint here actually works. If you dig deeper into the actual poll, it says: > In addition to Protestants, declines in church membership are proportionately smaller among political conservatives, Republicans, married adults and college graduates. These groups tend to have among the highest rates of church membership, along with Southern residents and non-Hispanic Black adult…

Yeah, I suspect this news story (and poll) only scratches the surface as to identifying the multiple demographic trends afoot. Most notable to my eye was the 15% drop in church membership between GenX and Millenial. Of course, to do that metric justice we'd need to monitor change in that age group over time. Are today's 18-to-30 year olds so different than 18-to-80 year olds were in the 1970's or 1990s?

I suspect the range of ages that are today's Millenials has forever been less traditional than other age groups. That's unsurprising given they have the least personal history of any adult group to weigh when deciding their life's priorities, and are likely to think least about their relationship to others in their family (since they just left the parents behind and have yet to add any more). At that age, the need to join another 'family' and adopt a bunch of new familial responsibilities is likely to be less compelling a notion than it may be a few years hence.

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

#693

Post by nathanaldensr »

justinzollars wrote: post #374

Observation (please don't hate me): Originally I am from Ohio and I've lived in SF for 12 years. I am not very religious. In college, I lived next door to a cult like "Young Life" Christian club. I notice people with extreme left wing fervor in the Bay Area behave in a similar manner to the Young Life crew. My thesis is: Their political beliefs are an independent variable and are not important. Had they grown up in a…

So "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." They all want to lord over me, whether religious or political. The distinction isn't important to me as I'm forced to bear their crosses regardless.

FWIW I don't hate you. :)

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

#694

Post by DVk6dqsfyx5i3ii »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #535
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…

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.

There is a decline in Christianity but there is not a decline in religion. The religions many preach today are non-theistic and secular but they are religions nonetheless and they don't tolerate heretics.

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

#695

Post by objectivetruth »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #324
sarabad2021 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no issues with Christianity from a philosophical standpoint. It explains things which our beyond our natural/physical world. Those things impact how we live in this world. I'm curious what you mean in your statement, please unpack your claim.

I would advise you to head down to your local university and take a religious studies course covering a bit of the Bible. It's usually split into OT/NT. What you will find there is that we know that the Bible is an amalgam of a script that was pieced together by many, many human authors. It is trivial today to tell because we can cross-reference Koine Greek versus translations and authors chose different words consis…

I would advise you to head down to your local church and meet some more Christians so you don't keep presuming we're all ignorant of Biblical studies, analysis, exegesis, and historical interpretation.

What you may also find there is that telling a person that the amalgams of history, philosophy, and spirituality that make up that person's religion "one lie of many competing lies" is an incredibly disrespectful and ineffective way to discuss religion with that person.

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

#696

Post by [deleted] »

lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

[deleted]

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

#697

Post by antonzabirko »

rmah wrote: post #687
lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

In that quote, Wallace is just morphing, conflating, and fudging the definition of the word "worship". He says people "worship" (with a variety of subtly different meanings) a variety of things and then, implies that because we can use the same word, "worship", to describe those activities, they are equivalent. I despise this rhetorical technique. I find it both insulting, intellectually dishonest and useless.

Pretty straightforward to me. Worship here just means prioritize.

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

#698

Post by alfiedotwtf »

lootsauce wrote: post #606

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble…

> is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive

I’ve seen plenty of people who have dedicated themselves to religion, made it completely consuming (ie go to church every day, God is the only thing they talk about, and the Bible is their only frame of reference), and they are unhappy because Religion itself has eaten them alive.

How wrong Wallace was.

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

#699

Post by elihu »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #655
rayiner wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The answer to "we don't have enough information," is not to reason less.

Many decisions aren't primarily based on reason/logic, but on priorities and preferences. Having more information rather than less is almost always a good thing, but it's a lot more useful when you already have some goal in mind.

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

#700

Post by Balgair »

Because no-one has yet linked the actual poll, here it is:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...

It's a pretty short poll. Here are the highlights that Gallup cites:

- In 2020, 47% of U.S. adults belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque

- Down more than 20 points from turn of the century

- Change primarily due to rise in Americans with no religious preference

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