Decline of religion

[HappySkeptic]

Atheist totalitarianism in Canada? Damn, no one told me? Who can I oppress today? I feel megalomania coming on.

[Fake Messiah]

Americans’ belief in God hit an all-time low about 6 months ago

According to a 2022 Gallup survey, the percentage of people who believe in God has dropped from 98% in the 1950s to 81% today; among Americans under 30, it is down to an unprecedented 68%.

Up close, the trend looks even more dramatic. Only about half of Americans believe in “God as described in the Bible,” while about a quarter believe in a “higher power or spiritual force,” according to a Pew poll. Just one-third of Generation Z say they believe in God without a doubt.

Congregational membership, too, is at an all-time low. In 2021 Gallup found that, for the first time ever, fewer than half of Americans – 47% – were members of a church, synagogue or mosque.

Yet another crucial measure of institutional religion in the U.S., the percentage of people identifying as religious, is also at a low: About 1 in 5 adults now say they have no religious affiliation, up from 1 in 50 in 1960.

In short, when it comes to three key realms of religious life – belief, behavior and belonging – all are lower than they have ever been in American history.

https://www.rawstory.com/americans-belief-in-god/

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Atheist totalitarianism in Canada?  Damn, no one told me?  Who can I oppress today? I feel megalomania coming on.

You just didn't realize it, what with living in a socialist nightmare.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Bill Maher about the big increase of Non-believers

[Goosebump]

Bill Maher as a whole aside, he's great on religion. And I'll likely be dead before an (OPENLY) agnostic let alone an atheist president ever get's elected. I'm 42 years old. There are a lot of jobs in this country that you'll find your self out of if you suddenly wave your "Agnostic/Atheist" flag. Talk Show Host isn't one of them.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Bill Maher as a whole aside, he's great on religion. And I'll likely be dead before an (OPENLY) agnostic let alone an ashiest president ever get's elected. I'm 42 years old.

Of the presidents you’ve had so far, who was the most ashy?

Boru

[Goosebump]

Bill Maher as a whole aside, he's great on religion. And I'll likely be dead before an (OPENLY) agnostic let alone an ashiest president ever get's elected. I'm 42 years old.

Of the presidents you’ve had so far, who was the most ashy?

Boru

Forum administrator is another one not at risk.

[Fake Messiah]

Decline of religion, Catholicism in the Philippines

A WATERSHED has occurred in my generation: religion is now on a steep decline, especially Catholicism whose culture and worldview have dominated this country since the Spanish conquistadores subjugated this archipelago nearly 500 years ago.

And it is during what we call the Holy Week that it becomes obvious that Catholicism is on the way to extinction as a system of beliefs, although many will still cling to its cultural aspects, as there are yet no replacements — weddings, baptism, and even house or office blessings. It is also during Holy Week that one feels religion as still fighting for dear life, as in several newspapers' closure from today till Sunday.

Opinion poll surveys, most of which report about 50 percent of Filipinos as religious, grossly underestimate the decline of Catholicism here, of course as most are still reluctant to report that they aren't really practicing Catholics any more.

Just go to any Church on Sundays, and they are becoming only half-full at most. If surveys show Filipinos are still practicing Catholics, it is because most of them are poor and desperate to get a boon from a Deity that they think can give them what they want — a job abroad, a winning lotto ticket, remission from cancer.

It was the Church hierarchy itself which debauched Catholicism, when it indulged in politics, its leaders, especially Jaime Cardinal Sin, getting drunk over the huge role they played in toppling Marcos, and then, Estrada.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo broke that streak, when she angrily told Cory Aquino, who claimed that Cardinal Sin wanted her to step down in that tumultuous "Hyatt 10" year of 2005: "Even if the pope asks me stop down, I won't: my responsibility is to this country." Many Filipinos had been turned off when activists, even leftist priests turned their pulpit into political soapboxes, and there have been many reports of church-goers leaving the church when such priests did so.

I suspect Covid-19 awakened Filipinos: even after at least a year of missing Sunday Mass because of the lockdowns, they discovered they still lived normal lives, and many felt they could go without the transportation expense and hassle of going to church. Covid-19's impact on the decline of Catholicism has been underestimated: priests proved to be totally useless in the fight against that contagion of nearly biblical proportions. Saint and sinners, the virus didn't differentiate. So what's the use of religion?

One of former president Rodrigo Duterte's most important legacies is his demystification of the Catholic Church. He is the first Philippine president ever and political leader of note, to take on the Church, and to show his disdain for it. He minced no words in a speech in January 2017: "You are in palaces while your faithful are in squatter areas and then you talk about sanctity? What is your moral ascendancy in the Philippines?" Religion? What is the meaning of it?"

"I challenge the Catholic Church. You are full of shit. You all smell bad, corruption and all," the then president said. Nobody but only the kind of person Duterte is could have spewed such vitriol on the Church.

Duterte certainly trod on very dangerous ground in challenging, even insulting the Catholic Church, yet going by his 88 percent popularity ratings during his entire term, and even after it, Filipinos didn't at all take it against him, and maybe even believed him. Not a few were even delighted at Duterte's tirades against the Church.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2023/04/07/o...es/1886029

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How some South Dakota churches are adapting to attendance declines

Falling attendance and membership at many South Dakota churches has prompted pastors, leaders and elders to look for creative ways to keep people engaged and pursuing a larger purpose.

Constanze Hagmaier, bishop of the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, said that includes using technology to allow for remote attendance and encouraging lay church members to take a more active role in spreading the gospel outside the walls of the church.

For example, Hagmaier said, trying to use traditional methods to collect offerings at church may not work for children or young adults.

“If all I do is pass a basket … I’m not sure my kids would make an offering,” said Hagmaier, who has three children. “My kids, they never owned a checkbook and I don’t know that they even carry cash.”

Churches need to adapt and react to changing trends in church attendance very soon due to a breakdown in generational church attendance that could have grave long-term consequences for organized religion, Hagmaier said.

“We’re coming now to a generation where the parents never went to church,” she said. “Right now, 7-year-old children are like, ‘Church, what is that?’”

Some religions, the Catholic and Lutheran churches among them, are also seeing a decline in the number of new priests and pastors who can run churches. The shortage is more acute in rural areas but is not a major factor in South Dakota declines, church leaders said.

“If your rural area is emptying out, with just a few people there, it’s hard to support a pastor’s salary, and if there’s nothing left for ministry, that’s a concern,” Hagmaier said.

https://www.sdnewswatch.org/stories/sout...e-decline/

[Fake Messiah]

Lots of Americans Are Losing Their Religion. Have You?

“In the United States,” the authors tell us, “somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 churches close down every year, either to be repurposed as apartments, laundries, laser-tag arenas, or skate parks, or to simply be demolished.” (I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that my apartment was once the rectory of a church, also built in the 1800s and transformed, a couple of decades ago, into condos for yuppies who want dramatic windows and a hint of ecclesiastical flavor.)

It’s not just the frequency of churchgoing or temple membership that’s declining in our country: Last month, The Wall Street Journal and NORC at the University of Chicago surveyed around 1,000 American adults about the importance of different values to Americans, including the importance of religion. In 2023, only 39 percent of respondents said religion was very important to them, compared to 62 percent who said that in 1998.

But two things can be true at the same time, said Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology at Duke Divinity School who directs the National Congregations Study: America can still be a comparatively observant nation and religious observance can be on the decline in various dimensions, happening at different paces, Chaves explains. “The decline in religious belief and interest is much slower than the decline in organizational participation,” he said when we spoke.

For example, few Americans say they don’t believe in God at all, and while that minority has grown, it’s still very small. According to NORC data, atheists only made up about 2 percent to 3 percent of the population from 1988 to 2012. By 2021, atheists were 7 percent of the population. In 1988, 17 percent of Americans said they never attended religious services. In 2021, that number was 31 percent.

Religion’s meaning to people goes well beyond regular attendance at a local church, temple or mosque, or trust in religious leaders. That’s why polling questions don’t always capture the whole picture of American religious observance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/opini...erica.html

[Anomalocaris]

religion is just one outward expression of exploitable intellectual indifference and corruption being ruthlessly exploited. decline of religion does not necessarily mean decline in either intellectual indifference and corruption, or in their ruthless exploitation.