Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time | Hacker News Reader

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

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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 same "baby food" and they look to other places. The churches where theology is solid (and clear) tend to be stronger in number and in regular attendance.

The American evangelical movement is particularly rabid, and subscribes overwhelmingly to Christian nationalism. It is entirely too mixed into politics, and is trying to create a theocratic state where “everyone must live like Christians (for my definition of Christian).”

One of the high points for me regarding religion in the past couple years was finding The Holy Post podcast. One host is Phil Vischer, AKA Bob the Tomato, the creator of Veggie Tales. I have some fundamental (heh) disagreements with their perspective at this point, but they remind me of what I thought the church was while growing up within it, and they still largely reflect what I think it should be. They acknowledge that there’s lots of room for disagreement, they don’t think they have all the answers, and they strike me as genuinely loving people.

If I had heard more people talking like them 20 years ago, I might not have left the church. It’s not a question of “baby food” so much as “cultural identity,” and the cultural identity of the American church is largely flag-waving rah-rah nationalism. Not sure what stats you’re referencing, because megachurches are still quite popular here and quite clear on their “theology.”

If you the parent poster are not located in America, please disregard this post entirely.

I grew up attending church, and on the whole have nothing but good things to say about the whole experience. It gave me both spiritual and moral support when I needed it the most and some of the best people I have ever known, I got to know through church. In fact in ways I mourn the loss of both my faith and my 'church'.

However once I realized that, on a very fundamental level, the core of what they where claiming as true wasn't in fact true, I felt I had no choice to walk away.

As someone who was raised in a religious home who no longer attends any church I think it's less to do with not answering questions and more to do with a hostile rejection of religion generally. It wasn't until I had children of my own that I realized I needed to distance myself from religion. I know there is a large variety of what is taught from religion to religion and sect to sect but I'd like to steer clear from any organization that takes a negative view on basic things like homosexuality. I cannot fathom exposing my (or any) kids to that kind of worldview.

There does not seem to be a shortage of church variety to choose from. It's not about churches not being able to answer questions clearly; the reality is just that fewer people believe in gods.

For comparison: in the Netherlands we already dipped below 50% in 2017, and the number of religious people keeps dropping steadily.

In 2019 the remaining religious minority was composed of 20.1% Roman Catholics, 14.8% protestants (various types), 5.0% Muslims, and 5.9% adherents of other religions.

Edit: bear in mind that this is people who consider themselves religious. The percentage of people actually member of a church/mosque/whatever is below 30%.

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.

I grew up in a church that was very serious about "serious" preaching- Primitive Baptist, very focused on Calvinist doctrine and what could be considered scriptural literalism. It was definitely not "baby food"... but they still could not answer some questions clearly, and that is because it is an invention of man rooted in a prescientific understanding of the world. I would argue that church are losing members not because it is being watered down, but because it is losing relevance.

Couldn't agree more. The thing that drove me away from faith was feeling like it was a set of truths that required obscuring the rest of life to keep true.

To me faith is something that you _have_ to understand through the lens of your life. There is no understanding faith before life. Your experiences allow you to understand faith. Which isn't to say that life is more important than faith, not at all, just that life is the lens in which you view faith.

In that mindset, faith seems exceptionally deep and complex. Full of discussion, learning, change. Not a black and white truth, but a series of learnings and understanding. You can't learn (in my mind) without change, and so the idea of a churn that teaches absolute truths felt fundamentally broken to me. I think faith is a journey in knowledge. And so many churches seem almost aggressive towards knowledge. They favor rote memorization, i think, as a method to avoid change. To avoid their doctrine as being mutable.

This mindset also seems pervasive into how these people behave in life, too. Just like how children need to learn to think critically, adults need to practice thinking critically. Such a strong emphasis on rote memorization has wide affects, i think.

No grand statements here, and i mean no offense to religion. Just my thoughts on some denominations.

Do you not consider God a narcissist? When he says "Worship me", no other gods, I'm a jealous god, worship or face hell-fire, literally threatening if you do not worship?

Why does God need/desire your worship? You know, I have kids. I "hope" they love me and always will, but I'll never force them to say it and I'm definitely not going to punish them if they are mad at me and won't prop up my ego.

The most "solid" theology is just shaky philosophy, though.

i mostly got tired of being told i going to burn and choke and scream forever and ever, amen, because i like guys and gals. and if i disagreed, the pastor made sure i got punished.

the long term effects wast that this not a healthy thing to tell a young teenager, and it's time for society to move on.

Some people go to church for answers, but I think a lot are really just there for the community and play along with the religious parts because of inertia.

What are the questions that church leaders are getting from their flock these days? Some big questions are being debated in society, sure, but the church's position on a lot of things is set in stone, is it not?

Maybe this is my ignorance talking, but I thought those with active church membership continue to go to participate in social events and make friends/partners?

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

Could you please share which churches you think have solid theology?

I get this, but wouldn’t the flip side be the brightness and relief that hypocrisy is being culled through this? Just a thought — but if you stop acting in a way (attending church) that doesn’t jive with what you believe, that seems to be revealing truth (something which all ca rejoice over, even if it’s a tough truth).

On the other hand — if it is people that are losing their faith, that is perhaps different, and I can see your concern.

I'd guess you're a Gen X from your comment? I'd claim that, for the younger generations (middle millennials and younger), that the very claim that the church has all the answers is the problem itself. They deal in relatives and uncertainty as a general rule and the very assertion that one person (or one group of people) has all the answers is laughable. They appreciate humility and acknowledged uncertainty more than clear answers.

I'd posit that these generations are primarily looking for acceptance, not answers. And they're not getting that acceptance, so they leave. Which was my experience - I started questioning teachings (directly based on my reading of scripture) and had leaders shut down on me entirely and refuse to talk further instead of engaging because it didn't fit in the prescribed "answer" - and this was in a fairly "open-minded" church. I'd come back tomorrow if I could find a church that (most importantly) actually accepted me for me and (secondly) would actually engage in tough topics instead of just giving me hollow "answers" that didn't answer the question (and often conflicted directly with scripture!). I guess what I'm looking for is a church that actually practiced grace and acceptance, answers be damned. That's what Jesus did (see hanging out with tax collectors and prostitutes and preaching a message of love for everyone). Why can't the church do it too?

Interesting. Can you give a few examples of what questions these are?

Yep. It's a pity there isn't more attention for churches that answer questions clearly and dig into nuance - but complexity doesn't get attention.

Agreed - especially in the face of obvious sinful behavior in the case of Trump that they somehow can't speak out against.

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.

As a non believer I love to see it. Believing in something you can’t prove and in turn trying to shove it down everyone’s throat is the antithesis to the world I want to live in. George W Bush and Tony Blair both admitted that the second gulf war was partially a religious crusade. This is who you’re teaming up with.

“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 Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”

David Foster Wallace

I prefer Camus personally. The act of rebellion against ...well everything, but in this case against things to worship, against stories that try to hide the absurdity of the universe seems to me a narrative much less likely to be led astray in harmful ways, since it gives you no power or secret insight, only personal despair and personal happiness.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus

"I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?"

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.

I find the idea that faith can't eat you alive to be strange given that we have so many examples of that happening in real life. Faith is no different than money, power, allure, etc... in that regard.

That's one reason people turn to atheism in the first place, to avoid getting gobbled up by religion.

To cut to the chase "bullshit"

I am an atheist. I am without god. I respect no external judgement upon me.

Am I pure? Have I fallen victim to the seduction of mammon and the innumerable trinkets of existence - of course I have, and accept I will until the day I die.

Do I worship myself and take excessive pride in my self-stated virtues - clearly I do, as you can see if you've read this far.

But outside of my petty rhetoric, I know I came from nothing and at the end of my life-span I will return from whence I came.

I find this comforting.

There's no game to win, no test to pass, no heaven to enter - just a feeling of solidarity with those I share my temporal-blip-in-the-light with.

I guess this makes sense if you define “atheism” as “not obsessing over something” and “worship” as a synonym for “unhealthy obsession.” I take issue with those definitions, and also with the premise that an adult must have an unhealthy obsession over something.

What if I told you, I don’t believe in god, nor obsess over money or beauty. Oh, I guess I “worship” all things in moderation and healthy relationships.

forgive me if im not moved by the edict of an alcoholic misogynist trying to assuage his own fears of moral impropriety and existential castaway after failing twice to join the Catholic church. Wallace enrobes the exhausted and derisive narrative of evangelicals confronted with an alternative to the almighty they themselves find personally intolerable in an almost comically dismissive tone. At least Thomas Aquinas had the decency to avoid Reducto ad Absurdum when he published his metaphysical treatise.

Had we only outlawed the semiconductor im sure Gallup would enjoy a more sterling report of gods children, however i myself may be amiss. Christian Evangelism on the whole has seen a marked decline since its apex during the second Bush administration.

I imagine that many people might read this quote (out of context) from his speech "This is Water" and in this thread discussing US church membership, and think, "This seems like DFW is defending religion." But, I think this is far from the case. I think this was DFW indicting modern secular consumer society as no better than religion in its vapidity. "Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship." This is the modern consumer choice, boiled down.

The point of the speech is not to convince you that worshiping religion might be a better idea than worshiping money, things, power, or vanity. Instead, the point of the speech is to convince you that a human's "default setting" (another phrase he uses in the speech) is to worship something. And, often, that worship of something simply happens to adults, as they are going through the motions of the modern drudgery of everyday life.

Thus to move beyond worship requires a level of education (and introspection) not typically accessed by everyday adults -- yet, it's still available to all, should they try hard enough to pursue it and to see it (that is: the water surrounding the fish who swim in it).

This being a college commencement speech, DFW encourages the young graduates to use their education, and the introspection it allows, to rise above the various human psychological biases (especially self-centered behaviors and attitudes) that might make their lives feel meaningless and miserable in the moment (or in retrospect).

Here's the full speech for anyone who took an interest in this excerpt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

In my opinion, it's one of the best graduation speeches of all time.

It is sad that so many people do not understand WHY religion is worse over other things mentioned here.

These things are SHARED among many things, along with religion;

- we humans tend to form social hierarchies

- we all want to be belong

- we want to be the hero of our story

- life is hard, and death is terrifying, so we need lullabies

- some rules/codes required wherever there are more than 1 person alive. Be it religious, moral or written/legal.

- we all need some ideal to work towards

This however, is SPECIAL to religion;

Religion makes it a habit in believers to believe without evidence, forbits questioning, and delays answers to "afterlife". Hence takes away the power of understanding and reasoning.

It installs a backdoor to people's minds so to speak. From which all the other bullshit are welcome to come in and also take a seat in their mind.

Oh wait, there was this video that was explains these more elegantly than I can. Okay I've found it: https://twitter.com/billmaher/status/1357915846731997185

I think Wallace is right in a sense. But I think 'worship' is the wrong word and if we're interpreting this literally then no, there is such thing as atheism.

I get the sense people too often take this quote out of context to suggest atheism is some form of religion. Wallace was a master of the metaphor. I don't believe that he meant this literally. I think he could have used the word 'nihilist' instead and gotten the point across but I understand why he didn't.

Conflating and oversimplify yet wholeheartedly highfalutin.

Must be DFW.

> 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.

>And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

What does he actually say instead of grieve? I have never been able to recognize the word. Plant?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI after 18:40.

I know religious folks who are the most miserable people ever. Because they get jealous when someone else worship more than them. They will criticize and belittle everyone they can. And I know atheists who are way more chill than so called hippie/spiritual/religious folks claim to be. Just because one is atheist doesn't mean they will be greedy capitalist or sex-addict or something else.

Here's what's actually true and not at all weird: religious people from evangelical religions draw parallels to non-religious people by pretending that every human is born with the need to venerate something. It's how they rationalize their evangelism. They have to, because admitting that other people do not share these imperfections is akin to admitting that some people do not need what they have to share. The fun thing about lying is that if you wrap it up in enough gift wrapping, people will tire out and accept it as truth rather than spending the time to uncover the lie.

If this were true wouldn't the religious be more "different" as in less likely to desire money or beauty etc. Yet I see no difference there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MzyBv4yOPU

Make me think of the stephen colbert christmas special https://vimeo.com/57953108

" Then you got your nothing. Some folks believe in nothing. But if you believe in nothing, then what's to keep the nothing from coming for you?

... Call me silly Call me sappy Call me many things the first of which is happy

You doubt, but you're sad. I don't, but I'm glad. I guess we're even. At least that's what I believe in And there are much worse things

- Written by Adam Schlesinger (RIP)

Nope. I for one don’t worship anything. Everything is flawed and imperfect. But there is still love, happiness, beauty in this world. Right next to hate, despair and ugliness.

> ...pretty much anything else you worship [other than religion] will eat you alive. If you worship money and things... then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

This is implying that worshiping religion/god/spirituality is exempt from extreme obsession. But I have to contest that religion can create far more extreme of obsessions than other forms of "worship" that Wallace references such as beauty, money, etc..

I grew up religious (in a high-demand religion) and saw that the religion created extremists among most of our church members. While an obsessive "worship" of losing weight can lead to anorexia, we see a good thing become bad. Being interesting in beauty isn't bad by itself, but an obsessive/extreme version can lead to depression and many other things.

Religion is no exception (even though Wallace seems to exclude it). An obsession over religion leads people to over analyze their life in the search of being perfect. It forces them to make unnecessary sacrifices for a reward that they will never actually attain. I've seen it tear apart families as bad as alcohol abuse or domestic violence can. There is a very dark, evil side to religion. The religion I was involved with put so much pressure on people to live life a certain way, to be perfect, that it was unattainable. The religion's goal is to enforce compliance and promote unity through shared suffering. But it has negative effects too. I've lost many close friends (including one roommate) who committed suicide from church pressures. Prescription drug abuse is particularly bad within the community that I grew up in, I personally know several people who have life-long addictions to prescription opioids that started from church pressures. I have seen domestic violence and child sexual abuse, all justified (and protected and buried) under religious arguments. My personal experience with religion shows consequences that far exceed those of other obsessions such as wealth, beauty, fitness, drugs, and so on. So I would be very careful about giving religion a "pass".

Are all religions bad? Probably not. I know plenty of people who have healthy relationships with religion. But the bad stuff is definitely there too, and it is FAR from rare. And I am only talking about relatively tame religions too. We can go even more extreme and start discussing the effects that religion have had on promoting unspeakable acts such as the holocaust, the crusades, the jihads, 9/11 attacks, the inquisition, Boston marathon bombs, numerous mass shootings, Incan & Mayan sacrifices, the KKK, witch hunts, wacko in waco, jim jones mass suicide, and this is a short list.

I am no longer religious myself (it was a religion imposed on me by my parents), but I have no problem with other people being religious. I would just caution that there are extremes, and religion is an easy one to fall into an extreme. You are literally discussing something that is "out of this world" and can not have any proof. The rewards are infinite (eternal life, glory without end, etc), which makes them more desirable to attain and justifies more extremes to earn. They also self-exclude and discriminate other people (your religion is right, everyone else is wrong or evil). The stakes that religion creates are simply so high, that it is easy to fall into the obsessive and extreme category, more so than worrying about an obsession over wealth or fitness.

For comparison, UK church membership is <10% and forecast to fall to to 4% by 2025.

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

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

I think part of the problem is that there is no clear tradition of “cultural Christian” like there is for “atheist Jew”. I don’t believe in God. I love the high church and choral traditions. I attend a church where the minister feels the same. Am I a Christian? No. And yes.

Growing up in the 80's (UK) as a Roman Catholic, I remember the services being full on Sunday mornings. Not been since I left home at 18, because frankly I stopped believing in God the same time I stopped believing in Father Christmas (7?). The only reason I went was to make my parents happy.

Now I'm in my 40's I do wonder if the lack of religion in society is leading us to a bad place. We know from numerous studies that 2 parent families (mother and father) give the best outcomes for children (education, jobs, etc). In modern no-religion societies, where is the pull for good old family values? What we are seeing is better rights and fairness for individuals (same-sex marriage, etc) but is that good for society as a whole?

Other than my Grandma who is in her 90's and one friend who joined a church later in life (his family are atheist) I don't know anyone in the UK who goes to church. At least among my friends its just not a thing. I find it bizarre how many people in America attend church, but I hold nothing against them for it.

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.

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 Coronavirus, but it appears as if there are more people who are wanting to attend than can. What I can say with some confidence is that there is at the very least more demand than the capacity.

The difference in politics is interesting too - in the USA politicians have to be shown to be religious - people discuss the possibility that Bernie Sanders' might be atheist like its a potential major scandal. In the UK its the exact opposite, we don't want our leaders to be religious. Its ok for them to go to a big church service or lay a wreath or something but if they start talking about their 'faith' (as Tony Blair did somewhat) we get weirded out.

Jeremy Corbyn's atheism is an interesting example - the right wing press found all sorts of ways to vilify or criticise him, but his atheism never came up as a criticism - because atheism in the UK is a complete non issue. No-one cares. Compare with Bernie Sanders.

UK has historically had low church membership. Even novels from the mid 1800s (Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy) talk about how village churches lay mostly empty due to lack of adherents

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 Reason" all the while lopping off the head of anyone that did not wholly and totally adhere to their new moral code. Even in the end the god of this new moral code met his fate by the monster he created. Believe me what is happening is not what anyone here should want. For all of you who are thinking and reasonable. Read the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_d...

100% that second paragraph. Growing up with morals imposed on my, via the threat of fire and brimstone was weird. I did what I had to do, because I was told to do it or else.

Being an adult and doing the right thing, simply because it's the right thing, and developing my own moral and ethical code of conduct has greatly reduced my stress and anxiety.

> 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.

How did you derive your moral code yourself? Any action you take has side effects in the outside world, and so some minimal, common understanding of morality is necessary for any beneficial interactions with the world and especially other people (I'll leave God aside for a second). Did you rely on the authorities of non-theistic moral authorities in the past, and if so, how did you examine the bases of their moral beliefs? Were you just relying on personal feelings and maybe some experiences? Did you discover the joys of hedonism?

I want to understand.

Edit: looking at some other comments, it seems you might be referring more to "fire and brimstone" preaching? I never experienced that growing up, despite being on the conservative end of mainline Protestantism and still practicing today, so I can kind of understand the reaction.

I'm still curious though.

> But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre.

My grandpa's best friend was a catholic priest. I remember him saying that you really don't need to go to the church if you don't want to, but, if you did good deeds selflessly, always tried to make things right (in the sense of least global damage possible) and to avoid wronging others, you'd be a good enough catolic to pass any reasonable judgement day test.

Which is something I would suspect my idealized Jesus would stand behind.

The only time I saw him actually working as a priest, was when my grandpa died and he delivered his eulogy.

In response to your first paragraph: I was raised Catholic, and for a long time I’ve been a little bit envious of my Jewish friends’ ability to still associate themselves with their religious identity even after they no longer identify with the theistic elements of it. “If you leave you’ll burn in hell for eternity” was effective for a long time, and it worked on me for much of my childhood, but it doesn’t seem like a very effective retention strategy at this point.

Of course, I don’t really care to associate with most Catholics as they stand today anyway. But that might be different if Catholics and “I was raised Catholic”s had a more formal shared identity in the same sense that religious and secular Jews do.

> Having the Church community while growing up was great. But the fact that admission to this community required total philosophical adherence is just bizarre.

If you're not talking about the capital "C" church (which I interpret as the Catholic Church), then, it doesn't, really. You can be a Unitarian Universalist and believe in just about anything you want. Their entire philosophy is almost literally "be excellent to each other."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism#Belief,...

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

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

We were only briefly religious growing up to satisfy some elders in the family, but in truth the community around our church was no stronger or any different than any other family based community we were in while growing up. You could have a just as strong of a family community with your kid in rec league sports, for example, because ultimately people just want to have a good time and you don't need a belief system for that when a plate of food will do.

Better to join a church/synagogue/whathaveyou that DOESN’T require total philosophical adherence.

There’s a similar problem in political circles, as politics has in many cases (especially last 5 years) replaced religion. Adherence is mandated by many, but the healthiest political circles/communities do not require strict adherence but instead allow healthy debate.

And in part, it is a difference in tradition. In Minneapolis, I was loosely connected with some Christian community houses (which were wonderful BTW), and one of the people who lived there was a (secular) Jewish person who made a kind of funny observation: She noted how Jewish people tended to get together and bond over arguments over the Torah, but in an evangelical Christian Bible study, everyone would “get together and just AGREE on everything!”

I tend to enjoy the process of philosophical/theological arguing as well, although I come from a evangelical Christian background, not a Jewish one. It’s just way more interesting to argue over stuff. And there is way less agreement out there on a lot of these topics.

Whether we talk about social justice, the ultimate fate of the universe, simulation theory, politics, utilitarianism, right and wrong and how that can or cannot have fundamental scientific bases. And also how spiritual vs physical interact with ideas as powerful entities themselves... Materialism is probably true on a literal basis, but ideas themselves have immense power, analogous to what the Ancients would talked about spirits ...is the Self a physical thing like a brain, or an idea or thought process or software that runs on the brain? How is that similar to the idea of a soul? Is it any different, and is dualism viewed from that perspective really incompatible with materialism? Why are people so resistant to the idea that a strong AI could have consciousness like a human or animal? If materialism is basically true (probably is), then it seems there’s nothing that one couldn’t effectively simulate. And why couldn’t we be in a simulation at this moment? Who runs this (possible) simulation and what are their goals? How is this any different from theological questions, and can we bring better insight to them? Are there things like “love” & “kindness” that we OUGHT to follow as our guiding principle in spite of lack of evidence of their utility? Is “right and wrong” purely situational or should they transcend merely being useful?

Anyway, these ideas, which one might think are obsolete with modern science, aren’t going away even from a purely materialist perspective. And neither do I think the need for community is going away any time. But it sure would be nice if we got rid of the “must have strict philosophical agreement” requirement that many (but not all) religious and political communities have.

You'll have a broken moral system imposed on you either way then, if not by a church than by the shifting values of politics and society. You'll never derive an absolute moral code by yourself, you are forced to accept the changing values of society or risk being ostracized. Most people just allow their morals to shift with society rather than dig in their heels or try to develop an absolute moral code.

I had a unique experience growing up in a religious family (that is very tolerant and respectful of all world religions) while simultaneously being immersed in Scientology via a private school experience.

The thing that underscores all of my experiences has been hypocrisy. So many people just want to belong to a group, or were raised in it and know nothing better. They don’t practice what they preach.

I can’t help but think the world will be better off when we abolish big religion.

>The thing that underscores all of my experiences has been hypocrisy.

This is, consistently, what I hear from friends and family as to why they have drifted away from the Catholic church, and is solidly my own reason as well.

You see people, day-in-day out being terrible, judgmental, hateful people, except on Sunday when they're in the front row being holier than thou. It grates on you, and leaves a bad taste. It's even worse, because those people tend to be the ones who gravitate toward leadership positions within your local church.

My theory is that people have always felt that way, but it was harder to nail down these awful people before social media. Now that everyone puts everything on social media, it's easy to see, in plain black and white print, that the deacon really is an asshole.

The one thing that I do genuinely lament from the death of large religious congregations (at least in my part of the states), is that there are no replacement social constructs for people to gather and feel a sense of community. I'm certain this has something to do with the splintering of American discourse; not the religion inherently, but the social aspect is lacking and legitimately missed by most folks.

"I can’t help but think the world will be better off when we abolish big religion."

So those people who want to belong to a group and believe in it without seeing what might be better can move into political groups for their identity? The actions and methods are human nature, so I think they will just move to a different domain.

As one who loves the Catholic faith, despite the failings of its members, and who yet also fails to live it well -- I agree with you that hypocrisy is a massive problem.

The group Jesus is harshest with in the Gospels is in fact the hypocrites. He even calls them white washed tombs full of dead men's bones! What a lamentable state of things.

G.K. Chesterton's words in "What's Wrong with the World" come to mind where he points out "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." Perhaps this applies to all major belief systems though, and not Christianity alone.

I think hypocrisy is inevitable for a couple of reasons.

1) In theory, people go to church because they want to improve, not because they are already perfect. It's not hypocritical to make mistakes.

2) Hypocrisy is everywhere. No one really does scrum, no one really does TDD, no motivational speaker is happy all the time, and no christian is without sin. This shouldn't be surprising.

The hypocrisy is that they preach and ideal and fail to achieve it?

One thinks this is because ideals are meant to strived towards but not necessarily achieved.

A solution of throwing out ideals because they are hard to achieve and a little myopic in my opinion.

What i find an interesting thought is that you either believe these teachings are from a higher power or they are just from man.

The former had obvious implications, but the with the latter you will then need to answer the question is it written by lunatics or people that actually knew what they were doing?

I’m not religious in the slightest, but the hypocrisy has always been fairly obvious from the outside.

That said, I have serious doubts religion and hypocrisy are aligned anymore than the other sources of truth - especially when followed without applying critical thinking skills.

As you said yourself, people do it to belong to a social circle.

What are you replacing this extremely important function with? Vacuum?

> So many people just want to belong to a group, or were raised in it and know nothing better. They don’t practice what they preach.

And it's not necessarily a bad thing when you frame it as a cultural institution. For many people, they grew up with the church and its traditions. Their families and friends share the same traditions, and it's part of their identity. They may not believe in the supernatural stuff or even feel aligned with the moral system, but it's still part of their culture.

You could say that's hypocritical, but we expect a an attitude of humility in regards to many cultures who have even more "backwards" practices than this. I think we ought to apply the same attitude here.

You went to Delphian?

I had a coworker who went there. He had, uh, stories.

The world will be better off when we abolish freedom of belief? That doesn't sound like a world I'd want to live in.

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’t have much of this to react against in my own churches. But we saw the bad fundamentalist theology in Southern Baptist or too many independent churches (those two mentioned because they were dominant where I grew up). I can appreciate the difference.

I’m still happily a mainline Protestant. I’m not instructed to hate anyone, I’m not told to vote a particular way. I’m not going to church to check in my brain to a charlatan who saves me from an angry (false) god. I’m going to be better and to grow my relationship with God.

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 majority and being a good person or not is largely disconnected from religiousness. It’s difficult for me though to not think that a religious person’s reasoning is broken in some way, and to be more skeptical of how they verify ideas in general.

If they can’t get something basic right, why would they be right about something more complicated?

A lot of the rationalization of religious people is complicated in a way that suggests they have some underlying idea of what the accurate world model is (they just want to believe otherwise): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CqyJzDZWvGhhFJ7dY/belief-in-...

One thing I credit the internet for is allowing me to read and learn enough to escape it. I think most people will end up with whatever belief system they grow up surrounded by.

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 exactly it all meant. Then one Sunday School a conservative leaning preacher taught the kids how to spot witches. That was the last straw and we never went back to Mass or Sunday School and gradually withdrew from everything else with Easter and Christmas being the final holdouts. So I drifted to atheism but still find wisdom in the Bible and dare to compare the passages that focus on Jesus to stories of the Buddha. Culturally there is still quite a bit of influence there, but the fundamentalist component is a massive division like a great wall.

Grew up Protestant and rejected it because of the hypocrisy I saw around me. I saw "good church going people" who I knew were not good people and I saw how they were able to use the authority of their positions to exert influence. I also found that asking too many inconvenient questions in youth group meetings led to uncomfortable situations. It became clear that the religion part of things had little to no impact on how good, bad or decent the people practicing it were. People were good or bad, religious people simply had a metaphysical framework they could use to excuse themselves... and the bad ones would do just this. Led me to reject confirmation and leave altogether. Now it's been 40 years and I am more convinced than ever that I made the correct decision. Religion is fundamentally flawed as I see it practiced around me and needs to be kept out of civil society strictly and completely. You want to practice it in your home or church? Go for it. You want to inject it into civil society (schools, government, etc)... you need to be stopped utterly and completely.

After being raised in a non-Fundamentalist denomination I'd say the progressive ones are more insidious and no less harmful. Their foundations are all the same text, no matter how literal or figurative they interpret it. IME they usually also teach the same bad ways of thinking: emotion over logic, testimony over hard evidence, authority beyond your understanding, etc.

I was raised Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools until college. When I was in high school I recall having serious issues with what they were teaching. Here's a few of the gems they left me with:

    1. You should only get married if you intended on having children.
    2. If you were unable to have children, the marriage should be annulled. 
    3. Homosexuality was abhorrent and sinful.
    4. Women should not obtain positions of power in the church.  They used Adam and Eve to justify their position.

Many years later I found out that the reason why my freshman year biology teacher left unexpectedly over the summer was because he had been shuffled to another location after molesting young boys. He was eventually imprisoned for this, after being extradited to Australia. The church and the school knew this but said nothing to the parents or the students and it was swept under the rug. It was complete silence until they were forced to say something at a point where those who were molested were fairly far into their lives.

Thinking back on all of this still makes me angry today. A priest in my elementary school was brought in and then quietly and suddenly left a few months later and I am left with unanswered questions.

I don't need that in my life. I don't need religion to be a moral person, and from my point of view the system that I was raised in was very far from moral. The Catholic church has done more to affirm my Atheist .. non-beliefs? .. than anything else.

Not just other commenters, the (sociological) science backs you up as well: political backlash is a big reason for recent disaffiliation. https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-24-423/

For me, and many I know, anti-religious sentiment is pretty simple. We just think it is science fiction, and thus not good to believe it is real. Even if its all very nice and friendly and reasonable fiction, it is better to understand it isn't real.

The reason fundamentalists are so appealing is because they at least try to maintain some level of consistency.

How does one know which parts of the bible to accept or which parts are metaphor and which parts are literal or which version of the bible to believe? At least the most literal interpretation always tries to be consistent.

What makes any interpretation better than scriptural literalism? Is it the fact that some happen to agree with current social trends? Seems like the source material is flawed and unnecessary in the first place.

> ...bad theology...heresies...

Without "scriptural literalism" how do you know what bad theology and heresy are? Is good theology not simply that which most closely corresponds to Scripture? Your comment makes sense on a Roman Catholic view – in which the traditions of the church are authoritative – but not on the Protestant view (sola Scriptura).

Fundamentalism is still a vague description. I left the Catholic church in my teens and was angry for the experiences I'd had. As I grew as an adult my ire went from "religious institutions" to "certain moral communities".

In any moral community there will be outliers and some of those outliers can take hold of a message. You can see this in modern day with secular moral communities as well. My main takeaway, after 20-some years of evaluating this is that morals are something okay to evaluate your group on, but they are not ethics. They cannot apply widely, make their way into law, or try to shape society because by their very definition they are intrinsic to small groups. That doesn't mean these groups can't teach us something, but the foundation of their ideas requires subscription and often holistically.

Unfortunately, you are the exception. I grew up in a church household and family. It is sad that so many people see the bible as a weapon to enforce their point of view instead of a manual to direct their own life. It is crazy the amount of hate that my "christian" family members post on FB.

Jesus drove people out of the temple with a whip for disrespecting it. He called people (these are all based on KJV translation) "generation of vipers", "hypocrites", "whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones", he said it would be better some people to not have been born, that it would be better for some to have a millstone hanged on their neck and be drowned in the sea.

None of that was hatred. It was love. He was dealing with people's religious and moral failings.

It is not love to tell people they are okay when they are morally bankrupt.

I've talked to people of the younger generations (in the USA) who are not even aware that there is anything other than fundamentalist literalism. Either the Earth is 6000 years old and Jonah literally rode in the belly of a whale, or there is no God.

This sets up a situation where you have to be willfully ignorant or lie to defend the existence of God, since this stuff is bollocks.

In reality fundamentalist literalism is a relatively recent (19th century) theological development, but it's taken over completely in many US denominations.

A further wedge has been driven by the total politicization of religion. Many also believe that you must be a far-right Republican to be a Christian. If you'd asked me as a teenager or early 20-something what it meant to be a Christian I'd have thought "you have to support the military and vote Republican."

Nobody hates you. The gallup just shows that your belief system is slowly becoming irrelevant. If you can still draw anything from it (while leaving the rest of the competing sects alone), all the more power to you.

Even without the hate, isn't it harmful to indoctrinate children into believing in fantasy?

Sure, adding hate makes it far worse, but one fantasy god with a fantasy origin story and fantastical powers is one too many.

The beauty of protestantism is that there is no ultimate arbiter to decide that one sect is "good" or "bad."

You view certain fundamentalists' interpretation as somehow "bad?" So what? They probably view your sect as being equally degenerate.

What gives you standing to cast this judgment?

The framework of Protestantism allows and accounts for these divergent views. So you really can't throw down the "no true Scotsman" fallacy against those sects you disagree with in its broader defense.

I think you're missing the bitterness that comes from growing up with a set of coping mechanisms and losing them. Moderate Christianity, taught by moral and good people, nevertheless can lead one to use the thought of eternal life as a psychological coping mechanism to deal with the reality of death and suffering in the world. If you eventually lose your ability to believe in that (which is involuntary for many), it can be quite painful.

1. Stance on abortion among your brothers in church? As if brothers should even have one that matters?

2. Do you follow the edict that if you’re not baptist then by definition you go to hell? How do you reconcile this with having friends or anyone at all you care about who are then going to hell?

Point is, I’m not sure there is any middle ground that’s acceptable. I don’t come here as an atheist, just as someone who’s trying really hard to believe but finding no acceptable ground to stand at all. The only smart people I find religious (especially Christian) are ones who were born and grew up forced to go to church. Typically they’d give up on practising it in their teens, basically break every rule in their book for two decades and then somehow rediscover it because now it’s convenient to find some community and higher purpose in their life. The ones who convert from elsewhere when they are adults are almost always gullible and did so for the most transactional reasons you can think of.

That's fair, but to play devils advocate, every sect can point the finger at some other sect, or at heretics within their own sect. No sect will agree to any negative critique, and because their doctrines tend to be self consistent, critique is pointless anyway. Yet the sects are not completely separate, but are collusive to some degree. And individual beliefs may be a mishmash of ideas from multiple sects. Indeed for this reason, the divisions between sects are not hard edged.

American fundamentalism would have no political power without the tacit consent of the mainstream. The predominant sects in my state are mainline, yet they voted en masse to outlaw gay marriage (before the US supreme court ruled otherwise).

Fundamentalism is corrosive and detrimental to society. I don't get angry at moderate religious views but I still think they're laughable superstition. I respect your right as a human to believe I just think it's silly.

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 adults.

From the actual first-party news article on the poll: https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...

For better or worse, conservative (both politically and theologically) people seem to be holding on to their Christian faith in greater numbers (at least marginally) than their more progressive or liberal leaning counterparts.

Anyway, as someone who almost left the faith, I would agree with the overall narrative that Christianity became ineffective in the late 20th century. Personally though, I would attribute it to a lack of focus on youth and issues relevant to youths. I can't find it now, but I'm pretty sure I saw a poll that indicated most people who leave do so in the transition from high school to college. That certainly lines up with what I observed, most people just didn't care enough to keep going (regardless of what branch they were in). I would have been one of them myself, if I hadn't been able to find a college Christian community that was dramatically more vibrant than what I grew up with. But overall I think I'm one of the lucky ones.

I became an atheist/agnostic as a teenager and now in my late 20's I have slowly come back to religion. So I am really interested in this topic.

My comment is specifically about online atheist communities, because I think they are often toxic to both religion and to atheism itself. A lot of these communities are hyper-focused on fundamentalism, to their own detriment.

These online atheists communities can be very unfortunate. Your noble search for the truth leads you to question religion - but then you get caught in an echo chamber spending a lot of energy hating on others for their beliefs. A noble pursuit devolved into hatred and groupthink. On the other hand, fundamentalists took a religion which preaches love and acceptance and twisted it into something bitter and hateful. I think it's kind of poetic how much those two communities mirror each other.

The fixation on fundamentalism is a combination of two things. First, there are people from those fundamentalist churches who were damaged in some way and have now swung way to the opposite extreme of hating all religion. They grew up learning to see the world through rigid dogma, and online atheist communities tend to be fairly dogmatic themselves. Not hard to see the appeal there. Second, and probably more common, are atheists who never had any close contact with fundamentalism but they justify their beliefs by taking on the low-hanging fruit. It is very easy to pick on young-earth creationists, vehement anti-gay groups, prosperity gospel, etc. Those groups' thinking really does rely on fear and hate, things that the bible actually tells us to reject.

What happens when you tell one of those angry atheists that yes, you're a Christian, but you also find evolution to be very cool, you know that the universe is billions of years old, you are pro choice, and you don't believe everything in the bible literally happened? Well, they aren't really sure what to do with you. Because they spend all their time congratulating themselves for being smarter than the lowest common denominator of religion, they aren't really able to have a more sophisticated conversation about their beliefs.

As a religious person, it is a bit frustrating that you never see atheists confronting the great theologists and religious philosophers - Origen, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, or even contemporary thinkers like Alasdair McIntyre. If Christians' beliefs are really so shallow and stupid, those guys should be super easy to refute, right? They think that all Christians are anti-science when Christian monks were pivotal in the discovery of genetics and the big bang theory, among other scientific achievements. They ignore that some giants of Enlightenment philosophy, like Descartes and Spinoza, were attempting to use new rational methods to affirm the existence of God in their major works.

The problem is, when you are an atheist engaging in the really complex arguments posed by the most intelligent and eloquent religious people of history, the waters become very muddy. You might even have to concede, just a little bit, that you take your atheism on faith, too. It's much easier to feel good about bashing the usual suspects - Joel Osteen, the 700 Club, Westboro Baptist and friends. And so a lot of people get sucked into that low-level discourse, and never get a chance to make the exhilarating journey back to religion. I don't really care if someone stays an atheist, many good people are atheists. But I do care if they never get a chance to see the promise of religion because of toxic echo chambers and groupthink.

As a religious person, I don't hate outspoken atheists. In fact, I very much respect them - they are people who care deeply about the truth. In that respect, they have something in common with any thoughtful religious person.

It's so refreshing to see somebody who has had a similar experience to my own. I've never been a member of a church like the ones that people describe in a lot of the comments. We focus on devotion to God and improving the earth. For example, here's how we marked our church's 100th birthday:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/on-its-100th-birthday-a...

And what did you gain out of it?

I grew up in a non-fundamentalist Christian cult (catholic) and it was at best a massive waste of time. I detest that part of my life.

I was raised liberal Catholic by an atheist father and an eclectic hippie New-Age-Catholic-Hindu-dowsing-crystals-homeopathy-and-runic[0]-divination mother, for the purposes of getting into a good school.

While it is fair to say that one specific fundamentalist young-Earth creationist Baptist certainly turned me from “it isn’t true but it doesn’t matter” to “it is actively harmful for people to believe this”, I should also say that the liberal version of Catholicism at my school — liberal enough to not explicitly condemn abortion or homosexuality, even though this was the U.K. in the 1990s and Section 28 still in force — had terrible sex education which completely ignored the existence of e.g. chlamydia, and I do think that was due to the religion given how quickly I learned about it the moment I moved to the next step in my education.

The open-mindedness may have been good for me as a teenager going through a goth-paganism phase, but it also meant she gave my dad homeopathic remedies when he got bowel cancer, and she got Alzheimer’s 15 years younger than her mother “despite” her use of Bach flower remedies for memory.

[0] naturally this meant I learned to read the outer border of the Allen & Unwin edition of The Hobbit, and the text in the hand drawn maps inside: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/...

it also depends on the church and with time. the southern baptist church i went to when young didn't have much if any extreme fundamentalism. the one i attended for a bit as a teenager (not by choice) was a little more fundamentalist, but not extreme. i stopped going to church after that.

but really, teasing apart the strains doesn't matter in the long run. our gods are changing, just as they always have.

Since mainline protestantism is in full collapse, is it really true the progressive christianity has any chance of surviving long term?

Seeing those same comments in this thread reminded me of something Jordan Peterson questions: with this decline of religious-based narratives for guidelines, what is replacing it?

I had a similar experience as a Catholic in the northeast.

Lately as the politics of old people and loud young people have tilted right-wing, and more extreme philosophy is accepted, it’s disturbing how the theology has followed the money.

I probably sound like a simpleton here, but I’ve always found religion to be a source of peace and solace and a positive influence. Some of that is a result of ignoring teachings that are more... noxious to me personally or focusing away from behavior of the human agents of the church.

Unfortunately, cycles of religious fundamentalism is a feature of the American body politic.

[Posted this under a reply below that got downvoted, so reposting here]

I grew up fundamentalist, then swung hard atheist, then ended up, as one friend who went to seminary described it, "the most christian atheist he knows". I've known Christians ignorant and intellectual, hateful and openly loving, urban and rural, liberal and conservative, and everything in-between (and these are all independent axes, to be clear).

Here's my take: A healthy faith is not about technicalities, or about finding a system for understanding the physical world or anything like that. If you get obsessed with technicalities you become a bitter fundamentalist; if you get fed-up with religion but stay obsessed with technicalities you become a bitter atheist.

A healthy faith is about people. Yourself, your community, the world. Cultivating habits of forgiveness and growth toward yourself, and openness and love (as well as forgiveness and growth) toward others. Having a specific segment of your life dedicated to contemplation of the most important things in life, and doing so in a community on a regular basis. The iconography and the texts, ideally, are just a communal conduit for those ideas; symbols people can point to and use to talk about their thoughts and feelings around this stuff with others, and also to spark new thoughts and points of discussion.

Many (not all) of my close friends are christians, and none of them have ever tried to convert me (if they were to do that on a regular basis, we wouldn't be close friends). Some of them don't really think hell exists; most of them don't think some magic prayer is all that's needed to keep you out of it; they know that spirituality is a matter of the heart, and the heart isn't so simple. Most, I think, see that even if hell does exist, the best thing they can do for others is simply to love them and to help them be better through example and friendship, if anything. They know they don't control others and they can't force them into anything. They can only be Good and hope that it spreads.

I like this quote from Pope Francis:

> We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.

ADDENDUM: So where has that left me? I don't practice religion, though I read from the occasional religious author and I think spirituality in the broader sense is a useful metaphor for matters surrounding the heart and trying to be a better member of the world. I have really nice conversations, even with religious people, around those subjects. I've been known to go with a friend or relative to the odd church service (as long as it's at a church that's reasonably compatible with the above), and I often get some benefit from it in the form of meditation on myself and my relationship with the world. I've thought about finding a church to join for the sake of community, though I go back and forth on that since I don't believe in even the smallest literal sense (I try to let go of my literalism, but I still have mental habits from the days when I thought it was all about that, both religious and not). Maybe one day I'll find the right church and get past that.

> which brings heresies like hating LGBT

This is funny to read because LGBT and a series of other movements cause me to feel much the same as I do about "religious" fundamentalism. Excessive self-styling and countering any adverse ideas with a refusal to compromise or cede any ground. Not tolerating adverse ideas and manifestations thereof in daily life but "calling it out" and attacking them constantly.

Extremism in opiniated/constructed ideas, polarized cancel culture etc has become much more popular and dominating in the public discourse and media than it has been for the past 50+ years.

I just don't get how fundamentalists can remain so busy going on about their fundaments. It's all very tiresome.

I suspect one factor in the declining membership is shared with other mid-century social groups that have also dwindled (e.g., men's lodges): it's easier to find community elsewhere.

For my parents -- born in 1940 -- church and men's service clubs/lodges were the primary areas of social interaction outside work. Dad ran his own veterinary practice, so his social interaction there was limited (I mean, everybody worked for him). Mom stayed at home until the late 70s. Church was the center of their social life.

Now, nobody wanted to say that out loud; it was all about the faith. But that's what it was.

In my life I've had no need for that, because people of my generation (b 1970) have generally found other communities of support/friendship/connection. None of my friends are Masons, either.

Men's lodges, fraternal organizations, and so on around here tend to have a religious underpinning of specific faiths, or seem to be charities of some kind with a connection to religion. As such, I think declining church membership would drag them down as well.

I wonder if men's clubs exist which are neither, just completely secular. I haven't been able to find any when searching, aside from The Club, which technically fits but as a bathhouse for hookups, wasn't really what I had in mind. I know lodges centered around professions more or less fell apart, and perhaps the last vestige of secular groups would be country clubs.

It's hard to tell how much of this is just "people aren't joiners anymore" and how much is declining church membership.

This misses the forest for the trees: Membership is down at organizations across the board - scouting, group athletics, Rotary clubs, unions, even things like PTAs and neighborhood associations and model train clubs.

There is a society wide "apathy" event happening right under our noses. Maybe we're just seeing a new generation moving to new niche groups that aren't being seen yet. But it seems that technology is doing something with our desire to form communal bonds.

I don't see it as apathy. I suspect people are simply choosing to put their time into pursuits other than attending meetings with other people.

In the past 20 years, there's been a large rise in the time the average person spends on the social web. In the past 10 years, with the rise of mobile platforms, that time has gone up even more. In addition, streaming media has become very big, thereby consuming even more of our free time.

That additional time spent online has to come from somewhere. As Sherry Turkle put it, we are increasingly choosing to be "Alone Together" probably at the cost of old school forms of togetherness like church and social clubs.

Yes I agree. This seems to be a continuation of the trends described in “Bowling Alone”. The book argued in 2000 that television was a contributing factor. It is probably further worsened by the rise in online entertainment since.

Our "communal bonds" are being replaced by 1-to-n relationships between influencers, streamers, content providers and their "followers".

Hard to tell if that's permanent; it may be a temporary thing due to COVID, people being afraid of gatherings. Is that possible? Probably only part of the picture: the poll sited elsewhere in this thread says the trend goes on for quite some time: https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...

Membership is down at in-person organizations across the board. I doubt the census includes the many different online communities I am a part of.

I have friends I have known for 10+ years which I have never met in real life. Friendships which are deeper and longer lasting than anything I have “in real life”.

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 churches have either very little by way of actual bible-based doctrine, or very little by way of in-depth theology. (Prosperity gospel/megachurches fall in the latter, a decent portion of other churches - eg. the Roman Catholic Church - fall in the former.)

Responses will be sporadic throughout the day, I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I'll do my best to get to it.

I think it's helpful to point out that the Bible contains a variety of types of literature including historical narrative, poetry, etc., some of which uses figurative language that is not intended to be taken literally.

We all understand this when we use modern language such as "sunrise" which is not literally true (the sun does not actually "rise" in the sky though it appears that way to the casual observer) even though we're educated enough to understand basic astronomical phenomena such as the rotation of the earth giving rise to daytime and nighttime.

A Biblical literalist who takes figurative language in the Bible literally would end up making the same mistake that someone taking "sunrise" literally would. This is not at all an attempt to classify as figurative language all controversial or supernatural claims of the Bible (its claim that Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead is clearly supernatural and impossible to classify as figurative), but so many of the lists of contradictory claims in the Bible rely on wooden interpretations of what is pretty clearly figurative language.

What's your take on the dead sea scrolls ?

How do the aspects of the early church align with scriptural literalism? Specifically the split of the early church between Paul and Jesus brother James. James was Jesus's choice to lead the church in his absence. A direction which aligned more with Judaism - including circumcision, and kosher foods. Yet later Christianity revolves around Paul at odds vision. Paul was a Roman who 'saw the light' whilst being sent after Jesus. He never met Jesus. His version of 'Christianity' didn't require those aspects - not least because adult male Romans who were interested in Christianity, weren't too keen on circumcision.

If this is correct, it means modern Christianity, is not based on Jesus stated future direction of his church.

What does your 'scriptural literalism' say about this? If your literature doesn't cover these aspects - then what is decided is canonical and what is not? Presumably such a distinction has to be outside of said literature - and therefore not 'scriptual literalism'. Implying 'scriptual literalism' itself is not grounded.

I should probably also say that it seems to me that claiming 'scriptual literalism' is a defensive position against claims of subjectivity. It is 'literal' and therefore not subjective. This is a fallacy - as there is always subjectivity and interpretation in human understanding, and certainly in interpreting something as nuanced and contradictory as the bible.

This might come across as somewhat aggressive questioning, and I'm sorry for that - but I am legitimately curious how it works.

> adhering to scriptural literalism

What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscripts - a resurrection was tacked on later. The story of the adulteress Jesus refused to condemn is not found in the earliest scriptures. And on and on. Much of contemporary scripture were things invented centuries after the events recorded.

Here’s some to kickstart things. Genuinely curious

1) did you grow up in the church you currently belong to or did you join later? If the former, did you ever explore other ones? Why/why not?

2) there can be doubt about what the Bible literally says given the number of authors, editors, and time involved. For example, someone chose x word when translating to English, that also could have meant y. Or, x book was included and y book was not. What are your thoughts on this?

3) there are a lot of rules in the Bible, especially one like Letiviticus (sp?). As someone adhering to literalism, do you aspire to follow them all? If not, which ones do you? If so, how do you deal with (likely) not following them all?

4) how do you keep your faith nourished / going in today’s society, where membership in churches is declining and Internet denizens can have a lot of skepticism toward religion?

A quick google search for 'contradictions in the {bible, new testament, jesus, etc.}' turns up a fair few pages. Viewing them either gives the answer as zero full-stop, or a long list of subject and their relevant citations. In looking at the citations, there does seem to be merit to the contradictory claims. I'll admit that the contradictions are a bit 'small' and may not always alter the main theme or may mix up the new and old testaments, but they seem to exist nonetheless.

I may not be all that up to date on what 'scriptural literalism' is exactly defined as, but as a lay person that would mean to me that contradictions would be a difficult circle to square.

What do you make of such contradictions and how do they affect your adherence, if at all?

Thanks for doing this!

(Don’t have questions; just encouraging more not-mega church public Christianity.)

What do you think of the many miracles that the Catholic Church has received?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun

My personal observation (having left a fundamentalist background, though still identifying as Christian) is that hardcore young-earth creationism of the Ken Ham variety has driven a ton of deconversion in my generation.

Ken Ham & his ilk have been teaching for decades, explicitly and repeatedly, that if you do not buy into their specific 6-day literal interpretation of Genesis, then you might as well be an atheist. [0] This line works great to rile up the faithful, but...

Fast-forward to today, and you have an entire generation of young adults who can no longer square YEC with reality, going: "Huh, I guess I'm an atheist then?"

Ham-flavored fundamentalism rules huge swaths of orthodox Christian tradition out of bounds, and it's been devastating for the future of the American church.

[0] https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/a-flood-of-nonse...

Except, mainline Protestants are shrinking at a much faster rate than evangelicals. If church attrition was driven by a rejection of fundamentalism we wouldn't expect Unitarians and Episcopalians to be losing members faster than Baptists and Pentecostals.

How did you personally abandon fundamentalism and end up still identifying as Christian? I grew up learning from Ken Ham (literally shook his hand at summer camp), but I'm now a genuinely atheistic apostate and I can't comprehend what you have left of Christianity when you abandon a literal understanding of the Bible.

Young Earth Creationism pseudoscience is one reason, but there are tons of others. Ham, I think, is mostly right: Either (1) it's all true, in which case you have all the problems of fundamentalism and have to disbelieve science. Or (2) or some subset of the factual claims it makes are true - the Bible as miraculously inspired and truthful, YEC, the very existence and nature of the supernatural, Old Testament miracles, New Testament miracles, eschatology, and so on - but as Ham eloquently points out, once you abandon one of the claims that the supposedly truthful book makes, you call them all into question. Or (3) none of it is true, it's all fiction, in which case you can use whatever you want as a moral framework, but it has no special value. In that case, it's merely a socially evolved construct like every other superstition throughout the history of our species.

Trumpism (and the past couple decades of political lead-up to it among fundamentalists) being the other big one. I think these are the two major forces that actively drive people away.

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&...

In mid-century US, religiosity/faith were also promoted by capitalists as counters to rising global popularity of Communism/Socialism. The 1954 addition of "Under God" to the USA's Pledge of Allegiance was marketed (in part) as a means of differentiating from the Godless Communists. I'd be surprised if this big push toward an obvious "Blessed Nation" wasn't a primary driver in the shift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening

Do you suppose it has anything to do with all the infrastructure that had to be built out new for the baby boomers? All of a sudden you needed twice as many grade schools, then middle schools, etc.

We don't do catholic boarding schools as much any more (too much bad PR of several flavors, for example) but they definitely did at the time. I wonder if the church-going came first or the religious schools did.

I think a number of the traditionally religious immigrant waves arrived well before WWI, so that probably doesn't have anything much to do with it, unless those groups had far more children post WWII...

There's a great discourse in one of Dan Brown's books about whether people leave religion because they have found better answers elsewhere, or because they have stopped asking the questions.

Separately, I observed that that the areligious are much more likely to have few or no kids while the religious folks put a much greater emphasis on it. As the secular world moves towards a place where there's no pressure to marry and procreate at all, how long before it is once again relegated into a demographic minority?

> how long before it is once again relegated into a demographic minority?

Many children of religious people are areligous, which is a primary reason how we got to < 50% church membership in the first place.

There was a religious leader making a similar argument some time back, but I don't think it holds together all that well. After all, back in the middle ages the amount of churchgoing people was near 100% and religions were promoting big families then just as much as now. So if religious parents "out-produce" their non-religious counterparts how did we ever get to the current situation where a majority is not religious?

The answer is of course that children choose their own way and don't stay religious just because of their parents.

> how long before it is once again relegated into a demographic minority?

2-3 more generations to go I suspect based on personal experience where it'll be less than 10%.

My grandparents were religious and my grandma prior to covid hadn't missed weekly service her whole life.

My parents were "partial" religious meaning they went to major events and still have an identity linked to their religion.

I grew up in a religious environment. Decided that belief and faith system wasn't for me in my teenage years and once on my own became an atheist.

My wife and I will raise our children without it being in a religious environment.

If you take away the "god" element, and adopt a Nietschze approach to religion/culture, i.e. its utility over generations, and where it ends up.

Then areligious would seem to be a pretty useless offshoot, if its always doomed to die out.

Perhaps a third state exists, with purpose and optimism to bring children into the world, but not born out of abrahamic religions.

There’s out- and inflow, too ((children of) the religious becoming areligious and vice-versa).

I expect those to more than compensate for the religious having more kids, on average.

I'm tempted to think that the correlation isn't religion per se, but rather a pragmatic attitude towards the 7b people on the planet today.

If you're reasonably 'rational' (but not especially religious) you're not going to look at those numbers and think procreation is compelling for the sake of keeping the tribe alive.

OTOH if you're thinking that your particular religion needs a numbers boost, then the imperative may feel differently.

"religiousness" is not likely to be an inheritable genetic trait, so the children of a religious person may or may not be religious themselves, and vice-versa. The overall culture is likely to have a more powerful impact on this than solely parenting.

Although I believe religion is outdated and in many ways I'm happy to see it in decline in the West, I do worry about the side effects the decline of religion has.

It seems to me that people my age today (late twenties, early thirties) are extremely self-centred and struggle to see any higher pursuit in life than self-satisfaction. This is in contrast to the few religious people I know who are far more family focused and believe in self-sacrifice in the pursuit of what they believe to be morally good - charity, children, community, etc.

As a teenager who went to a catholic school I often found myself in trouble for mocking things we were taught from the bible, but as I've grown up I've come to appreciate religion and the role it has historically played in our society.

For example, my sister has made a lot of bad decisions in life - drug use, having a child to get a council house, arrested for violent behaviour, etc. Something that made me reflect on my attitude towards religion was that I realised my sister would likely be in a much better place today if we lived in a more religious society. Many of the legal things she did for self-satisfaction would have been look down upon just a few decades back and if that happened she may not be the way she is today. I see this all the time as someone who grew up in a poor area of my city, the lack of religion promoting family values and self-sacrifice is clearly hurting those on the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder the most. Almost everyone young female in my family is a single mother living in government housing today, many struggling with drug addiction and mental illness. This just wouldn't have been the case in past decades.

If you educated and middle-class you're far more able to go a bit crazy in your twenties before you you settle down in your thirties. If you're able to responsibly navigate between self-satisfaction and self-sacrifice then religious values are less important and perhaps even seen as a burden in your life, but if you have less self-control and perhaps don't have the intellect to form your own secular spiritual meaning to life, then what else is lack but the pursuit of self-satisfaction?

Sorry for the ramble. This is a topic I think about a lot because I'm so split in my thoughts towards religion today. I don't think we should go back to religion, but I suspect we might need to find a substitute for it.

> I realised my sister would likely be in a much better place today if we lived in a more religious society.

I'm really not so sure about that. For instance, the top 10 states in terms of teenage pregnancy in the US is mostly dominated by religious states[0]. I'm not sure I've ever seen a stat like crime, drug use, etc, where the more religious states perform better than more secular states.

Of course, other factors might influence these stats. But at the very least it seems that, even if religion isn't actively harmful, it doesn't seem to be helping all that much.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_pregnancy_in_the_Unite... ; the data is from 2010 though

Quick note: your sister's story was also common enough in the 1880-1950 timeframe. She'd also have been considered a loose woman, immoral, etc, and come under vicious religious censure. Now, statistically, would that have improved things more generally? I don't know. But it was a thing.

If we were to spin the clock back to pre-industrialization and its concomitant labor crunching, I don't know that period of history quite as well.

While I think the lack of good religious thinking is causing all sorts of odd misfires across society, I'm not sure it would improve "bad choices" though. C.f. canturbury tales...

I'm in a similar boat. I grew up Christian and then became a very "online atheist", but since the mid-2000s I've become more worried about the lack of what feels like a real in-person community.

My wife is Reform Jewish and one thing that I have come to appreciate is what seems to me a good balance between community and a good dose of secularism--I agreed to help raise our children this way with her for this reason (without converting myself). The most dogmatic thing you could maybe argue is some kind of allegiance to Israel, but this isn't present as much in the younger / millennial Bay Area Jewish community that I've witnessed.

It's interesting to read a HN thread regarding theology. It seems there is quite an interest in the topic, and affirms another thing I tend to see: That many in this field identify as a Christian but don't really seem interested in saying so unless it's in a thread which expressly mentions it. Maybe it's my own bias and I'm just viewing it that way, as a Christian myself, as it feels hard to talk about it within the tech sphere with nuance and empathy.

> That many in this field identify as a Christian but don't really seem interested in saying so unless it's in a thread which expressly mentions it.

Wouldn't it just be off-topic in other threads though? It's not a surprise it doesn't come up when it's not the subject of a given conversation. I have all sorts of interests that I don't tend to bring up until there's a conversation specifically about them.

Cultural Christianity versus theistic Christianity in action. Anecdotal, but many, many more people had to go to church as kids than actively believe today.

The problem is that this leads to people who feel entitled to a space in the conversation (because it was part of their upbringing), but bring very little love or understanding to it.

(And I say this as someone who was raised in the Church and left it pretty early on).

In my opinion the main problem for religion right now is the failure to explain their arguments at the highest intellectual level, publicly, consistently.

Once I was exposed to better theology and philosophy of Christianity I was blown away. Edward Feser’s ‘The Last Superstition’ helped open this up.

I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically underestimating the populace.

I thought I knew what Christianity was, growing up in church. After I attended a theological seminary, I realized I knew nothing. Also I stopped debating religion with people online because I realized majority of religion debates are extremely shallow, yes even those with popular sciences like Richard Dawkins are shallow.

On the other hand, being just a regular member of my church, I also don't want to bring my background when I talk with my church community. Majority of people don't have the education that I had, and to explain half-assedly will just confuse them more.

I haven't read Feser, but I do agree there is a huge gap between, say, the theology and level of discourse of C.S.Lewis and Tolkein and popular megachurch pastors. Culturally it's interesting to me - all but the most die-hard atheist will likely see some value and truth in Tolkein's work even if they disagree with his theology and choice of church. They may not agree, but would respect him. Where are today's Inklings?

> I have no idea why the level of discourse is on average so primitive, I think church leaders have been systematically underestimating the populace.

They're not underestimating the populace. They're catering to them in a desperate attempt to stay economically viable. The big beautiful building, supporting staff, production equipment, etc doesn't pay for itself.

Many churches are operated as businesses - ones which have realized that the easiest, most profitable mode of operation is to refrain from teaching/challenging your supporters as much as possible. Mix in a sense of tradition, some political activism, and a touch of self-righteousness and you've got yourself a recipe for a successful organization. At least until your congregation passes away and their children realize they have no use for you.

There are still a few churches out there which use the hellfire-and-brimstone approach, but it's not very effective on Gen X and younger. Nowadays, I'm certain it drives more people away from Christianity than it brings in.

I grew up Protestant but have considered myself Agnostic for a while.

However, lately I've been having the urge to dig into spirituality more, as I'm starting to suspect there can be something there, it's just that, except for a single sermon I sat in about people destroying natural rock formations that have been around for millions of years on a whim (yeah the pastor actually said millions of years), I haven't found anything that seemed worth reflecting on in church services I've attended in a very long time.

The book you posted seems interesting, I'll give that a read. I also found Tolstoy's 'A Confession' very interesting back in the day. Do you have other resources you would recommend I check out?

Oh, yes. Quoting Fulton Sheen:

"There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be."

In this case, I would include the majority of Catholics who are oblivious today about the very basics of what the Church believes, much less why, and practice it seldomly on one hand or cliquishly on the other. When the culture becomes hostile to the faith, it is little wonder that many fall away if all that kept them there was vacuous habit and social inertia. Obviously, if your ideas are primitive and stupid, and the culture within the Church enters a malaise, and the promised rewards of defecting and joining the popular chorus seem so enticing, then you will experience defections and apostasy. The intellectual mediocrity of people like Dawkins impresses only the uneducated or the mis-educated.

But frankly, the kinds of apostasies we're seeing in the US are mostly a formality. Those defecting are effectively apostates already. They're just not going through the motions anymore, either because they're tired of faking it, or because the social incentives of putting on appearances no longer seem to exist. You might even fear being seen as a "weirdo", though you will find that most people will admire, even feel intimidated by, a well-informed and educated Catholic who unapologetically and without a feeling of shame or cowardice is frank about his beliefs.

Of course, FWIW, the Church itself is growing in numbers. It is growing rapidly in Africa and in Asia, though Catholics, and more broadly, Christians are the most persecuted group in the world (persecution also tends to produce more conversions). The West is undergoing a period of cultural decadence. Whether it will survive or whether the carcass will rot out completely, I don't know. At the moment, it looks like the future of the Church is on those continents.

Feser has written a few other books that others might also find useful. I have greatly enjoyed his writing. Some find Peter Kreeft, himself a convert, a good introduction (his "Apologetics" for instance), and I've heard some good things about Scott Hahn. These are probably good entry points before venturing into the vast literature of the last few millennia.

lol. you really fail to understand why everything is dumbed down? it’s because 1) people don’t have a lot of time 2) a lot of people don’t need or can’t understand the arguments. why bother?

Reading dostoesvsky brought my back to the church on a spiritual and emotional level, and the Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity bt CS Lewis brought me back on an emotional level.

I agree.

I grew up in a conservative congregation with a difficult-to-understand theology. I went through some dark and nihilistic points in my life but after being exposed to Jordan Peterson's study of Christianity as the mythology that underpins the culture of the west I developed a deep appreciation for these ideas and now consider myself a Christ follower.

The same can be said of science in that science can't explain the supernatural or the after-life. Science was never meant to explain those things but we have tried to make it a replacement by trying to naturalize everything. Things that go beyond this realm of understanding and reason.

Fanny Holmes (wife of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) once said, when asked why she belonged to the Unitarian Church,

"In Boston one has to be something, and Unitarian is the least you can be."

Unitarianism by the 20th century didn't have any dogma, even atheists and agnostics could be members, and accepted that all religious traditions had spiritual wisdom to offer. But because it had evolved from Christianity it had institutional legitimacy, in a world where church membership was a social requirement.

People's beliefs might have changed less than we think over time, despite the common perception that nearly everyone in the US was hyper-religious until the last few decades.

There might be other factors around the decline in church membership -- perhaps related to the decline in participation in secular community groups as well.

Superb point. To quote Holmes, ‘Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.’

My great Aunt who is 95 belongs to a UU church, and remembers when the Universalists merged with the Unitarians. She says "The Universalist brought too much God stuff into church and wrecked it"

Living in Massachusetts, what I've found is that the UU still requires a strict adherence to very left-leaning politics.

The dogma shifted from a religious dogma to a political one.

For example: https://barnstableuu.org/about/history.html

> In the early 19th century there was considerable theological debate in the “churches of the standing order” in New England. Many churches actually split over this debate, the traditionalists becoming Congregationalists and the liberals becoming Unitarians.

Americans' religious affiliations and degree of religious adherence tend to follow a generational step-down pattern.

For instance, in my grandparents' day, both religious affiliation and religious adherence were relatively high. In Philly, where my mom grew up, Catholic schools were practically overflowing, and parents expected that the school would supplement and support the religious upbringing they were receiving at home.

Then in the next generation, there was a shift. Religious affiliation remained relatively high, but religious adherence and attendance began to decrease. Those Catholic schools continued to bring in students, but there was a marked difference; parents who were not particular devout themselves expected that the school would replace and make up for the religious instruction that many of the kids were not receiving at home. These people might still have identified themselves as Catholic, but they weren't really actively practicing their faith.

Nowadays, Catholic schools are largely on life support, because the decrease in religious affiliation that was precipitated by the decrease in adherence/attendance has now cut down enrollment to a much smaller number of families who either have high devotion or who have low devotion but see the schools as better than the public alternatives. Parents who in the previous generation might have sent their kids to Catholic school to replace the religious instruction they weren't getting at home have instead decided to disaffiliate and not give their kids outsourced religious instruction. Whereas in previous generations, they might have continued to identify as Catholic even though they were inactive, in this generation it's much more common to just shed the identity.

Obviously, I'm just painting a small part of the picture, of Catholicism in the mid-Atlantic region. Many other parts of the country with other religious makeups have followed different patterns. But I think we can basically predict what the religious landscape is going to be like over the next generation or two by following this step-down pattern. (This assumes that religiosity will continue getting weaker, which is not necessarily a sure thing. Religious revivals have been relatively common throughout history.)

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.

>Now every single indicator of courtship is at all time lows, mental illness is off the charts and we're all miserable.

I'm guessing this has far more to do with political and economic changes than decline in religion.

I am agnostic, but, I don’t necessarily see this as a good thing.

I was raised Jewish and as a kid we would go to the reform synagogue on and off throughout the year. My parents are completely secular (atheist and agnostic), and yet that did not stop my mom from becoming President of the local reform synagogue, so at least for a period it was a big part of my life.

The main benefit of the synagogue, and I assume it is the same one you get from being involved in your local church, is the community that is built around it.

When someone was sick, someone died or someone needed help, people from the community were always the first ones to help. They would took care of the poor, help the weak and also the elderly. They would lead food drives and volunteer efforts.

I have yet to find any community that is as strong and as helpful as the one that was built around the local synagogue. There is something unique about places of warship that drives people to be more generous and helping. My only assumption is the communities they build are passed down from generation to generation with their own traditions which makes them stronger.

As an adult, I don’t go to synagogue at all. The weird thing is I miss it even though I hated it as a kid.

One last thing. I see a lot of hatred for religion in the comments and as of late in general. Please don’t hate! Understand that extreme anti-religion is no better and no less dangerous than people that take religion to the extreme. Yes, religion has caused or been excuse for a lot of bad and intolerant behavior. You aren’t going to end intolerance by being intolerant yourself. Assume best attentions, judge people by how they act and help through education to change their misconceptions.

Speaking as a person of faith, religion has been largely obsoleted by social media and political tribalism. Most people get their moral compass from Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Celebrities, op-end writers, talk show hosts, and corporations have become the bishops of the new American moral universe.

I don’t think anyone is getting their morals from Instagram.

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, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."

Emo Philips has another joke which I think was voted somewhere as funniest joke ever, and is a great take on western religion :

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive 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 displayed courage, anger, revenge, ect.

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.

Christianity from the very early days (The skims' under Constantine) was a very absolute one. There was a right and wrong. There was only one god and you are wrong and a heretic for believing in another.

That's why Hellenism works so well for me. I do not claim to be a moral precept but i do offer you this; A peace treaty. You can believe what you want to believe as long as you respect my own moral reasoning. In the grand scheme of things as long as there is no direct harm to you for my actions you must accept and respect them but i do not have to bow to them. It cannot be a suicidal pact, meaning if i do not believe in YOUR GOD, slip up and don't call you a 'They' or say somethings 'Gay'.

I truly believe one of the biggest problems with current society is everyone believes they are a moral precept and have all the answers. Love your neighbor.

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.

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 the edge cases like Northern Ireland have little to do with actual religious differences. That issue is mostly political in nature and revolves around the relationship of Ireland to Great Britain, not the intricacies of the Christian religion.

It’s easy to observe the difference when you look at the Muslim world, where there still is a lot of violent conflict and people being persecuted or killed because they are “heretics.”

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.

What US society is struggling with is what to replace church with. It provided community and mutual support, but combined it with a myth that many could not accept any longer. The big question is what can provide the community and mutual support without the binding myth. There hasn't been a replacement thus far that has taken hold.

Also, the combination of online life and recently the pandemic has weakened what local community life still exists.

>There hasn't been a replacement thus far that has taken hold.

The replacement is social media.

Is it a good replacement? Absolutely not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Assembly is a reasonable attempt... or at least it was when people could actually meet in places.

If our population was better educated, I feel like togas, buggery and acropolises could be a real option.

Not more degrees, but well read- history, philosophy, religious literature, science shit, etc.

Also, the whole wokespeak has seriously destroyed public discourse- not just from the right but on the left.

The spread of information has allowed people to form their own moralistic code and spiritual journey that doesn't rely on having an institutional infrastructure. They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods, a trend now going back for thousands of years starting with Zarathustra. I consider this progress.

I think there's a rhetoric out there, that "everybody needs a religion," and that identifies any vehemently held ideology or close-knit social group as a religion. It's tautological. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of forming a general definition of "religion" that isn't riddled with exceptions. Defining "religion" broadly enough to include all religions makes it end up including everything else too.

But "your group is a religion too" seems like a combination of confirmation bias and tu quoque fallacy.

They have chosen new religions and a new elite priesthood, they just have different names.

They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods [...]

They choose no religion.

> They are choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods

Do you have an example of such in the modern age? I don't really see many people I know "choosing religions that reject elite priesthoods"

Why do you assume these people are choosing religion at all?

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

The Economist published article in this week's edition contrasting the rise of the current left/right fervor to relative decline of the religious fervor. The accompanying image captures this really well - https://www.economist.com/img/b/1000/563/90/sites/default/fi....

The full article is here -https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/27/religious...

I'm not sure this is actually that good of an explanation. Europe has much lower levels of church attendance and doesn't have heavily partisan politics.

Interesting timing. The Atlantic had an article arguing the same thing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/america...

Now let's tax churches, like Frank Zappa suggested :)

I am from Brazil... To be honest this would be a complete disaster here.

1. My city main hospital, belongs to Catholic Church, same applies to many other cities.

2. Many of our leading universities, doing research and important work, belong to Catholic Church, notably PUC-RIO, the creators of Lua language.

3. Protestant churches here are the major organizations driving away drug dealers, some took the donations to build better light system in public parks, provide free food, counseling, and so on.

4. We have an hospital considered one of the best of world for certain treatments, to the point people from first world countries sometimes come here for this hospital, and it belongs to a Jewish organization.

And the list goes and goes on... a lot of public infrastructure here belongs to religious organizations, if the government taxed them the result would be the government suddenly needing to spend a ton of their own money replacing what these organizations are doing, and I doubt it would work well, for example the government-owned hospital in my city killed people more than once for stupid reasons (including giving penicilin to a guy that warned them he was allergic!), so the population rely on the catholic hospital instead.

EDIT: reading a sibling comment made me remember another important one: the religious organizations here are major drivers for cultural education, for example our public-owned orchestras are often filled with church-trained people, ditto for audio engineering, theather and many other "art"-related professions.

Given that corporations, which are taxed, have adopted totalizing ideologies that demand you "bring your whole self to work" and attend group therapy sessions, and that they are now ostentatiously "values-driven", I can see a point in not distinguishing between them and religions. Pretty soon they'll have us singing hymns and attending confession. I'd hate if, when they finally go all in on that, they get taxed less.

Ehhh Christian churches are some of the largest charitable donators in the world. Unless those taxes are going to the same places to help people I'd vote no. The government isn't going to spend it on things that help people and we know that.

My experience with religion came via Mark Twain.

"In high school or at some point in my high school years, I read Huck Finn. There was a part in the book where Huck has to save Jim and if he saves Jim, he knows the church has taught him that he will go Hell. Huck denies the teaching of the church and saves his friend."

The following is my recollection of the book, it might not be exactly accurate but it is the way I remember it and or want to remember. Keep in mind, I read this close 30 years ago, so I read it without our current revisionist/racists history perspective. Please try to take my comments and thoughts only in the light of religion.

I do remember that reading that passage or that part in the story, saying to myself. “FTS”! I can’t reconcile this in my conscience. Religion is definitely the opiate of the masses. Look no further than the last few US elections. At that point, I disavowed any organized religion and started listening to Bad Religion.

My Faith isn't based on rules--it's based on forgiveness. I believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins. Through that my past is washed clean and I'm able to directly communicate with my Heavenly Father and receive the gift of salvation. If you believe in Jesus Christ, it should change your behavior and you'll hopefully live with the fruits of the spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Faithfulness, Meekness, and self-control. Religion is the various rules and bureaucracy that we put on ourselves. Churches that promote rules and not living out your faith shouldn't be supported. I don't participate in a religion, I try to live my Faith and love others. I choose to participate in a church that supports community and loving others. We aren't meant to go through life on our own, I firmly believe that we need community and spiritual support.

As someone who is trying to find their personal beliefs (who also doesn't like religion) I really appreciate your comment.

Whenever I used to complain to my dad about how much I disagreed with 'religion' and churches, he always mentioned how 'religion' came from man, and since man is flawed it will follow.

It helps to shift one's focus on these principles of living rather than the establishments.

I grew up in a fundamentalist christian church. I'm now an agnostic deist (I don't know if god exists, but if he does, there doesn't appear to be much evidence that he intervenes much in his creation). My moral code has evolved and simplified from biblical to 'if it doesn't hurt anybody, it's fine'.

Frankly, I can't be bothered with any belief system which relies exclusively on a 2000 year old book and isn't measured by real world effects today.

Link to the actual Gallup article is better: https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...

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 weird.

Surveys like that are often designed to get a representative group. It's not like they call thousand people on random and keep their responses outright.

After a while a certain demographic will be "full" and as such the effort will be to get responses for the groups not adequately represented yet.

Or another way is to weigh the answers. If you get 90% responses from elderly and 10% from young, you cannot just use the average. But can use models to apply those groups' answers to how big the group is in the demographic of the country.

Much of the heartland is _very_ religious. Drive across the country and in the flyover states you'll see A LOT of anti-abortion/sin billboards.

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.

Maybe people are leaving church because they have started asking questions.

Not the kind of questions religion 'asks', which are answers in disguise.

The notion that people have suddenly become smarter or more objective or more rational has been blasted tume and time again, both by uncovering new past instances of rationality and by new blunders reminding us that it is our reason that evolved to serve our intincts, and thinking our reason is actually in charge is thus delusional. When people's physical needs are being met well, they become less religious. Look at relgious growth in undeveloped countries as an example. Those people aren't less intelligent than us, and if we point to education, we have data indicating our quality of education is decreasing while religious affiliation falls as well. Even with physical needs being met, people have certain needs that religons were meeting. We should be careful what part of aociety picks up meeting those needs. Politics? Yikes we know what happens when the passion and absolute certainty of religion gets infused into politics, we are seeing it now. Science? Belief harms science, science requires skepticism even of our best axioms to avoid dogma. Don't drown people who ask questions your theory can't answer. If we dont find a safe outlet for those residual needs, we are better off keeping religion around to fill them without giving it any temporal power.

Not all religions and churches are declining. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world[1].

In Europe is growing especially fast if compared to local demographics. Cyprus is 25% Muslim. France nearly 10%[2].

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/06/why-muslims...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Europe

I used to think that the lower church membership went, the better off we'd be as a nation, because we'd be more rational on average. I still think so, but I'm less hopeful now. The events of the last few years have called that idea into question, as the rampant irrationality that I used to associate with fundamentalists seems to have moved from the pulpit to the airwaves and now to social media.

Sadly, fundamentalism does not limit itself to religion. Yet no matter how much you draw the obvious parallels in the social/political sphere, the teams are decided and criticism of any kind labels you a heretic.

Fundamentalists lack critical self-awareness.

Edgy opinion: religion is useful for guiding the human inclination to look for causes and reasons. All people will believe all kinds of nonsense, some people fanatically, so it's useful to make sure these people have healthy outlets. Lower church membership may not be the atheist utopia one desires, especially in the west with our rampant and unapologetic individualism.

“God does not exist; but don’t tell my servant, lest he slit my throat in the night.” - Voltaire

Church, synagogue or mosque. Not just church.

Also how about updating the link to direct to the Gallup poll itself?

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

first time in 80 years, anyway.

for rather more of the 19th century than we think, regular church attendance was more like 35% of the country.

Thanks for pointing this out.

There's a big difference between church attendance and church membership... Unfortunately, the original linked article glosses over the difference, while the original Gallup study digs into it. According to Gallup, approximately half of the recent reduction in church membership can be attributed to people becoming less religious, while the other half is explained by people who still attend church regularly, but avoid formal "membership" in a congregation.

And, to your point, the historical data is very telling. My understanding is that the idea that basically everybody in the US used to be super religious and go to church all the time is largely a myth. In fact, I believe the high-water mark for US church attendance as a percentage of the population was actually around 1990. (Source: Sociologists of religion Rodney Stark / Roger Finke. Their book "The Churching of America" attempts to get historical stats on this question, and includes this graph: https://madeinamericathebook.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/fin...)

Take from these stats/trends what you will. Just adding some additional context to the discussion.

Any source for that?

membership != attendance. There's a joke somewhere about people who only attend church for their baptism and their funeral.

A post religious society might not be a better one.

Religious institutions bring a sense of community and belonging. They are a large powerhouse in many social programs. Heck most children likely are preschooled through religious institutions.

I fear that post religion we could very well end up worse off.

Hopefully the declines will continue so that we approach the levels in Scandinavia over the next few decades. Religion has been a force of oppression and division for far too long. It has negatively affected my life, to the point that I am nearly estranged from my parents due to religious conflict, so my loathing of it is perhaps more personal than most here.

400 years ago I would have been executed for my atheistic views. 200 years ago I would have been a social pariah. Today my views are largely accepted in silicon valley and among millenials and zoomers on the internet, though I still face discrimination in the bible belt where I happen to live. Progress is being made, however slowly it may seem at times.

Ten years ago I would have said this is a good thing. But now I’m actually terrified of whatever replaces religion for these people.

God is Santa for adults. The parents/relatives who tell the lie are the politicians and religious leaders.

If you do what we say you'll get heaven/presents, if you don't listen you get hell/coal.

These kids are not falling for it anymore.

I've never been religious but for 30+ years I always considered myself christian. If asked on such survey, I'd answer with the church I used to go twice a year for Christmas and Easter. One day I watched Ricky Gervais give interview on Cobert show (who's religios). And geez those jokes made me realize I'm actually and atheist. Now I would answer with no affiliation. From my friends observation, many are on the same edge, where practically they are gone from church, but may still show up on survey. In such cases those membership rates are going to drop a lot and fast.

I think astrology is the new religion taking over the world. So many people I know are into it right now, it's unbelievable. All explain-everything religions tend to end up incompatible with modern life if there isn't a nation state or compact community to support them. Astrology has less broad claims on explaining how the world works but seems to provide a lazy framework to think about people, to explain "Why are people doing what they do"? In this sense we really live in a post modern world : No grand narrative seems to be taking root any more.

I can only speak from experience about Christianity: I have found very few sects of christianity that don't have some mixture of 1. arbitrary claim to absolute certainty regarding the "Will of God" --Bible is inerrant, the denomination's understanding of it is inerrant, etc 2. Non-sensical "lesson-of-the-week" structure" where very few actually make any progress on any lesson 3. blind acceptance that the church has to be a functional business. the first one is the most hurtful -- the leaders offer certainty when certainty is far from possible. It amounts to "God gave you your brain, but it's mostly for decoration, you don't need to think when it comes to your faith, just accept what we tell you/is written." The business side can also be hurtful.

I was reading recently about scientists attempt to measure cognitive differences between the religious and non-religious -- by looking at things like math proficiency. I think that's really missing the impact of religion. Religion doesn't make you bad at math, but it likely makes you bad at 1. finances -- how much pct of your income are you regularly giving away? 2. philanthropy -- how much of that income really went to helping people vs church administration, continuing the Sunday lesson? 3. Political engagement -- i would hypothesize that being religious leads folks to more frequently vote against their own self-interests.

At the risk of sounding very cold-hearted I am very happy to see this happening.

At its core, belief in a higher power is magical thinking.

Considering the problems we face as a species, we can no longer afford magical thinking.

Great news. At some point, hopefully humanity will realize religions are the myths of our less enlightened ancestors and we can all move on to something more interesting and productive.

As a believer that Jesus is God and he controls the whole universe and the lives of all people, I am not too concerned about church membership percentages in a particular nation in history. Whoever God calls to be his children will follow him, and they will find each other. Jesus is the head of the church, and people who don't believe in him have no part in it. I would hope that unbelievers would hear the good news of Jesus and be drawn to him and have their hearts changed.

A lot of clever folks in here attempting to tailor the Emperor's new clothes.

As to whether church membership slipping below the 50% mark is a good or bad thing for America, I'm agnostic.

HN has a strong bias in the same direction as Malcolm Gladwell and the "well ackchually"s of the Internet.

This constant search for a counterintuitive result or explanation means that most comments on things just end up with a massive contrarian bias.

This makes sense. After all, no one is writing "oh cool" and no one is upvoting that.

I’d like to see a comparison between synagogue membership over time.

My wife and I are not actively religious but think it’s definitely a great framework and moral code. Particularly, it creates a community one can choose to leave or join of good people, working together for the common good of each other.

I grew up Lutheran and don’t necessarily believe in god, but I believe in the value code. Which is really what’s important. I think that’s what’s lacking these days, tbh.

I enjoyed my pretty low key episcopal church upbringing. There was very little dogmatism, and mostly it created a framework for community activities and service. Many of my friends in youth group were agnostic or atheist. And the church felt welcoming to everyone.

I wish something could replace this in my life. Something that felt softly mandatory that brought people together in a spirit of togetherness and service.

Do you mind if I ask why you aren't going to a church now? I had a very similar experience growing up involved in an Episcopalian church. I met a lot of interesting people who really cared about the community. Not long after I graduated and moved away, the church split over the introduction of Young Life (and their associated fundamentalist beliefs) as a replacement for the home-grown youth group.

It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned about my church's past. The priest there in the 80's molested kids who were part of the Boy Scout troop that met in the church's basement. Some church members found out, they contacted the diocese, and he was shuffled away to another state.

I was horrified. Older church members, people I had a great deal of respect for and spent most of my life looking up to, let him get away with it. They didn't go to the police, they went to the church, which allowed him to keep abusing children.

Looking for that sense of togetherness and community service, I've tried going to other churches since then. But deep in my mind, I know that all of the true believers will look the other way. The church I grew up in was a good influence on me and I met a lot of great people, but now that I'm getting close to having children of my own, I don't think there's any church I'd feel was right to take them to. The odds of anything awful happening are low, but knowing that these communities would not help them has completely turned me away.

I'm not a church-goer and now in my late thirties have seen many, including myself, have significant crises ending up therapy of some kind. Thankfully, these crises have all had successful and revelationary outcomes. Crises such as financial, relationship, burn-out, questioning purpose, depression. In all cases it's been a revelation for the people involved because they were simply unequipped to deal with the situation; didn't have the tools in their toolkit.

It dawned on me that as a kid I did go to church as part of school, and there I would receive almost daily "counselling", or at least broaching life issues, challenges and philosophical concepts regularly.

When not a church-goer, where does one get this same level of regular counselling, self-improvement or self-analysis? I'm not advocating religion though I feel like the concept of meeting regularly and talking about big issues is very positive, and I feel overlooked.

Bishop Barron had a good writeup on this in his meeting to the conference of US Bishops: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/article/the-usccb-meeti...

Bishop barron is great, as a practicing catholic strikes a great balance between the more liberal and traditional wings of the church.

For the life of me, I cannot remember his name and I cannot find a reference, but there is a post-war German theologian who celebrated the kind of personal Christianity that doesn't require a church hierarchy, arguing that acting independently with the values of the faith without being told what to do is the best outcome.

Well Martin Luther certainly qualifies, but I can't guess what war you have in mind that took place before 1517.

There is an idea of "God-shaped hole" that is an urge to have a belief in something transcendent or greater than oneself. As the organized religion is in decline, politics or activism seem to become a substitute that provides belief, sense of community, and a vision for improving the world. This also explains why there is so little rational discussion across the divide of the political spectrum in the US.

The same political views can come from observations and reasoning, or they can be ingrained as a belief and be a part of one's [group] identity. In the former case a rational discussion is possible. In the latter case it turns into a challenge of one's personal integrity and devolves into a fight of the righteous against the heretical other side.

Are there individual churches that are doing really well and bucking the trend?

Maybe an individual church can't tell us much about the broader trends, but it would be interesting to see if people are moving to more extreme churches, or more liberal, etc.

I grew up attending church weekly but never considering myself religious. As an adult I don't attend but it does leave a hole in my life. That hole is having forced social interactions with members of the community each week. Without church it's much harder to keep up with what everybody is doing, making connections, and networking.

It's very hard to organize and keep running secular social clubs. A lot of the infrastructure churches take for granted has to be managed manually and you're at the mercy of venue operators and have to do your own membership drives to get people to show up. It's a lot more work than most people expect.

Obviously the overrated part of church is the ceremony and mystique, and the past wrongs of the church.

The underrated part is the sense of community and communal energy... which even though I'm agnostic, I envy, and would consider going some day.

It maybe that I'm in my own personal bubble but it strikes me that so many people still invest a significant time and effort into propagating a delusional interpretation of reality. On some level I bear them no ill will, they are free to lead their lives in whatever way it brings meaning and fulfillment. However many people attending a Christian church seem to have aggressive opinion on how others should live their lives.

The biggest flaw with religion is their story of an afterlife without any proof or evidence. The consequence is that billions of followers of this delusion devalue the importance of their current biological existence, and that of others. They are told they will have an infinite and wondrous existence in a made up paradise. When this shared delusion is the dominant world view it leads to easily excusable murder and abuse of human beings. For example the genocides of indigenous people by European colonizers or slavery.

I suspect our ancestors in a thousands of years will look at this early childhood stage of humanity in shame and contempt for what cruelty this insanity allows.

Looks like I am the only person surprised that the membership is this high, even more so that it was in the 70% range just 20yrs ago.

I admit my guess is based on my interactions but I was expecting it to be in the 20-30% range.

If you are thinking of Christianity, this poll included Judaism and Islam. Christianity's numbers are around 33%.

I think a lot of people have thrown the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. There’s so much value in being spiritual but we get offended by the extremes of religion and toss it all away.

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 red state, their personality type would have been selected for and they would have become religious young life members rather than left wing activists. People who are right wing in the bay area, have more in common with those who were not religious in the midwest, going against the grain of society.

In short politics has become a modern religion and is replacing religion. And your personality type is being selected for, in your proclivity to join a group; either religious or political.

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. :)

People seek power, and God can be thought of as the highest form of power. Religion empowers some people by building a relationship between them and the supreme power of God. It also offers other empowering benefits like community, tradition and sense of purpose. But our will to power can be satisfied in many ways, and the opportunities for pursuing power have increased over time. Organized religion is being out-competed by alternative sources of satisfaction of the will to power.

As someone that grew up non religious I’m genuinely bewildered at the concept of (especially the Christian) God. I understand the sense of community and potential psychological benefits of “knowing”.

But in terms of truth seeking, how can something that has never been demonstrated and without any evidence be so widely believed? We have no evidence for the existence of any God, let alone any specific God. Yet so many people claim to know the will and desires of this being.

For the believers, why do you believe?

Rising standards of living seem to have correlation to suppression of religious instinct.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_instinct

I had difficulties understanding religion, until I had few religious experiences in the span of few years. Looking back, it was most definitely some sort of brain chemistry.

As environment becomes more stable, brain probably has less chances to get into religious channnels.

Not only that, this is self-reported info from a poll.[1] Self-reported church attendance in the US is about 2x higher than what churches report actually showing up. Adherents.com used to have statistics on this.

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

What will be interesting to observe is how the US adapts to the ongoing need for the dozens of community-gluing charity responsibilities churches have historically taken on in American towns and cities. As church membership diminishes, the resources to do those tasks also diminish.

They can certainly be taken on by other charities; I'm curious how frictionless that process will be.

Church membership i think ignores the fact about the explosion in alternative beliefs and practices.

For example, meditation, san pedro, ayahuasca use etc has exploded tremendously and I think there is a significant cross section of the former religious population that have found relief from daily hustle via these alternative non-denominational activities.

I think life, in general, is pretty good and has been in the U.S. As a result, it's not surprising to see the numbers decline over the years.

That said, religion isn't going anywhere. The metaphysical questions we have are still the same since the dawn of mankind.

I see religion as being a useful counterbalance to government power. I'm a little concerned how cultish politics is getting in the US. Racism is the new original sin. You can just call anyone racist to publicly condemn them as unforgivable sinners. I was very concerned about Churches being burned down in last year's Riots, the cult of personality around Trump, and the new woke culture that sees individuals as only members of some oppressed/oppressive group.

Transhumanism which I feel started with the abuse of steroids, is already upon us, and soon tech will give us the power to change and manipulate human DNA. Turns out many people don't like their bodies and would like to change them on mass. Will the changes have unforeseen consequences? Seems to me like things could go horribly wrong. The ultimate irony would be that we would end up looking like the depicted deformed and grotesque biblical demons. The obesity pandemic is already pushing many people that way. And thats probably a consequence of injesting too much plastic, and damaging hormone levels and pure gluttony.

I think at its best, Religion abstracts some useful concepts like humility, guilt, responsibility, and so on, into stories and parables and makes the insignificant individual feel like their life is important and part of a grander story. It adds the practice of rituals, and adds more exposure to art, music and community and self reflection, and reduces death anxiety. And it marks significant life milestones with community celebrations.

Is it better to be a realist, or is it better to add a layer of mental abstraction around reality. And feel like you are part of a (Movie) script and act accordingly.

Last thing one should want is to give religion power. People need better education, more tolerance and less judgement.

There's some interesting points made here. At the very least, I think there would be an immense value to society to add to our school curricula education about liking and taking care of our bodies.

Not just Health and Gym classes.

I grew up going to a Christian church: Sunday school when I was younger, then youth choir on Wednesday nights, then regular church service for a couple of years in my early teens. I sort of grew out of it as I got older, because as I started thinking about it more, it made less and less sense.

For example, I distinctly remember our youth group leader, who was the wife of the minister, saying in one of our classes that we have to fear God. I didn't get it, and asked her "Why are we supposed to fear someone that loves us?" She didn't have a good answer, because there isn't one; it's another one of those things the Bible says that makes no sense. At some point, for me, there were too many of those and I could no longer pretend that Christianity made sense.

To me, the Bible is a major problem for Christianity. If you believe the whole thing, it makes no sense. If you don't believe the whole thing, then it becomes a fragmenting thing where some groups pick and choose these parts and other groups pick and choose different parts. But once you go down the road of "I only believe part of it, you can't take it literally, la la la", you're on a very slippery slope.

The Bible is a story book, written by man. It has some good stories, some good advice, and some bad advice. There is no hard scientific evidence that any of the miraculous things that supposedly occurred really did occur.

Religious people believe that the Bible is the "word of God". One of my big problems with the Bible is that if it truly was the word of God, doesn't it seem reasonable that he would give us some clues about how we fit into the universe? I mean, our whole planet is a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things. If God invented all this, and the Bible is a sort of road map, wouldn't it make sense to talk a little about the other parts of the universe - the overwhelmingly huge part - and not just our little planet?

I went to a Protestant Christian school for 9 years and church until I was 16. As someone with learning disabilities, Tourette’s, and (at the time) gender identity issues; Christian’s made my life a living hell for things I had no control over.

I just came here to say that I really appreciate most of the civil discussion going on here on all sides. Doesn't seem entirely one-sided or extremely negative. Thanks everyone for keeping it that way!

I don't care about religions in general. It is not necessary to my daily operations, and I have no interests to have it intertwined with my life either.

Why would I assume there is some God anywhere anyway?

I’m not surprised and about time. Churches are taken over by the GOP propaganda and used as a blunt weapon to spread lies and false information by the GOP to steal their votes.

Just remember that the lake gets saltier the more it evaporates.

At least where I leave you're not allowed to go to church and haven't been for a year. I'm surprised the numbers are this high.

Curious about how high that number is for ethnic minorities. Anecdotally, minorities (black, Asian, Hispanic) tend to be more religious.

Serious question, how does anyone reconcile the fact that if there's a God, he's a total narcissist? How can a perfect all-father creator be such a narcissist wouldn't that be the opposite of what you'd imagine a god-figure to be?

Worship me, come to me, I'm the one and only, no other gods but me... everything happens because of me... worship me or else you'll go to hell.

All things I swear a cult leader or Donald Trump or any other narcissist in history would say to their followers and they'd eat it up because they just want someone to tell them how to get through life.

Just curious, would this slow down the rate of conversion to Christianity around the globe (India, Africa, etc)?

If Alan Watts or someone like him were speaking near me every Sunday, I'd be there every week.

It looks like the U.S. is running along a similar trend to the U.K. (and I'd guess many other countries, but I'm from the U.K.). Church attendance falls, followed by membership, followed by people considering themselves "religious".

One of the tricky things in the UK over the last 3 censuses has been accurately capturing this, so that government funding and policy can be best targeted. People think "I celebrate Christmas so I'm a Christian", while never attending church, not identifying with any particular type of Christianity, not being able to talk about the content of the Bible even in a very general sense, and only generally thinking that there's probably some sort of god or something, and hopefully an afterlife.

This was so ingrained that the British Humanist Association (I believe humanism in the US is very different, here it's a secular belief system) had a big campaign during the previous census (2011) titled "If you're not religious, for God's sake say so!".

Despite not going to church or really taking part in any organised religion, people really don't want to be non-religious. I think we could better recognise this sort of generic "spiritualism".

I'm amazed it was that high. Shows how much of a bubble I live in.

Maybe if they'd stop molesting children and protecting the molesters when it happens they'd have more members.

At this point if you're a member you're arguably complicit in some sick organization facilitating child abuse.

Good Riddance.

The need for motivating belief structures, community, ethical guidance, and so on aren't going anywhere.

At the same time we see the rise in tribal hyperpartisanship where the political ideology functions much like a religion.

There's no call out of how churches and places of worship / community were all shutdown through 2020 for fear of the virus.

Good!!! We can finally move forward as a species without the chains of religion.

Whether this is good or bad depends on what the substitute is.

Whatever it is, imo, intellectuals should be more involved in communities that cater to simpler folks. Otherwise, these often get co-opted by nefarious forces. See Qanon, Trumpism etc. Hopefully this is not people jumping to these.

So you've been burned by some folks at a church and you're struggling with the hypocrisy of the whole thing? A lot of us hear you, we’re sorry that happened to you, that stinks. Something inside you knows people aren't supposed to treat each other like that.

One thing to consider - the whole reason we have for knowing and understanding the person of Jesus Christ is because of those exact same types of people that hurt you. Jesus called out the leaders of the church in His time for doing all the kinds of things that are driving people like you away. In doing so, He made them so mad, they conspired with their sworn enemies to have Him killed.

"Well, anyway, I could never mindlessly worship someone who's so narcissistic he needs my uninterrupted attention."

Is that what God wants from you though? Repeated chants? Money? Have you considered a God that cares less about what you can do for Him and more about just being with you? Is it possible that someone who designed you knows what's best for your relationship - keeping you close to Him?

"Well, Christians believe in N and I'm !N, so no thanks."

Sure, I get it, we want a God that will love us for who we are - just the way we are. But sometimes we're more selective with our love without even asking the question "Yeah, God should love me, but do I love Him whatever way He is?" Are we willing to change any part of ourselves? The problem here is that if there is an intelligent God, He knows that anything we love more than Him becomes our god. Maybe that isn't the kind of relationship he's after. Maybe he wants our whole heart, not just a part.

And therein lies the issue, we aren't terribly loving to that kind of God, any of us. Most of us mess up constantly, and the most frequent way we do so is by hurting someone else He created and we elevate ourselves. That's the whole point. Look around, we're about 5 minutes from torching this whole thing to the ground. We blew it. And you know what? After all that, just like the day he was nailed to the cross - He forgives us, He still wants to give us a chance to make amends and draw near to Him.

Dear Internet stranger, shut down your IDE for 5 minutes and take some time this Easter to figure this out. Is it possible that God is near? That He wrote Himself into our story and happened to have the name Jesus? That He took the hit and died on a cross and He rose again to make your relationship with Him right? If God loves you, he's not going to drag you somewhere you don't want to go - that wouldn’t be love. Maybe forgiveness and a new start is holding out it's hand, but if it was, would you even be willing to consider it?

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.

Oh good, HN can finally settle all questions of religion and moralism.

My wife and MiL both stopped going to church and no longer will go to their old church due to it becoming a mouthpiece of Trump(ism).

Thank God!

I am interested in one more detail. average family income for all church members.

I have observed hindus, muslims, christians, jains. My observation so far is, religious fervor is directly to 2 factors.

1. is that religion a minority in a given state ? 2. whether you grew up in prosperity (not wealth, but above middle class)?

societies which are poor tend towards fundamentalism. religion gives some sort of escape place where poor might forget their harsh reality and usually its provides some sort of alt-reality that their after life is going to be good. rich people who already seen those comforts dont search for such answers.

Also, if that particular religion is minority in a country, the religion offers companionship and keep the group close. also, it forms the main identity of that group which is difficult to get away from.

for the above reasons, In india, there are a lot of atheist hindus, but not many athiest muslims or atheist christians.

Magical thinking will never die. Just look at Qanon, health and wellness, and Ruby vs. Python.

The Christian church has gone through an interesting time in 2020. Many churches have lost attendance as pastors closed their doors or tried to stay out of politics, while other stronger pastors who have kept their doors open despite lockdowns and are speaking up against the US government with respect to threats against religious freedom (eg see H.R. 5) -- those churches are stronger and more vibrant than ever.

Cultural politics has replaced religion. I'm sure if you did another poll, 90% of the US would say they are tightly aligned with a single political party and would not befriend/marry/hire someone of a different party. Tribalism and belief systems aren't going away, they're just changing the wallpaper.

If they threw in the religion of “Anti-Racism”, I’m guessing it’s closer to 100.

Human beings seem to need religion. If we find ourselves in a void, we just create new ones.

https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neorac...

As a practicing Catholic this is greatly troubling. I truly want all to be saved. I fear "progress" that so many non-religious people will tolerate and irreligious will promote. This is not new. Abortion has been pushed for decades and is the greatest sin of our age. Our generation will be looked back upon the same way we look back at slave holders/traders. Those who dehumanizing the vulnerable to the point were we can kill them because they are not persons. 60 million have been killed since legalization in the US.

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