Is America Still A God-Fearing Nation?
Oh yes, according to a Baylor University study:
There's great news for conservatives in this, since the drift is notably away from churches that have become more left-wing and secular and toward the more conservative evangelical churches.
Of course, the GOP will only benefit to the extent that they stop treating the truly religious as mildly-retarded distant relations.
IS AMERICA GETTING MORE SECULAR? Not according to a new survey on Americans' religious beliefs, "American Piety in the 21st Century," published this month by Baylor University. According to the Baylor survey, 82 percent of Americans are Christians, 90 percent believe in God, 70 percent pray regularly, and half attend church at least once a month.
If Baylor is correct, Americans are demographically as religious, and as Christian, as they ever have been. But their denominational affiliations have become somewhat less structured. Less likely now to be Methodist or Lutheran, they are drifting towards more informal forms of evangelical Christianity.
There's great news for conservatives in this, since the drift is notably away from churches that have become more left-wing and secular and toward the more conservative evangelical churches.
Of course, the GOP will only benefit to the extent that they stop treating the truly religious as mildly-retarded distant relations.
posted by Teflon at 4:58 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Teflon, choose any mainstream denomination you wish. Modern secularism has set its religious orthodoxy adrift.
What never before would be honestly questioned is not only being challenged, but occaisionally overturned. The very fact that so many denominations even exist is their obvious downfall, in my opinion, because it suggests inherent errors of their uncommon denominators. In that sense Islamists and their umma seem attractive to masses.
Christian children of the future must inherit a steadier beacon of faith than that secular confusion of protestantism, America's modulus of Catholicism, or Islam's barbaric crescent.
Vig-
I think your point would be enhanced were Islam not itself so fractionalized. Aside from the two major delineations of Sunni and Shi'a, you've got a host of splinter sects such as the Wahabbis. The Islamic "advantage" as it were is basic fundamentalism and a commingling of church and state not seen in the West since the 19th century. Islam never had an Enlightenment.
In a West increasingly culturally hostile to religion, fundamentalist religions have a leg up.
While WG and I also lament Christian fragmentation, the larger issue is Christians of all denominations flexing their political muscles to roll back the secularism that the Islamists now exploit. We have replaced tolerant Christianity with intolerant atheism as our official religion, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority of Americans are Christians.
Unless we intend to mint more jihadists as more and more Americans yearning for the spiritual turn away in disgust from secularized churches, that is.
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