what are the athiest doing to stop religion?
The idea of American exceptionalism has become then dubious that much of its modern usage is merely sarcastic. But when it comes to religion, Americans really are exceptional. No rich country prays most equally much every bit the U.S, and no country that prays every bit much as the U.S. is nearly as rich.
America's unique synthesis of wealth and worship has puzzled international observers and foiled their grandest theories of a global secular takeover. In the late 19th century, an array of glory philosophers—the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—proclaimed the death of God, and predicted that atheism would follow scientific discovery and modernity in the West, certain every bit smoke follows fire.
Stubbornly pious Americans threw a wrench in the secularization thesis. Deep into the 20th century, more than than nine in 10 Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the great majority of them calling themselves Christian. That number held steady—through the sexual-revolution '60s, through the rootless and anxious '70s, and through the "greed is good" '80s.
But in the early 1990s, the historical tether between American identity and organized religion snapped. Religious non-affiliation in the U.South. started to rise—and ascent, and ascent. Past the early on 2000s, the share of Americans who said they didn't associate with any established faith (also known as "nones") had doubled. Past the 2010s, this grab bag of atheists, agnostics, and spiritual dabblers had tripled in size.
History does non often give the satisfaction of a sudden and lasting turning signal. History tends to unfold in messy cycles—actions and reactions, revolutions and counterrevolutions—and even semipermanent changes are subtle and glacial. But the ascension of religious non-affiliation in America looks like one of those rare historical moments that is neither wearisome, nor subtle, nor cyclical. Yous might telephone call it exceptional.
The obvious question for anybody who spends at least two seconds looking at the graph above is: What the hell happened around 1990?
According to Christian Smith, a sociology and religion professor at the University of Notre Matriarch, America'south nonreligious lurch has mostly been the consequence of 3 historical events: the association of the Republican Party with the Christian right, the end of the Cold War, and nine/xi.
This story begins with the rise of the religious right in the 1970s. Alarmed by the spread of secular culture—including merely non express to the sexual revolution, the Roe v. Wade decision, the nationalization of no-fault divorce laws, and Bob Jones University losing its tax-exempt condition over its ban on interracial dating—Christians became more politically active. The GOP welcomed them with open up arms. The party, which was condign more dependent on its exurban-white base, needed a grassroots strategy and a policy platform. Within the next decade, the religious right—including Ralph Reed'due south Christian Coalition, James Dobson'south Focus on the Family, and Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority—had become fundraising and organizing juggernauts for the Republican Party. In 1980, the GOP social platform was a facsimile of conservative Christian views on sexuality, abortion, and school prayer.
The marriage betwixt the religious and political right delivered Reagan, Bush-league, and countless state and local victories. Just it disgusted liberal Democrats, especially those with weak connections to the Church building. It besides shocked the conscience of moderates, who preferred a broad berth betwixt their faith and their politics. Smith said information technology's possible that immature liberals and loosely affiliated Christians first registered their aversion to the Christian right in the early 1990s, later a decade of observing its powerful role in conservative politics.
Second, it may take felt unpatriotic to confess one's ambiguity toward God while the U.South. was locked in a geopolitical showdown with a godless Evil Empire. In 1991, however, the Common cold War concluded. Equally the UsS.R. dissolved, so did disbelief's clan with America's nemesis. After that, "nones" could be forthright about their religious indifference, without worrying that it made them sound like Soviet apologists.
Third, America's adjacent geopolitical foe wasn't a godless state. Information technology was a God-fearing, stateless move: radical Islamic terrorism. A series of bombings and attempted bombings in the 1990s by fundamentalist organizations such as al-Qaeda culminated in the 9/11 attacks. It would be a terrible oversimplification to suggest that the fall of the Twin Towers encouraged millions to leave their church, Smith said. But over time, al-Qaeda became a useful referent for atheists who wanted to argue that all religions were inherently destructive.
Meanwhile, during George Due west. Bush'south presidency, Christianity's association with unpopular Republican policies drove more immature liberals and moderates away from both the party and the Church. New Atheists, such every bit Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, became intellectual celebrities; the 2006 best seller American Theocracy argued that evangelicals in the Republican coalition were staging a quiet coup that would plunge the country into disarray and financial ruin. Throughout the Bush presidency, liberal voters—especially white liberal voters— discrete from religion in always-higher numbers.
Religion has lost its halo event in the past three decades, non because science collection God from the public square, merely rather because politics did. In the 21st century, "not religious" has get a specific American identity—i that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the bourgeois, evangelical right.
Other social forces, which have little to do with geopolitics or partisanship, have played a cardinal role in the rise of the nones.
The Church is just ane of many social institutions—including banks, Congress, and the police—that have lost public trust in an age of elite failure. Just scandals in the Cosmic Church have accelerated its particularly rapid loss of moral stature. According to Pew research, 13 percent of Americans today self-identify as "onetime Catholics," and many of them leave organized faith altogether. And equally the ranks of the nones take swelled, it'due south get more socially acceptable for casual or rare churchgoers to tell pollsters that they don't especially identify with any organized religion. Information technology's also become easier for nones to meet, marry, and heighten children who grow up without whatsoever real religious attachment.
Nor does Smith rule out the familiar antagonists of commercialism and the net in explaining the popularity of non-affiliation. "The former has made life more precarious, and the latter has made it easier for anxious individuals to build their own spiritualities from ideas and practices they find online," he said, such as Buddhist meditation guides and atheist Reddit boards.
Most of import has been the dramatic changes in the American family. The past half century has dealt a series of torso blows to American spousal relationship. Divorce rates spiked in the '70s through the '90s, following the state-by-state spread of no-fault divorce laws. But as divorce rates stabilized, the union charge per unit started to plummet in the '80s, due to both the decline of marriage within the working class and delayed union among college-educated couples.
"At that place'southward historically been this package: Get married, go to church or temple, have kids, send them to Sunday school," Smith said. But just every bit stable families make stable congregations, family instability can destabilize the Church. Divorced individuals, unmarried parents, and children of divorce or single-parent households are all more than likely to disassemble over time from their congregations.
Finally, the phenomenon of "delayed adulthood" might be some other subtle correspondent. More Americans, especially college graduates in big metro areas, are putting off wedlock and childbearing until their 30s, and are using their 20s to found a career, date around, and relish existence immature and single in a city. By the fourth dimension they settle down, they accept established a routine—work, brunch, gym, appointment, drink, football—that leaves little room for weekly Mass. "They know who they are by 30, and they don't feel similar they demand a church to tell them," Smith said.
The rise of the nones shows no signs of slowing downwardly. In fact, the religious identity that seems to be doing the best job at both retaining quondam members and attracting new ones is the newfangled American religion of Nothing Much at All.
Does the rise of the nones thing?
Let's first consider the possibility that it doesn't. As America'south youth have slipped away from organized faith, they haven't quite fallen into wickedness. If anything, today's immature people are uniquely conscientious—less likely to fight, drink, utilise hard drugs, or accept premarital sex activity than previous generations. They might not exist able to quote from the Book of Matthew, but their economic and social politics—which insist on protections for the politically meek and the historically persecuted—aren't then far from a certain reading of the beatitudes.
Simply the liberal politics of immature people brings us to the showtime big reason to care about rising non-affiliation. A gap has opened upwards between America'southward ii political parties. In a twist of fate, the Christian right entered politics to relieve religion, only to make the Christian-Republican nexus unacceptable to millions of young people—thus accelerating the country's turn against faith.
Although it would be wrong to call Democrats a secular party (older black voters are highly religious and dependably vote Democratic), the left today has a college share of religiously unaffiliated voters than anytime in modernistic history. At the same fourth dimension, the average religiosity of white Christian Republicans has gone up, co-ordinate to Robert P. Jones, the CEO of the polling firm PRRI and the author of The Finish of White Christian America. Evangelicals experience so embattled that they've turned to a deeply immoral and disciplinarian champion to protect them—even if it means rendering unto an American Caesar whatever the hell he wants. American politics is at adventure of becoming a state of war of religiosity versus secularism past proxy, where both sides see the other equally a catastrophic political strength that must exist destroyed at all costs.
The deeper question is whether the sudden loss of faith has social consequences for Americans who opt out. Secular Americans, who are familiar with the ways that traditional faiths have betrayed modern liberalism, may non have examined how religion has historically offered solutions to their modernistic existential anxieties.
Making friends as an adult without a weekly congregation is hard. Establishing a weekend routine to soothe Sunday-afternoon nerves is hard. Reconciling the overwhelming sense of life's importance with the universe's ostensible indifference to homo suffering is hard.
Although belief in God is no panacea for these bug, organized religion is more than a theism. It is a parcel: a theory of the globe, a community, a social identity, a ways of finding peace and purpose, and a weekly routine. Those, like me, who have largely rejected this package deal, often find themselves shopping à la carte du jour for pregnant, community, and routine to fill up a religion-shaped void. Their politics is a religion. Their work is a religion. Their spin course is a church. And not looking at their phone for several consecutive hours is a Sabbath.
American nones may well build successful secular systems of belief, purpose, and community. Simply imagine what a devout laic might call up: Millions of Americans have abandoned religion, only to re-create it everywhere they wait.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/atheism-fastest-growing-religion-us/598843/
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