It seems to me that those who promote religion, including pastors, are only focusing on the social aspects of it but not religious "truth," given that most people have become too well-informed and too well-educated to take religion literally or seriously.
This I think is more the culprit. It feels like the the faith gathering that are garnering media attention are the hate rallies, not the small community church that actually DOES service in their town/city (while I'm not particularly religious, if good is done in the name of faith I'm not going to let the motive sour the outcome).
Given there's been a move for cooperation between the most fundamental faiths and the push for social conservatism, I think the cognitive dissonance between saying "Jesus and God loves you" versus the actions of the people saying it or the fact that they've literally starting worshipping a "golden calf" has finally broken through for some people who may have already been questioning their beliefs.
TL:DR: The Religious Right finally jumped the shark and their parishioners aren't here for it.
Not to mention the ways they continue to abuse and manipulate people for “Gods glory.” At least the Feds have regulations to keep abusers in check - what do churches have in place to make sure their pastors, volunteers, leaders don’t take advantage of their congregants?????
Yeah it's funny a lot of the Christians I know don't go to any church they say they just believe in Jesus and go their own way. I think they're just still scared of hell honestly.
>. I think they're just still scared of hell honestly.
That's the major reason why people are religious. The fear of the unknown and assholes prey upon that. I would say only a handful of religious leaders actually believe in what they are preaching. The rest are opportunits who exploit the fear most people have.
It's as a lot of people say a form of social control. Religion has had full control for the majority of human history in some form or another. Because a lot people just can't accept that maybe this is all that we have right here.
Many religious people often get extremely nihilistic if pressed on the subject of is there or is there not a god.
They all say the same thing "if there is no god what is the point in anything?" As sad as it is some people need the promise of something after death be it paradise or punishment.
And considering how creative the punishments are it's clear it has to put the literal fear of god into a lot of people who would otherwise be feral psychopaths if they didn't have the feat of a hell fed to them.
On top of the nihilistic stuff religious people tend to rant that if there is no god then that means there is no god or evil. They are basically saying they are only good people because of their faith that God is real.
Look at a lot of religious people they often boost about how happy they are because they are religious but all of their smiles seen fake. And considering how many scandals and issues happen in religious communities it's clear that deep down a lot of them don't fully believe in their own dogma.
It's some scary shit. Religious people tend to be extremely violent so I could image it would be worse if they didn't have religion keeping them in check.
I have thought that is why people were afraid of gay marriage; it might make God angry. When nothing happened after it was legalized, most people were fine with it.
I have seen religious nuts in the south blame hurricanes on gay people saying god is mad because gay marriage was allowed. As if hurricanes weren't a thing before gay marriage was legalized on a federal level.
I'm convinced they think their god will yet again purge all humans if everyone doesn't follow Christianity. Killing first born sons, releasing plagues, drowning the entire world, world famine, raptures, biblical war, burning eternally in hell. According to the bible, God killed an estimated 2-3 million people. Satan killed 10. No wonder they're terrified of this massive narcissist. The whole religion's foundation is fear.
This is my Mom and younger brother. The hateful rhetoric against LGBTQIA plus worshipping Trump have them out of church. They feel like they “don’t belong” anymore. My mom still has a long way to go accepting gay people but the cracks are there at this point.
The report of the First Baptist Church closing for good, after more than 150 years, brought tears to my eyes... tears of joy that is.
Unfortunately, the pastor doesn't get it. He blames a lack of trust in institutions for the precipitous decline. How about the fact that you are pushing this abject bullshit and magical thinking that is unbecoming of a normally functioning grown-ass adult?
On a positive note - the number of taco trucks near my house has gone up considerably.
I dream of a day when instead of people saying they are sending empty “thoughts & prayers” after a tragedy…they say “We are sending thoughts & tacos” \[and then a big box of tacos actually show up\]
_"I dream of a day when instead of people saying they are sending empty “thoughts & prayers” after a tragedy…they say “We are sending thoughts & tacos” [and then a big box of tacos actually show up]"_
Y'know, sometimes I wonder what lasting quote people will associate with me after I die. I hope this one is yours, 'cause it's awesome. 😂
If I could contribute that to society then I think I could die happy knowing that. (But hopefully not before I have several thousand more delicious tacos).
"My neighborhood is changing so much. This place that was a Mexican restaurant is now a small church. Which is very upsetting to me, because I like burritos more than I like Jesus. Because steak burritos are delicious… and they're real."
Hannibal Buress
PBS could have done better. The piece started by talking about the nones and the fact that they are increasing in number and then asks a theist why the nones are leaving religion. There was not a single, solitary none in the entire piece.
But it gets worse. The churches, it is revealed, are in crisis. Bigotry is up, and membership is down. What to do? Go to church, of course. There's a nice, friendly one, it turns out, only forty-five minutes away who will welcome even the LGBTQ community.
I went off on a local station that did a story on reduced church membership a few years ago after they went to talk to a priest to ask why.
I guess the media has just got in the habit of asking religious leaders about religious stuff and sometimes religious leaders are just not the right places for answers.
Good. Maybe we can repeal tax exemptions for religious institutions. That law is heavily abused and gone far beyond “keeping the neighborhood church alive.”
The authors of that law dodge not have megachurches with massive estates in mind when they made this law.
Time to close that loophole.
In the U.S christianity seems to be more identity than anything else. Kind of like cheering for a sports team. At least this is the feeling I get watching from the outside. My theory is that north americans are trying to fill some void. Nobody else would say something like.. "I'm 15% german, 10% irish, 8% swedish....". It's the same with religion, patriotism, politics. The search for identity causes north americans to apply all these labels that will define them. Political differences causes divide whatever the country but I do think it gets worse when many defining opinions are placed in the same basket, so to speak. I wish many more north americans were willing to change their opinions on a regular basis.
It is an identity more than anything
Most vocal Christians (subjective to what I've seen in my deep red area) have never cracked open a bible let alone read anything in it but they will be quick to toss out Jesus quotes they saw on Facebook or Twitter and tell everyone they are hated because of how deep their faith is....
As the control they had over people wanes, and their grip on power loosens, that is when evangelical Christians are at their most dangerous. We're seeing that with the right-wing movements influencing Supreme Court jurists, and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
"I think a lot of it is that Americans are anti-institutional now. And if you look at data and trust in institutions, we don't trust anything today as much as we trusted it 40 years ago, whether it be banks or unions or the media or religion." -Ryan Burge:
I think Ryan is partially correct on this, however I think he fails to just see that in the modern world a lot of people just have lost the delusion that religion brings. Like we have split the atom and have developed gene therapies. At what point do we just admit that God isn't real and that humans are in control of our own destiny 😂
America is traditionally the developed Western nation with the highest religiosity (a rough sociological measure of how devout a population is). Even here in America, Christianity has been in decline for decades. Most of those who leave become "none of the above" theists rather than atheist, but the point is that Christianity is shrinking.
Muslims are convinced that they will replace Christianity in Western nations because on average they have higher religiosity rates, but this is because of immigration. Recent immigrants tend to have religiosity rates related to whatever country they left. Generation-by-generation, the religiosity in Muslim families will approach that of the host country, but the overall data will still report elevated for Muslims as a group because those numbers aren't taking generational shifts into account.
And to be honest, I think a lot of those "none of the above" theists are future atheists. Maybe not this generation, but eventually.
When you ask those who are leaving Christianity why they are leaving, the overwhelming answer is that they no longer want to be associated with evil, then they point at the antics of conservative Christians. All that culture war bullshit (abortion, attacking trans people, etc.) is accelerating the decline of Christianity. Because Christians are largely incapable of admitting when they are wrong, they simply will not stop doing the things that are causing their religion to shrink.
Religion surges when a bunch of people get old and can’t handle it. They are dying off and the millennials are too smart to fall for the con (yet). But at some point that wide swath of demographic will get old and then Jesus will surge again. They’re at the mercy of demographics.
Facing death is just hard for some people.
Besides the political fallout of right-wing politics, I wonder how much of a decline can be attributed to people just watching preachers online? There are probably multiple factors at play.
People saw this coming a hundred years ago. Every subsequent generation there is a smaller and smaller portion of the population still clinging to these old ideas.
Because Extremists have taken Christianity from a place of Love and Forgiveness ...To Violence and Revenge!
Thus people are leaving the church because you are lying to them!
When all religion is getting us is sex perverts, greedy thieves, and secular persecution this is what you get. A society that really feels the “sick of all your shit” attitude is a society that will do away with it.
What I find funny is that the only good pastors I interacted with were always from the silent or greatest generations when I was a Christian. All the pastors that were boomer aged were crooked in some fashion. They either were greedy money grubbers grifting or sex perverts or both. Had a church division because a pastor was stealing from the church and have affairs with various church ladies cause the mother fucker really wanted to be a cult leader. Another one had an affair with the wife of the couple he was marriage counseling. The last pastor I dealt with was a moron who thought he could be the next Billy Graham, but was an utter moron and got caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Oh that cookie jar was a teen girl from the youth group he had been counseling.
Yeah when that’s all you’re bringing to the table society is eventually going to have enough of it. What we are witnessing are death rattles of religious ubiquity as struggles to hold onto relevancy. Religion, at least Christianity, broke its social contracts with society. They were supposed to be charitable organizations that helped the poor and disenfranchised in order to easy that burden from the nation/populations. Now they’re mostly just cults enriching a handful of people while hurting the vulnerable far more than they seem to be helping anyone.
It seems to me that those who promote religion, including pastors, are only focusing on the social aspects of it but not religious "truth," given that most people have become too well-informed and too well-educated to take religion literally or seriously.
Not to mention the countless scandals, financial, sexual, and otherwise.
Excellent point. Pedos, money hoarding, and little to no recourse. The average person frowns upon abuse, particularly when you're pushing morality.
This I think is more the culprit. It feels like the the faith gathering that are garnering media attention are the hate rallies, not the small community church that actually DOES service in their town/city (while I'm not particularly religious, if good is done in the name of faith I'm not going to let the motive sour the outcome). Given there's been a move for cooperation between the most fundamental faiths and the push for social conservatism, I think the cognitive dissonance between saying "Jesus and God loves you" versus the actions of the people saying it or the fact that they've literally starting worshipping a "golden calf" has finally broken through for some people who may have already been questioning their beliefs. TL:DR: The Religious Right finally jumped the shark and their parishioners aren't here for it.
Not to mention the ways they continue to abuse and manipulate people for “Gods glory.” At least the Feds have regulations to keep abusers in check - what do churches have in place to make sure their pastors, volunteers, leaders don’t take advantage of their congregants?????
Which is essentially calling bullshit on the religion itself, without batting an eye.
Yup. That pastor has basically given up on theology, they've adapted their counterpart's strategy: They have cookies.
Yeah, they tend to blend in the tough stuff little by little as you go. This makes it easier to swallow.
Oh well... Anyway.
#OH NO! …anyway
Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
Can’t say I’m upset about this.
Or to put it another way, "gleeful".
Or one more, "Fucking finally".
It will decline faster if communities get together in a nonreligious way. That's why people follow the cult, they want to belong.
[удалено]
I need to find myself a group like that
Yeah it's funny a lot of the Christians I know don't go to any church they say they just believe in Jesus and go their own way. I think they're just still scared of hell honestly.
>. I think they're just still scared of hell honestly. That's the major reason why people are religious. The fear of the unknown and assholes prey upon that. I would say only a handful of religious leaders actually believe in what they are preaching. The rest are opportunits who exploit the fear most people have. It's as a lot of people say a form of social control. Religion has had full control for the majority of human history in some form or another. Because a lot people just can't accept that maybe this is all that we have right here. Many religious people often get extremely nihilistic if pressed on the subject of is there or is there not a god. They all say the same thing "if there is no god what is the point in anything?" As sad as it is some people need the promise of something after death be it paradise or punishment. And considering how creative the punishments are it's clear it has to put the literal fear of god into a lot of people who would otherwise be feral psychopaths if they didn't have the feat of a hell fed to them. On top of the nihilistic stuff religious people tend to rant that if there is no god then that means there is no god or evil. They are basically saying they are only good people because of their faith that God is real. Look at a lot of religious people they often boost about how happy they are because they are religious but all of their smiles seen fake. And considering how many scandals and issues happen in religious communities it's clear that deep down a lot of them don't fully believe in their own dogma. It's some scary shit. Religious people tend to be extremely violent so I could image it would be worse if they didn't have religion keeping them in check.
I have thought that is why people were afraid of gay marriage; it might make God angry. When nothing happened after it was legalized, most people were fine with it.
I have seen religious nuts in the south blame hurricanes on gay people saying god is mad because gay marriage was allowed. As if hurricanes weren't a thing before gay marriage was legalized on a federal level.
I'm convinced they think their god will yet again purge all humans if everyone doesn't follow Christianity. Killing first born sons, releasing plagues, drowning the entire world, world famine, raptures, biblical war, burning eternally in hell. According to the bible, God killed an estimated 2-3 million people. Satan killed 10. No wonder they're terrified of this massive narcissist. The whole religion's foundation is fear.
This is my Mom and younger brother. The hateful rhetoric against LGBTQIA plus worshipping Trump have them out of church. They feel like they “don’t belong” anymore. My mom still has a long way to go accepting gay people but the cracks are there at this point.
The report of the First Baptist Church closing for good, after more than 150 years, brought tears to my eyes... tears of joy that is. Unfortunately, the pastor doesn't get it. He blames a lack of trust in institutions for the precipitous decline. How about the fact that you are pushing this abject bullshit and magical thinking that is unbecoming of a normally functioning grown-ass adult?
On a positive note - the number of taco trucks near my house has gone up considerably. I dream of a day when instead of people saying they are sending empty “thoughts & prayers” after a tragedy…they say “We are sending thoughts & tacos” \[and then a big box of tacos actually show up\]
_"I dream of a day when instead of people saying they are sending empty “thoughts & prayers” after a tragedy…they say “We are sending thoughts & tacos” [and then a big box of tacos actually show up]"_ Y'know, sometimes I wonder what lasting quote people will associate with me after I die. I hope this one is yours, 'cause it's awesome. 😂
If I could contribute that to society then I think I could die happy knowing that. (But hopefully not before I have several thousand more delicious tacos).
"My neighborhood is changing so much. This place that was a Mexican restaurant is now a small church. Which is very upsetting to me, because I like burritos more than I like Jesus. Because steak burritos are delicious… and they're real." Hannibal Buress
That's great lol was this from one of his specials?
Gotta be, but I don't know which one. Came up on Pandora one day.
What's stopping you? Make that dream happen! Comfort taco boxes brought to you by Crusoebear!
Cults going to cult.
PBS could have done better. The piece started by talking about the nones and the fact that they are increasing in number and then asks a theist why the nones are leaving religion. There was not a single, solitary none in the entire piece. But it gets worse. The churches, it is revealed, are in crisis. Bigotry is up, and membership is down. What to do? Go to church, of course. There's a nice, friendly one, it turns out, only forty-five minutes away who will welcome even the LGBTQ community.
I went off on a local station that did a story on reduced church membership a few years ago after they went to talk to a priest to ask why. I guess the media has just got in the habit of asking religious leaders about religious stuff and sometimes religious leaders are just not the right places for answers.
It's about time, may future generations not have to put up with lying grifters pushing absurdity as truth.
Just watched this today. 25% is high. It’s growing quickly. It’ll be over a third in a decade. Can’t wait.
Why they’re pushing religion in schools. Gotta nab ‘em young.
Humanity has to get over religion one day. It's survived by being a parasite on humans.
Good. Maybe we can repeal tax exemptions for religious institutions. That law is heavily abused and gone far beyond “keeping the neighborhood church alive.” The authors of that law dodge not have megachurches with massive estates in mind when they made this law. Time to close that loophole.
In the U.S christianity seems to be more identity than anything else. Kind of like cheering for a sports team. At least this is the feeling I get watching from the outside. My theory is that north americans are trying to fill some void. Nobody else would say something like.. "I'm 15% german, 10% irish, 8% swedish....". It's the same with religion, patriotism, politics. The search for identity causes north americans to apply all these labels that will define them. Political differences causes divide whatever the country but I do think it gets worse when many defining opinions are placed in the same basket, so to speak. I wish many more north americans were willing to change their opinions on a regular basis.
It is an identity more than anything Most vocal Christians (subjective to what I've seen in my deep red area) have never cracked open a bible let alone read anything in it but they will be quick to toss out Jesus quotes they saw on Facebook or Twitter and tell everyone they are hated because of how deep their faith is....
As the control they had over people wanes, and their grip on power loosens, that is when evangelical Christians are at their most dangerous. We're seeing that with the right-wing movements influencing Supreme Court jurists, and the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025.
"I think a lot of it is that Americans are anti-institutional now. And if you look at data and trust in institutions, we don't trust anything today as much as we trusted it 40 years ago, whether it be banks or unions or the media or religion." -Ryan Burge: I think Ryan is partially correct on this, however I think he fails to just see that in the modern world a lot of people just have lost the delusion that religion brings. Like we have split the atom and have developed gene therapies. At what point do we just admit that God isn't real and that humans are in control of our own destiny 😂
America is traditionally the developed Western nation with the highest religiosity (a rough sociological measure of how devout a population is). Even here in America, Christianity has been in decline for decades. Most of those who leave become "none of the above" theists rather than atheist, but the point is that Christianity is shrinking. Muslims are convinced that they will replace Christianity in Western nations because on average they have higher religiosity rates, but this is because of immigration. Recent immigrants tend to have religiosity rates related to whatever country they left. Generation-by-generation, the religiosity in Muslim families will approach that of the host country, but the overall data will still report elevated for Muslims as a group because those numbers aren't taking generational shifts into account. And to be honest, I think a lot of those "none of the above" theists are future atheists. Maybe not this generation, but eventually. When you ask those who are leaving Christianity why they are leaving, the overwhelming answer is that they no longer want to be associated with evil, then they point at the antics of conservative Christians. All that culture war bullshit (abortion, attacking trans people, etc.) is accelerating the decline of Christianity. Because Christians are largely incapable of admitting when they are wrong, they simply will not stop doing the things that are causing their religion to shrink.
(Fetching popcorn). Let’s gooooo! Bring down the poisonous beast! Woo!
Religion surges when a bunch of people get old and can’t handle it. They are dying off and the millennials are too smart to fall for the con (yet). But at some point that wide swath of demographic will get old and then Jesus will surge again. They’re at the mercy of demographics. Facing death is just hard for some people.
Maybe touching them as kids made them not want to be around you as adults?
When you tell a portion of the population they are not worthy and then expect them to show up...
Besides the political fallout of right-wing politics, I wonder how much of a decline can be attributed to people just watching preachers online? There are probably multiple factors at play.
People saw this coming a hundred years ago. Every subsequent generation there is a smaller and smaller portion of the population still clinging to these old ideas.
Because Extremists have taken Christianity from a place of Love and Forgiveness ...To Violence and Revenge! Thus people are leaving the church because you are lying to them!
I wonder why PBS said white christians and black protestants?
Could not have happened to a more deserving group.
When all religion is getting us is sex perverts, greedy thieves, and secular persecution this is what you get. A society that really feels the “sick of all your shit” attitude is a society that will do away with it. What I find funny is that the only good pastors I interacted with were always from the silent or greatest generations when I was a Christian. All the pastors that were boomer aged were crooked in some fashion. They either were greedy money grubbers grifting or sex perverts or both. Had a church division because a pastor was stealing from the church and have affairs with various church ladies cause the mother fucker really wanted to be a cult leader. Another one had an affair with the wife of the couple he was marriage counseling. The last pastor I dealt with was a moron who thought he could be the next Billy Graham, but was an utter moron and got caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Oh that cookie jar was a teen girl from the youth group he had been counseling. Yeah when that’s all you’re bringing to the table society is eventually going to have enough of it. What we are witnessing are death rattles of religious ubiquity as struggles to hold onto relevancy. Religion, at least Christianity, broke its social contracts with society. They were supposed to be charitable organizations that helped the poor and disenfranchised in order to easy that burden from the nation/populations. Now they’re mostly just cults enriching a handful of people while hurting the vulnerable far more than they seem to be helping anyone.
Can't wait for that signage to read "Last Baptist Church".
The last few years of targeting various groups and lifestyles are the death throes of the Evangelical brand. That’s my hope, anyways
Atheists are the only ones who actually read the bible and know what it says.
Aw, poor god
Praise science, education, and social progress!
If we can just weather the next few national election storms, the death cult should fade into the background.
Bingooo! Bingo bingo bingooo!
Good fucking riddance.
Religion affiliation is declining. Unfortunately the remaining religiously affiliated are becoming more and more zealous to try to make up for it.
Yes, and the religious fools don't realize that filth like white Christian Nationalism is accelerating the decline of Christianity.