What's really hurting Christianity in America (It ain't us!)

[onager]

I'm still thinking about this article. Found it at Dawkins.net the other day, but the link is to the full original piece in the L.A.TIMES last week.

Charlie responded to one of my posts by saying "Generation Internet thinks Christianity is clownshoes." The article seems to bear that out.

What's really hurting Christianity in America
A grand combination of secure prosperity, mass consumerism and advanced technology is deeply eroding Western faith.
October 27, 2010 - by Gregory Paul

...Americans, especially the youngest generations, are rapidly losing a lot of their faith. The nonreligious are far and away the fastest-growing group, with nonbelievers having tripled as a portion of the general population since the 1960s and nonreligious twentysomethings doubling in just two decades...

The now dominant corporate-consumer culture has driven the religious right into a shrinking parallel culture that most young Westerners see as pathetically square (for similar reasons, young Americans are reluctant to become "tea partyers," and the tricorner hats do not help).

That a grand combination of secure prosperity, mass consumerism and advanced technology is deeply eroding Western faith means that there is not much that organized religion can do to stem, much less reverse, the losses.

Nor is there any reason to think that a less politically strident form of Christianity will do any better than it already is. What is ironic is that the Republican political alliance of the religious right with corporate interests has been a deal with the capitalist devil, which has been laughing its way to the bank as religion fades in the West.


http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/27/opinion/la-oew-paul-religion-secularism-20101027

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

1. They're working on that. First, the prosperity. -nt

[Odin2005]

2. I have a problem with with "Corporate-Consumerist Culture" assertion.

It smacks of a variation on the "Atheists have no values" shitck.

[jmm]

3. That stood out to me too.

Mega church/"gospel of prosperity" Christians do more to encourage corporate consumerist culture than any atheists I've ever known.

[yellerpup]

4. We spend so much time teaching our children about

fairness and yet there is very little equity in life in the US and hypocrisy abounds. It was only a matter of time and the removal of torture as a tool of conversion plus 500 or so years until we were able to shed our fear of god and start trusting our intellect and our own good natures again.