Courtesy of
The Guardian:
Even in the deep South, the Republican base of white evangelical Christians is shrinking – and in some traditional conservative redoubts like Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky, it’s declined as a percentage of the population by double digits. Even Alabama is becoming less Christian. Meanwhile, there’s been a corresponding increase in the religiously unaffiliated, who tend to vote more Democratic. While the effect on evangelicals is new, the general pattern isn’t. The Catholic church, the largest single religious denomination in America, was the first to feel the pinch. Church leaders and Catholic apologists have been fretting for years over the problem of aging and shrinking congregations, declining attendance at Mass and fewer people signing up to become priests or nuns – although their proposals for how to solve the problem all consist of tinkering around the edges, or insisting that they need to try harder to convince people to believe as they do. America’s next-largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, held out a bit longer but has now come down with the same affliction. Membership has been declining for the last several years – to the point where half of SBC churches will close their doors by 2030 if current trends persist. And as with the Catholic church, the SBC defenders with the biggest platforms have insisted that they don’t need to change anything if they just double down on their existing policies and pray harder for revival. What’s driving the steady weakening of Christianity? The answer, it would seem, is demographic turnover. The so-called millennials (Americans born between 1982 and 2000) are far more diverse, educated and tolerant than their predecessors. They’re also the least religious generation in American history – they’re even getting less religious as they get older, which is unprecedented – and the majority of them identify Christianity as synonymous with harsh political conservatism. As older, more religious generations fade away and younger generations replace them, the societal midpoint shifts. And this trend is going to accelerate in coming years, because the millennial generation is big. They’re even bigger than the baby boomers.You know the main focus of this blog has never been about Sarah Palin, she actually came along four years after I started it. It has always been about taking down the Religious Right and destroying their stranglehold on our politics.
Remember back in 2004, when The Immoral Minority came to be, George W. Bush had just won his second term in office, we were in the middle of two unnecessary wars, the Evangelicals had insinuated themselves into every facet of government and the military, and secularism was under assault from all directions.
As an Atheist it is no exaggeration to say that I was terrified about the direction we were headed, and what that meant for my daughter and the future of this country.
It is for that reason that I have worked so hard to reveal the ugly truth about the Evangelicals chosen star of 2008, and what she demonstrates about the hypocrisy of that politically powerful group.
In fact Sarah Palin has been incredibly helpful in revealing much of the sordid underbelly of politics and religion in America. Her fake pregnancy to attract the pro-life folks, her fake Christianity to attract the Bible thumpers, her fake conservatism to attract the Reagan-ites, have all been revealed on this blog and many, many others.
And through those revelations we have also been able to get a look inside the true agenda of the Right Wing which is to use the easily deceived religious folks to amass great power and influence, and then use that to essentially line their own pockets at the expense of those who trusted them and bought into their line of bullshit.
That is why I am such a fan of the Millenials. THEY are the result of greater access to information on the internet. THEY are the result of the Religious Right's power grabs. And THEY are the what we need to break the grip of ignorance and superstition, and to move toward greater enlightenment and a better understanding of our place in the universe, and our responsibilities here on this planet.
And boy am I glad they are here, for it is not a moment too soon.
