The Collapse Of Faith In America
By Michael Snyder/Economic Collapse Blog February 03, 2023
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Once upon a time the United States was known as a "Christian nation", but now our country is moving away from those roots at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking. I spend a lot of time writing about the ongoing collapse of our economic system, but the truth is that we are witnessing a collapse of faith as well.
In 1972, a Pew survey found that 92 percent of all Americans identified as Christians, but the most recent Pew survey that asked this question discovered that only 63 percent of Americans still identify as Christians at this point...
Pew Research Center has been measuring religious identity since 2007 using a slightly different question wording - "What is your present religion, if any?" - as well as a different set of response options. Since 2007, the percentage of adults who say they are atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular" in the Center's surveys has grown from 16% to 29%. During this time, the share of U.S. adults who identify as Christian has fallen from 78% to 63%.
Assuming that this trend continues, it won't be too long before we are under 50 percent.
And it is very important to note that many Americans that still identify as "Christians" want absolutely nothing to do with traditional Christian values.
Church attendance in the United States has been steadily falling for decades as well, and the shift that we have seen since the pandemic started has been particularly dramatic...
Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.
As a result, large numbers of churches are being forced to close all over the nation.
In fact, a recent Guardian article claimed that "thousands of churches are closing each year"...
Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether - even as faith continues to dominate American politics.
As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country - a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.
We are going down the exact same road that almost every other western nation has already traveled.
At one time, virtually every nation in the western world was heavily Christian, but now most of them have been transformed into post-Christian societies.
It could be argued that the United States is already there as well, and one recent survey found that most parents do not consider it to be important to pass their faith on to their children...
"Parents place less importance on their children growing up to have religious or political beliefs that are similar to their own. About a third (35%) say it is extremely or very important to them that their children share their religious beliefs, and 16% say the same about their children's political beliefs," Pew researchers Rachel Minkin and Juliana Horowitz said in Parenting in America Today released on Tuesday.
Numbers such as these should make all of us very sad.
As Americans increasingly move away from what they have previously believed, it is inevitable that even more churches will close.
Meanwhile, many of the institutions that still remain are bitterly divided over sexuality. Here is just one example...
The United Methodist Church announced a proposal Friday to split the denomination over what it called "fundamental differences" regarding its beliefs on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy.
The proposal, signed by 16 church leaders from around the world, will be voted on at the church's general conference in May. If passed, it would allow for a "traditionalist" denomination to separate from the United Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in the U.S., with more than 12 million members worldwide.
And Roman Catholicism is also being torn apart by controversies related to sexuality...
Gay "clubs" operate openly in Catholic seminaries, the institutions that prepare men for the priesthood, the late Pope Benedict XVI has claimed in a posthumously published book scathing of Pope Francis's progressive agenda.
In a blistering attack on the state of the Catholic Church under his successor's papacy, Benedict, who died on Dec 31 at the age of 95, said that the vocational training of the next generation of priests is on the verge of "collapse".
He claimed that some bishops allow trainee priests to watch pornographic films as an outlet for their sexual urges.
Our culture is being fundamentally transformed all around us, and many prominent Christian leaders are deeply concerned about where things are headed.
During a recent interview, Franklin Graham warned about what will happen if we do not change course...
Graham, who heads the Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, told CBN's Faithwire he's read Scripture and knows where culture is headed.
"I know where we're going," he said. "I've read Revelation. I know what's getting ready to happen to this world. Judgment is coming."
Graham continued, "God is going to judge this earth with the rejection of His Son, and there's gonna be a great price to pay."
Of course Franklin Graham is quite right.
These are the end times, and judgment is coming.
Unfortunately, most people are not interested in listening to the warnings.
But even though our society is rapidly moving away from religion, more evidence that validates the Christian faith continues to emerge.
For example, a team of researchers in France has determined that an ancient stone that is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris actually contains references to King David from the Bible...
The stele includes phrases such as "House of David" and "Altar of David," but the damage to the stone's face made accurate translation of the text difficult.
By using newer technology, including enhancing techniques in digital photography, researchers verified that the text does refer to the biblical King David.
I was so excited when I first read that.
And all over the Middle East, vast numbers of Muslims are becoming Christians after having supernatural experiences with Jesus.
Just as He has done throughout the past two thousand years, Jesus is still showing people that He is alive.
Sadly, many Americans simply do not care.
Our nation is choosing to reject faith like never before, and right now there are no indications that this is going to turn around any time soon.
Originally published at The Economic Collapse Blog - reposted with permission.
