It's no secret atheists have an image problem in the US. That seems to be improving. What isn't improving is the public's view of Christianity. Young folks look around them and get the message. Christianity is a religion. Just like other religions. And that isn't such a good recommendation. The Barna Group supports religion, specifically, Christianity. They also do polling. I can't vouch for their methods, but the latest poll should give pause to the adherents of the Christian religion (one among many, remember):
Barna polls conducted between 2004 and this year, sampling 440 non-Christians (and a similar number of Christians) aged 16 to 29, found that 38% had a "bad impression" of present-day Christianity. "It's not a pretty picture" the authors write. Barna's clientele is made up primarily of evangelical groups.[Barna Groups' David] Kinnaman says non-Christians' biggest complaints about the faith are not immediately theological: Jesus and the Bible get relatively good marks. Rather, he sees resentment as focused on perceived Christian attitudes. Nine out of ten outsiders found Christians too "anti-homosexual," and nearly as many perceived it as "hypocritical" and "judgmental." Seventy-five percent found it "too involved in politics."
Not only has the decline in non-Christians' regard for Christianity been severe, but Barna results also show a rapid increase in the number of people describing themselves as non-Christian. One reason may be that the study used a stricter definition of "Christian" that applied to only 73% of Americans. Still, Kinnaman claims that however defined, the number of non-Christians is growing with each succeeding generation: His study found that 23% of Americans over 61 were non-Christians; 27% among people ages 42-60; and 40% among 16-29 year olds. Younger Christians, he concludes, are therefore likely to live in an environment where two out of every five of their peers is not a Christian. (Time)
This is a big change from ten years ago when a similar poll found 83% identified themselves as Christians and less than 20% of non-Christians had a negative view of the religion. I guess the Bush administration hasn't been so good for these guys. Even Christians seem embarrassed at their own religion's perceived anti-gay attitudes, with 80% of them saying it's a negative characterization. The really good news is in the attitudes of the 16 -29 year olds: 85% of the non-Christians and 52% of the Christians said today's Christian religion is "hypocritical -- saying one thing doing another." Half of Christians thought their religion was too involved in politics.
The Right Wing Noise Machine likes to excuse each new outrage of the Bush administration with the catch phrase, "9-11 changed everything." Something 9-11 genuinely seems to have changed is American's attitude toward religion, including Christianity. 9-11 was perpetrated by religious zealots.
One thing about human beings: they can generalize.
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It's amusing to see an axis on which young people are (as a group) more grown up than older people.
One caveat: according to the statistics books I've read, people have a tendency to lie in surveys when asked about religion. For instance, if asked how often they attend church, respondents tended to inflate their church-going numbers, so they would sound more devout than they really were.
Or at least that's how it used to be. If we take this new survey at face value, being a good, church-going Christian just doesn't have the panache it used to.
John Cole wrote recently of "Christianist nanny-statism," and I thought it was a good phrase. Perhaps people have become tired of Christianity-as-decrier-of-"deviant"-sex and would be more open to a church that actually taught and lived the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.
As always, good post. Thanks, revere.
there is an easy way to figure out, whther it's
Bush or a general trend : compare with other
Christian countries.
Another freethinkers report on the weekend: Early in 2006, having not set foot in a church in 40 years, I noticed that the local Unitarian Universalist parish was having a celebration of Darwins birthday, so I went. Identified myself to the minister as an unaffiliated heathen; he was okay with that. Since then Ive dropped in occasionally, especially on those Sundays when the pre-service Lyceum is presenting something interesting. We had astronomy this morning in Lyceum: exoplanets. Fascinating. When the speaker said that the universe was pointless, someone said that he also believed it was pointless but wasnt so CHEERFUL about it. The speaker said it means that we make our own meaning instead of having it handed to us. Yup, the place is a hotbed of free thinking. At present, we have a substitute minister while the regular guy is on sabbatical; when she introduced herself to the congregation, she said that she uses the G-word. Freethinkers left no room for doubt that they were not thrilled. Yesterday, I was discussing our mutual ungodliness with a friend and she said she didnt mind that people had religions to comfort them as long as they didnt mess up the rest of us; I responded that religious people are the most UNcomfortable people I know. Having been raised RC, as I recall the policy, misery is obligatory. I have not enrolled in the UU parish yet --- just not a joiner by nature --- and may never do so, but I find that a gathering about values, service, and community is a good punctuation mark for the week [but not every week]. Joining one of the Ethical Societies that serve the non-religious in some communities is another alternative for joiners. I like Ingersolls Humanist Creed: Justice is the only worship, love is the only priest.
Anyone else think that this poll plays right into the hands of the Barna Group's clients? "The secular world is turning against us, young people are lured away by Satan, Christians and their beliefs are being persecuted, time to counter with more evangelism." I can easily see thousands of sermons echoing these themes next Sunday morning. Anything that plays to the persecution complex sells big with this crowd.
tom: I considered it. I spun it in the other direction. But that's why I said I couldn't vouch for their methods. IMO, it is actually worse than they are stating but that's only an impression.
Tom, that depends. You could just as well read as a hint to evangelicals to give the gays a break, for their own good. In fact, that's how I understood it.
Now, indeed, it is likely that fundy kooks will just conclude that they need more propanganda to show why gays are icky, but still.
Two things that I have observed about ourselves, each of us, in general:
One-We love it when our singular expression of existence is admired.
Two-We are terribly afraid that it is not.
Three (who's counting?)-We will go to great lengths to attenuate, block, camouflage and deny that One and Two even remotely apply to ourselves as individuals.
But if there is a larger group to defer to in the sense that "my opinions are congruent with those of all these others and thus I need make no special claim," we happily cancel quite utterly Thing One. In doing so, we are asserting that we do not, in fact, live in fear of not being admired. "I got backup," and "I got your back." Thus Thing Two is equally canceled.
Speaking as a seriously backslidden mondo-ex-believer and as a surly, godless threat to the general welfare as we have become accustomed to it, I can only smile quietly and reflect on how similar are the stories of all of us. Shrill god botherer or silent skeptic or something else, our stories all contain the seed of commitment, dedication and purpose. But for one more thing, Thing Four.
Thing Four simply takes seriously the possibility of being perfectly comfortable without being admired and the possibility of not being afraid. When one does not create or assume the existence of ISS*, any approach to life is amenable to inspection, consideration, utilization or outright condemnation based upon how it best reflects the real world and how it affects others. Thus we make ourselves. My observations show that Christianity, and religion in general, is either not aware of these Things or cannot see how they magnify the experience of being human or just can't stand the idea at all.
It is not how you choose to travel the path of life, but how much of it actually registers as you pass by. And how much of you remains among those you have passed along the trail. These things I chose to measure in purely human terms, which gets pretty tricky sometimes. The upshot is that my measure seems to work better that the measure of any ISS I have ever heard of or appealed to. (That would be many and two, respectively.) I could be wrong, but I think not. In any event, I do not believe I am right. I only believe in a handful of things and these do not involve the creation of universes, the populating of them, or the exploitation of said populations.
In deference to my friends who believe in ISS (and strangers who do too), as well as all others, I will agree that the best thing we can do is to love one another as we love ourselves. And to be as cunning as serpents and as harmless as doves. And to forgive ourselves for being less than "just so." (Or "so just," for that matter.) Unless, of course, stronger measures are indicated.
Thanks for the post. Got me thinking. Some more.
* Invisible Supernatural Spooks
What the article does not elaborate upon is how many have switched faiths. How many identify themselves as Muslim, Pagan, New Age, etc... Often people just substitute the church of their parents with something more fashionable. And sometimes something more radical...
I don't read much hope for rationality in that poll. There's not enough information for optimism
merciless:
I vaguely remember a study that tried to measure this discrepancy: they conducted a poll where people were asked how often they attended church. Then the researchers asked people to keep a log of their movements for a month, ostensibly in order to see what sorts of toxins and whatnot people are exposed to in everyday life. According to the movement logs, people attended church significantly less often than the direct poll indicated.