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The decline of "fundamentalism"

By razib on May 31, 2007.

The "Boy Genius" Karl Rove recently told The New Yorker that the rise of conservative Christianity bodes well for the Republican party. There's a problem with the hype though: there is a mild, but persistent, trend away from Biblical literalism, in the United States.1 Fundamentalist Christian pollster George Barna documents some small recent shifts. This isn't new, those who favor the Secularization Hypothesis for the United States have pointed to data which suggests a gentle ebbing away of Biblical fundamentalism. That being said, the process of rescaling "conservatism" every generation always means that religious "conservatives" will always be with us. Karl Rove might be right in the long run simply because as history marches to the social Left a significant proportion of the American populace might balk at solemnizing the relationships of Zoophiles. At least for a while.

1 - Mormons swim against the tide on this trend, see Ronald Numbers' The Creationists. As Mormons "assimilated" to the Christian Right, broadly construed, they picked up some of the views of their political-social allies. Creationism is one of those views.

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