Three items appear below:
1    The Long, Slow Death of Religion
2    Is Religion Dying?
3    Is Christianity Dying?


 
The long, slow death of religion

James A. Haught

(Investigator 173, 2017 March)


By now, it's clear that religion is fading in America, as it has done in most advanced Western democracies.

Dozens of surveys find identical evidence: Fewer American adults, especially those under 30, attend church — or even belong to a church. They tell interviewers their religion is "none." They ignore faith.

Since 1990, the "nones" have exploded rapidly as a sociological phenomenon — from 10 percent of U.S. adults, to 15 percent, to 20 percent. Now they've climbed to 25 percent, according to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.  

That makes them the nation's largest faith category, outstripping Catholics (21 percent) and white evangelicals (16 percent). They seem on a trajectory to become an outright majority. America is following the secular path of Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and other modern places. The Secular Age is snowballing.

Various explanations for the social transformation are postulated:  That the Internet exposes young people to a wide array of ideas and practices that undercut old-time beliefs. That family breakdown severs traditional participation in congregations. That the young have grown cynical about authority of all types. That fundamentalist hostility to gays and abortion has soured tolerant-minded Americans. That clergy child-molesting scandals have scuttled church claims to moral superiority. That faith-based suicide bombings and other religious murders horrify normal folks.
 
All those factors undoubtedly play a role. But I want to offer a simpler explanation: In the scientific 21st century, it's less plausible to believe in invisible gods, devils, heavens, hells, angels, demons — plus virgin births, resurrections, miracles, messiahs, prophecies, faith-healings, visions, incarnations, divine visitations and other supernatural claims. Magical thinking is suspect, ludicrous. It's not for intelligent, educated people.
        
Significantly, the PRRI study found that the foremost reason young people gave for leaving religion is this clincher: They stopped believing miraculous church dogmas.
        
For decades, tall-steeple mainline Protestant denominations with university-educated ministers tried to downplay supernaturalism — to preach just the compassion of Jesus and the social gospel. It was a noble effort, but disastrous. The mainline collapsed so badly it is dubbed "flatline Protestantism." It has faded to small fringe of American life.
        
Now Catholicism and evangelicalism are in the same death spiral. One-tenth of U.S. adults today are ex-Catholics. The Southern Baptist Convention lost 200,000 members in 2014 and 200,000 more in 2015.
        
I'm a longtime newspaperman in Appalachia's Bible Belt. I've watched the retreat of religion for six decades. Back in the 1950s, church-based laws were powerful:
        
It was a crime for stores to open on the Sabbath. All public school classes began with mandatory prayer. It was a crime to buy a cocktail, or look at nude photos in magazines, or buy a lottery ticket. It was a crime for an unwed couple to share a bedroom. If a single girl became pregnant, both she and her family were disgraced.  Birth control was unmentionable. Evolution was unmentionable.

It was a felony to terminate a pregnancy. It was a felony to be gay. One homosexual in our town killed himself after police filed charges. Even writing about sex was illegal. In 1956, our Republican mayor sent police to raid bookstores selling "Peyton Place."
        
Gradually, all those faith-based taboos vanished from society. Religion lost its power — even before the upsurge of "nones."
        
Perhaps honesty is a factor in the disappearance of religion. Maybe young people discern that it's dishonest to claim to know supernatural things that are unknowable.

When I was a cub reporter, my city editor was an H.L. Mencken clone who laughed at Bible-thumping hillbilly preachers. One day, as a young truth-seeker, I asked him: You're correct that their explanations are fairy tales — but what answer can an honest person give about the deep questions: Why are we here?  Why is the universe here?  Why do we die? Is there any purpose to life?
        
He eyed me and replied: "You can say: I don't know." That rang a bell in my head that still echoes. It's honest to admit that you cannot explain the unexplainable.  
        
The church explanation — that Planet Earth is a testing place to screen humans for a future heaven or hell — is a silly conjecture with no evidence of any sort, except ancient scriptures. No wonder that today's Americans, raised in a scientific-minded era, cannot swallow it.

Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation is most accurate. Why is religion dying? Because thinking people finally see that it's untrue, false, dishonest.

White evangelicals tipped the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, giving an astounding 81 percent of their votes to the crass vulgarian who contradicts church values. But white evangelicals, like most religious groups, face a shrinking future. Their power will dwindle.

It took humanity several millennia to reach the Secular Age. Now it's blossoming spectacularly.

James A. Haught is editor emeritus of West Virginia's largest newspaper,
The Charleston Gazette-Mail. 
haught@wvgazettemail.com.


Is Religion Dying?

(Investigator 174, 2017 May)


I refer to "The long, slow death of religion" by James A. Haught in Investigator #173.

I am a little confused where this article came from. #173 infers that it was submitted by James A. Haught, who is the editor emeritus of some newspaper in West Virginia and is also a regular contributor to the Secular Web on infidels.org. Haught is supposedly a high flyer in America and it would surprise me if he submitted this article to Investigator Magazine. In fact, Laurie Eddie sent me a copy of this article in late January. Was this article submitted by Laurie Eddie, James Haught or someone else?

I agree that Christianity is currently in decline in Western countries, such as Australia and America, in terms of church attendance and nominated affiliation. However, Haught suggests why and that is where I disagree. He basically claims that belief in the supernatural (expressed in derisive terms) is "not for intelligent, educated people” and "thinking people will see that it's untrue, false, dishonest.” He then concludes that the "Secular Age… is blossoming spectacularly."

So, there we have it. If you want to be considered intelligent, educated, thinking, honest and follow the winning team, then you had better get on the same bravado train as James A. Haught. The pressure is on and you don't want to look silly, do you? As for me, I am in a bad way, as I believe in the supernatural. Therefore, I must be unintelligent, uneducated, unthinking, dishonest and so on. Is this true? I don't think so.

One of the strongest points of sceptics is self-congratulation. They refer to themselves as "brights", "free thinkers", "rationalists" and other effusive terms, but does claiming that you are bright necessarily mean that you are bright? If you go with the flow, does that mean that you are a free, independent, rational thinker or just another sheep that is going astray?

James provided speculation that was unsupported by evidence, so I think I should have a go too. My observations are that rejection of Christianity is mainly based on prejudice, ignorance and apathy. Simon Smart has described Australian cultural attitudes as "a thin veneer of resentment toward religion on top of a sea of apathy!" Most people do not want to have a conversation, as the barriers are already up. They have absorbed the subliminal and overt messages in the media and advertising, their eyes are covered and their ears stopped. They are distracted by the pursuit of wealth and happiness.

The gospels give their own reasons why people fall away. Some are love of riches, the cares of the world, fear of persecution or ridicule, and so on. These factors were true then and are still true today. In Australia, the people who hold the microphones are celebrities, pop-stars, sportsmen and comedians. These people have no idea about the veracity of Christianity, but the public listen to what they say and absorb their values and opinions, but "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit” (Matt 15:14).  In surveys, respondents may well claim that their disinterest in Christianity is due to unbelief, but is this unbelief justified? In philosophy, knowledge is defined as "justified, true belief". The fact is that, for many who claim that they reject Christianity due to unbelief, their belief systems are not warranted and so do not constitute knowledge. Delusions are common at the highest level. A paper by Cross in 1977 reported on a survey where 94% of professors thought they were above average amongst their peers.

I am involved in apologetics and sometimes I wonder whether I should target the world or the church. In Israel, the problem was often bad leadership and that is often the case in the church today. I believe the church could do much better at addressing the causes of decline, and so the state of the church is part of the problem.

The decline in the West is not necessarily mirrored in non-Western countries. Christianity is now growing quite rapidly in China, but the current decline in the West does seem real. Cultural decline is nothing new. The pattern was regularly repeated in the life of Israel. Gradual decline is followed by a disaster, then reform and then gradual decline again. In all societies, this pattern repeats, even though no social movement has ever persisted. So, why presume that current Western trends are forever?

None of this should be surprising. Jesus warned, "Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matt 7:13-14). G.K. Chesterton also put it this way, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." The crowd is not always right.

Kevin Rogers
Director, Reasonable Faith Adelaide.
[Editor's note: To answer Kevin Rogers' query: "The Long, Slow Death of Religion" appeared on various websites; James A. Haught gave permission by e-mail to reprint it in Investigator.]


IS CHRISTIANITY DYING?

Anonymous

(Investigator 175, 2017 July)
 
INTRODUCTION

"The Long, Slow Death of Religion" (Investigator 173) is really about Christian denominations, not about all religions. James Haught argues that Christianity is on its way out in the USA and Europe, and the Secular Age is "blossoming spectacularly."

Lawton (2014) would agree with Haught and writes:

A decade ago, more than three-quarters of the world's population identified themselves as religious. Today, less than 60 per cent do...

Even in the US—a deeply Christian country—the number of people expressing "no religious affiliation" has risen from 5 per cent in 1972 to 20 per cent today…

That is not to say that they have all explicitly rejected religion: only 13 per cent of people around the world are "committed" atheists … almost a billion atheists globally.

Christian decrease is evident also in the Middle East. In 1910 Christian communities comprised 14% of the population, in 2010 only 4%.

Today, terrorist attacks by Islamists (a Muslim minority who believe that "infidels" should be murdered) have multiplied. In 2009, for example, a bomb in the Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad killed 58 and injured 75. Such events accelerated the Christian exodus from the Middle East even as Western nations accepted millions of Muslim immigrants.


BROADER PERSPECTIVE

Rowan Callick (2015) reported that religion is booming in South Korea! In 1945 only 2% of people in Korea were Christians. Today, of South Korea's 50 million people 18% are Protestant, 11% Catholic, and 26,000 are missionaries in 169 countries.

Similarly China — 4,000,000 Christians in 1948, and 67,000,000 in 2010!

And Africa:
Table 1   
Christians in Africa
1900
 9,000,000
2000
 380,000,000
2010
 489,000,000
(Sources: Wikipedia; and Britannica "Religion Year in Review" 2010)


In Investigator #12 (1990) I estimated the worldwide Christian increase across twenty centuries as follows:
Table 2
Date
 Christians
 World Population
(Millions)
 Christian % of
World Population
35 AD
 5,000
 260
 0.002%
100
 50,000
 300
 0.02
300
 1,500,000
 250
 0.6
400
 8,000,000
 250
 3.2
700
 30,000,000
 300
 10
1000
 45,000,000
 350
 13
1500
 70,000,000
 450
 15.5
1800
 160,000,000
 900
 18
1900
 350,000,000
 1,650
 21
1950
 550,000,000
 2,450
 22.4
1975
 940,000,000
 4,000
 23.5
1990
 1,250,000,000
 5,200
 24


Based on Table 2, I argued in Investigator 12 that Christian increase and survival fulfilled Isaiah (54:17) "No weapon that is fashioned against you shall prosper" and that:
The "weapons" against Christianity have included organized large scale martyrdom, inquisitions, Bible burnings, invasions of "barbarians" from Asia, avalanches of new cults, Atheistic Communism…
AFTER 1990

Table 2 terminates in 1990 which I now update in Table 3:

Table 3
Date
 Christians
 Christian %
of World Population
1995
 1,928,000,000
 33.7
2004
 2,107,000,000
 33.0
2010
 2,280,000,000
 33.0
(Source: Britannica "Religion Year in Review" 1995, 2004, 2010)

It seems that my sources in Table 2 for 1975/1990 either gave low estimates, or Christianity in the 1990s increased remarkably.
THE USA

Table 4 shows Christian trends in the USA compared to agnostics and atheists :
Table 4
Date
 Christians
 %
 Agnostics
 %
 Atheists
 %
1900
 73,000,000
 96.4
 1,000,000
 1.3

1970
 190,000,000
 90.6
 10,000,000
 4.9
 200,000
 0.1
1990
 217,000,000
 85.3
 21,000,000
 8.4
 800,000
 0.3
2000
 236,000,000
 82.0
 33,000,000
 11.5
 1,200,000
 0.4
2010
 257,000,000
 81.0
 39,000,000
 12.4
 1,300,000
 0.4
(Source: Britannica "Religion Year in Review" 2010)

Christians in the USA are increasing in absolute numbers but decreasing as a percentage.
WHY?

Haught's explanation for the increase of "nones" i.e. agnostics or non-believers is:
That clergy child-molesting scandals have scuttled church claims to moral superiority. That faith-based suicide bombings and other religious murders horrify normal folks.

Significantly, the PRRI study found that the foremost reason young people gave for leaving religion is this clincher: They stopped believing miraculous church dogmas.

Lawton (2014) suggests:
One of the main motivations for abandoning god is that people increasingly don't need the comfort that belief in god brings. Religion thrives in existential angst: where people feel insecure and uncertain, religion provides succour. But as societies become prosperous and stable, this security blanket becomes less important.

I would suggest that many "Christians" have throughout history been in it for the social and economic advantages. Therefore, rather than non-belief "blossoming spectacularly" it may be that government benefits have largely replaced Christian social services, and there is now less to be gained by pretending to have faith.


AN ANCIENT PATTERN

In ancient times the Israelites were, according to the Bible, the people of God. (Psalm 135:12; 148:14)

The Bible records that ancient Israel flip-flopped between faith and apostasy. The people swerved many times from idolatry (along with injustice, immorality and poverty) to repentance and prosperity, and back to idolatry. The books of Judges, Kings, Chronicles and the prophets document this pattern.

An example is II Chronicles 33 which describes the 55-year "evil" reign of King Manasseh and the short reign of his idol-worshipping son. The next Chapter documents the grandson, King Josiah, in whose reign the worship of one God "Yahweh" was restored. The long-lost "book of Moses" which had probably been unread for half a century was rediscovered. (Chapter 34:14-18, 29-30)

When national standards became truly gross and God was ignored by almost everyone, Israel suffered insurrection, crime-waves, oppression, climate change, war, and deportations of whole populations.

The New Testament teaches that all nations, not just Israel and Judah, are now God's people, "ransomed" for God because Jesus died on their behalf for their sins.

The New Testament says that the ancient Israelites were "examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did" and suffer similarly. (I Corinthians 10:6-11; Jude 5-7)

Despite this warning many people today do "desire evil as they did", and Israel's destructive pattern is often repeated in churches and nations.

Germany, for example, virtually repudiated Christ in the 1930s and idolized a man who wanted to both rule the whole world and eradicate Christianity. The result was that about 7 million Germans died, millions became slave laborers, millions of women were raped, over 10 million Germans became refugees, and 25% of Germany's land area was confiscated.

China with 4,000,000 Christians in 1949 was potentially a land of promise, but Mao Tse Tung and Communism took charge. Political repression, man-made famines and the "Cultural Revolution" killed over 50 million Chinese.
BIBLICAL BENEFITS

Much of what makes modern nations prosperous began with believers in the Bible.

Why have people today got modern medicines? Comfortable housing? Cheap plentiful food? Ample clothing? Electricity and countless appliances that electricity powers? Clean cities? Good roads? Greater safety and security than people centuries ago? And Bibles available everywhere?

Because the Bible foretold that God would "bless all nations" through the descendants of Abraham (Genesis 18:18), and Jesus foretold that his followers would do greater things than he did. (John 14:12) I showed previously (Investigator 170; 172) that modern science and the benefits it produced began with believers in the Bible wanting to glorify God by their discoveries.

Many ethical rules and laws that today promote health and prosperity also come from the Bible. In Investigator #173, for example, I wrote of the "world war" against corruption begun by US law makers in 1977, and pointed out that the Bible opposed "corruption" thousands of years earlier.


CONCLUSION

Secularism, if it leads to Christian decline, is nothing for James Haught or anyone else to gloat about: 

Firstly, many people who ignore the Bible turn to indefensible and less beneficial beliefs. Lawton writes:
As religion wanes spiritual-type beliefs do not. The majority of no religion still believe in some form of higher power or in the paranormal such as astrology, extraterrestrials, karma, etc.

Secondly, millions who forget God replace Him with drugs, gambling, immorality, debt, crime, and whatever else is harmful to families and nations.

Thirdly, the ancient pattern described above and replicated in some modern nations, suggests that at some stage everything beneficial that modern humans have gained but take for granted and fail to be thankful for could be lost.


REFERENCES:

Callick, R.S. Korea leads world in religious export trade, The Weekend Australian, January 3-4, 2015, 8

Haught, J.A. The long, slow death of religion, Investigator 173, March, 2017

Investigator Magazine 12; 170; 172; 173

Lawton, G. Losing our religion, New Scientist, 3 May, 2014, 30-35

http://www.perforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Africa
The Bible (as well as Religion, the Supernatural and the Paranormal) investigated on this website:

https://ed5015.tripod.com/