Donald Trump, a 77-year-old Bible salesman from Palm Beach, Florida, has emerged as the nation’s most prominent Christian leader. Trump is running for president as a divinely chosen champion of White Christians, promising to sanctify their grievances, destroy their perceived enemies, bolster their social status, and grant them the power to impose an anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQ, White-centric Christian nationalism from coast to coast. That Trump doesn’t attend church and has obviously never read the book that he hawks for $59.99, seems of interest exclusively to his political opponents.
What might catch the attention of some evangelical conservatives, however, is that Trump’s ostentatious embrace of White Christian militantism coincides with a precipitous decline in religious affiliation in the US. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, one-quarter of Americans in 2023 said they were religiously unaffiliated. “Unaffiliated” is the only religious category experiencing growth. In a single decade, from 2013 to 2023, the percentage of Americans saying that religion is the most important thing, or among the most important things, in their life plummeted to 53% from 72%.
Trump may be accellerating the issue, but people have been turning away from religion for at least the 5 decades I’ve been on this planet. I think it’s more that younger people take a more critical eye to the idea and realize that if you look at organized religion in general, none of it makes the least bit of sense.
I’d love to see a CinemaSins style video on the Bible.
This is my own personal experience, so your experience may vary significantly. But I was born in the early 70s and I think my generation was really the first generation that may have had strict, God-fearing parents, but were the first generation to actually start thinking critically about it instead of just blindly accepting the religious ideas being passed down by our parents even if we know they don’t make sense. In turn, we raised our children either without religious influence at all, or at least a heavily scaled down emphasis on religion, while allowing our children to make their religious decisions on their own, assuming they bother practicing religion at all. All things considered, the increasing trend of abandoning religion entirely should not only be no surprise, but should also accellerate as the next generation will likely be raised by mostly atheist parents, or at least non-practicing parishioners, who’s children will look at religion as a relic of the past that their great grandparents cared about back in the day.
I think in a few short generations, our descendants will look at religion the same way we look at medieval practices of using leeches to cure disease.
It’s not CinemaSins style, but Satan’s guide to the Bible is certainly an interesting watch.
https://youtu.be/z8j3HvmgpYc?si=Zrpy2pXIEcfcCl_u
I’m sure we weren’t the first generation to question religion, I’m your age and my dad did, and there were hippies and beatniks and I’m sure some version of freethinkers before that. My mom used church more like a social group and I think we ARE missing that in society now. But agree it’s reached a critical mass now in my kids’ generation, their friends from school mostly are nonreligious, a few are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu but overwhelming majority just not religious.
Oh there were plenty. But I think our generation was really the first generation to start questioning things en masse, to the point where it was actually impacting church attendance and causing even more people to start questioning their own religion.
And we are definitely missing the social group aspects of society. It’s been replaced by social media and we as a society are suffering for it. A tool that was supposed to usher in the free flow of ideas ended up instead just giving everybody their own fortified echo chamber to live in, and it shows when you see how people act with one another today; they have no idea how to handle it when someone is telling them something they don’t want to hear.
And my kids said the same thing. Outside of a few who were born into theirs and a handful of old-school religious parents, the overwhelming majority all see religion as who’s imaginary friend is pretending to be better than who’s.
Your last paragraph - I sure hope so.
My extended family all complains about how their church attendance is declining and people are being let go from leadership because the tithing isn’t coming in like it used to and etcblahetc…
I don’t fucking care. Burn. Topple. Go away. We’ll all be better off.
Religious affiliation often goes up under harsher times. If economic woes and global warming continue, I think we’ll see the trend reverse.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean Christianity, mind you. It might be some form of neo-paganisim. I’ve been noticing this trend among some of my ex-Christian friends.
Was also born in the 70s, feel the same way. I was raised Catholic, but we were taught that abortion and gay people were absolutely fine no matter what the church said. When I left home I left Catholicism simply because I didn’t relate to it, what does a voluntary eunuch have to say to a young woman about her life, was my reasoning?
But in the last few years I started going to a very lefty inclusive and completely welcoming non-denominational Christian Church. I still think much of the Bible is loony tunes, but applying some of the wisdom of the teachings of Christ to life is appealing to me, and there’s just something about singing in an old building with stained glass windows on a Sunday morning that feels sacred in a way nothing else does. This church is actively trying to find a path forward to be good humans together while acknowledging and trying to repair the damage Christianity has done, we have openly gay and trans people who attend and participate fully, and I don’t know why they all can’t be like that. Conservatives suck the life breath out of everything they touch.
My understanding is that Christianity is dwindling in numbers but Islam and Judaism are growing.
I also think religion is on the downswing, I’m fascinated by how we’re seeing people like Trump accelerating it.
Well that makes sense because Islam and Judaism are religions that people are typically born into. Baptism and other religious ceremonies aside, nobody is Christian by birth. So it’s not a surprise to see those religions grow as the population grows.
And don’t forget that Catholics can simply just stop going to church. Even considering that option in some Islamic countries is punishable by death. Which means there are probably at least some Muslims that aren’t Muslims by choice.
LoL. Ya, one of those certainly isn’t known for forcibly converting people at the threat of death or for force converting part of an entire continent and not a single one of those raped choir boys was born into that environment.
This is the best comment I’ve seen online today and I’m not complementing you.
Have you heard of the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible? It’s probably the closest thing to CinemaSins on the subject of the Bible.
A Youtuber called Mindshift is doing a secular bible study from the perspective of a deconverted evangelist, where he goes trough each book of the bible and points out its flaws. He’s got the Old Testamsnt down and will start with the new Testamsnt in a couple of weeks.
I recommend it, I think he has a lot of interesting views to share.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLecYLkaBsy1XKwQ5eWYwufAUnfrA-4tF