In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

Assuming there is direct causation here rather than simple correlation I'll take it. The long term harms of religion far outweigh these items. You don't have to look much further than the death toll in the middle east for an example.

jumpman5002• 7 years ago

You’re being unfair to gscott. He didn’t make a causation claim.

hinkley2• 7 years ago

One of the services a church provides is a community. For some religions it’s wielded as a weapon though. Leave, and lose everything. Take a peek at /r/exmormon for a bunch of examples.

What people need is a secular community to replace it, and not all find it. Some of the things listed above are exacerbated by feelings of isolation or lack of purpose.

A lie is best concealed between two truths. Churches know how to organize people. It’s a rare set of people management skills that has nothing specific to do with the Divine. They’ve just had more opportunity to hone those skills.

But as humans we often trust people who show expertise in multiple areas to be telling us the truth about other things as well. There are plenty of good things that happen at churches, but they don’t have to happen at a church. And the more they happen in the secular world, the more people figure out they can pick and chose things that make them feel like decent human beings without signing up for the others. That’s either a terrifying or comforting statement, depending on which way you are coming from.

LoSboccacc• 7 years ago

Christianity had their issue and politicized Christianity had done enormous damage to our society trough bigotry, segregation and straight up wars, but it got better in the recent decades and meanwhile it's by no means perfect we're throwing away the only western moral framework with no replacement in sight. this will do a number on society coesion and it's already visibile in certain aspects.

theseadroid• 7 years ago

correlation != causation

Europe has been though a similar de-religion phase without many of the problems you stated.

claudeganon2• 7 years ago

Yeah, it’s almost as if a Christian-backed conservative political coalition dismantled the welfare state and stopped new services from being put in place or something...

dang13• 7 years ago

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how provocative another comment is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Arguably the second blow does more damage to the container.

wetpaws• 7 years ago

Crime rate is on global decline for several decades (even article you linked mentions that)

damnyou• 7 years ago

Also joined with a rise in support for LGBTQ rights. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

teunispeters3• 7 years ago

In general, replace all of the social and infrastructure with themselves at the center and then there's nothing to replace when the churches fail to serve the people - so people leave.

(I've never been a member of any - I just study - as a hobby - "conversion era" in Europe. Be aware that some of what the church replaced was toxic, and some was not. It's an interesting set of eras to study....)

The churches have failed though, largely. And finding out why can be informative. (this is not a religious failure, this is a social one. Don't blame peoples' beliefs for this, that's not the right target).

jamesrcole• 7 years ago

In addition to what others have said about correlation vs causation, this "less religious societies have more violence and social problems" view doesn't stand up to the statistics https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/our-humanity-natural...

dangus6• 7 years ago

Besides the other replies to you discussing correlation not being causation - is the purpose of your comment to disseminate truth or convince others to join a religion? And why don't you link to us religious missions of non-Christian religions like Islam or Judaism?

Let's (easily) debunk each of your sources to demonstrate their complete irrelevance to this topic:

- The Mass Killings article you post describes mass shootings, which are a specific type of homicide with a narrow definition. Homicides overall are down dramatically since the early 1990s. Mass shootings are aided by poor gun control policies and mass availability of guns in the United States. Mass shootings are not prevalent in developed countries that are not the United States in significant numbers.

- The Violent Crime article you've cited only talks about the past two consecutive years, not the decade-long time period cited by the religious affiliation trends in this article.

- Homeless populations probably aren't sampled in this phone survey, so the homelessness rate can't be correlated with the information given here.

Your weak correlation to religion is entirely debunked by choosing just about any Western/Northern European country, or much of Asia like China, South Korea, and Japan, and noticing that their religious affiliation numbers are far lower than the US has ever been, along with their violent crime rate.

What do Christian churches do? They certainly don't pay property taxes, so they don't fund public schools, police, or mental health services, like a normal business or resident would if they occupied the property.

CompanionCuuube• 7 years ago

The Mass Killings article you post describes mass shootings, which are a specific type of homicide with a narrow definition. Homicides overall are down dramatically since the early 1990s. Mass shootings are aided by poor gun control policies and mass availability of guns in the United States. Mass shootings are not prevalent in developed countries that are not the United States in significant numbers.

Homicides are indeed down, and that includes firearm homicides as well. When people mention any recent rise in firearm deaths, what they are are really saying is that firearm suicides are on the rise.

As for prevalence, it's not as uneven as you would think.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/aug/05...

In one study by the Crime Prevention Research Center, the United States actually ranked 66th among other world nations when it came to the frequency mass public shootings per capita.
And when just comparing European countries with the United States and Canada, the U.S. ranked 12th in a comparative study between 2009-2015.

https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from...

nine_k• 7 years ago

This is also correlated with the rise of a new and powerful religion, informally called progressism.

If you don't think it's a religion, try to speak publicly against it, and observe the kind of protest it's going to evoke. Most of it will not be a calm rational discussion, or even a light-hearted dismissal. For many, you would appear attacking the holy.

The experiment above is dangerous; I'd suggest studying preivous experimental data first.

manishsharan• 7 years ago

If we are indulging in causation and correlation mixup, have you noticed that some of the most ruthless public service cutting politicians and outsourcing CEOs are devout church going folks ? You have cut social services and mental support services , branded those who need such services as freeloaders and you are blaming secularism.

gscott2• 7 years ago

This is exactly the main issue I see right now, politicians who use Christianity as a banner to do less for people. Which is very confusing to me but somehow they get away with it. This is turning people away from Christianity before they can find out that its purpose is to serve people especially the mentally ill, homeless, poor, etc.

scarmig2• 7 years ago

Turn Christianity into a vehicle for conservative identity politics instead of a community and moral framework, and the people victimized by it will cease to identify as it. Simple as that.

gmoot• 7 years ago

Catholicism has never been that, and it's declining too.

AlexandrB2• 7 years ago

Catholicism as an organization has a lot of skeletons in the closet. I'm surprised it's not declining faster.

scarmig2• 7 years ago

Spillover effect. Catholics might not have the terrible reputation that evangelicals do, but they all fall under the Christian umbrella.

diego_moita4• 7 years ago

Catholicism has never been that, and it's declining too.

In the U.S. you are likely correct. But in Spain, Portugal, Argentina and many parts of Latin America it was a strong supporter of fascist/authoritarian regimes up until the 70's and 80's. Also, up until the 19th century Catholicism was the foundation of very authoritarian and absolutist monarchies.

notadoc• 7 years ago

Will be interesting to see what happens when the country trades the Protestant worth ethic, concepts of morality, duty to family, for .... whatever is adopted as faith instead.

Identity politics seems to be the new religion for many.

nighthawk1• 7 years ago

One set of rules is enough. Don’t want to have to follow common law and some made up religious laws as well.

dang13• 7 years ago

This community doesn't seem to have the capacity to discuss religion.

Edit: ok you guys, message received. I won't do it this way again.

krapp2• 7 years ago

This community doesn't have the capacity to discuss a lot of things, yet it does.

traderjane2• 7 years ago

Should people really be able to discuss things they don't have the discipline to understand? Should average Americans be able to discuss race relations or economic matters or should they simply... rightly receive superior accounts from those who engage in empiricism?

dang13• 7 years ago

Actually, there is almost no topic that degenerates into flamewar and (frankly) inanity as rapidly as the topic of religion does on HN, and probably anywhere on the internet. Can you think of one?

JoeAltmaier2• 7 years ago

Wow that's the sort of comment that usually gets removed. An unnecessary slur on an entire group of people with no supporting argument. Being disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. I'm disappointed.

tokai3• 7 years ago

Yeah a really disparaging comment coming from a mod. What is the problem. Sure there is some bickering, but it's falling to the bottom.

dang13• 7 years ago

It's partly strategic. The presence of a moderation comment like that in a thread often seems to evoke higher-quality comments. I'd bet that it such had an effect in this case—the thread improved almost immediately—but who knows.

You're right that I should have written something longer and not in haste. But I'm a bit surprised by the strong reaction to that one; it's atypical. Perhaps to some readers it felt like a disparagement of their own view on religion—which of course it was not.

traderjane2• 7 years ago

1. Which community does? The Christian community? If so, do you have an intuition over the proportion of HN people who were raised in Abrahamic faiths? Do you presume that the voices which monitor the conversation aren't personally experienced?

2. Or the academic community formed by the Abrahamic faiths? Did you reserve some expectation that secular scholars in academia are about to pop in?

3. And if people cannot discuss these matters, are they to receive the truth from a better source? Which source should we receive it from?

4. If most discussions never reaches into data-driven conversation, does that put them all in the same bin for you? Aspirational speech, perhaps?

dang13• 7 years ago

I don't know which community does, but I suspect there's no large public internet forum that does. The topic is too activating.

To get substantive discussion of religion, you probably need smaller groups that have a certain amount of cohesion. A group can be cohesive even if it disagrees. But a large group with weak cohesion discussing a provocative topic is probably always going to plummet to lowest-common-denominator quickly.

verisimilitudes• 7 years ago

You wrote that after a mere twenty minutes. Compared to how you've treated other inflammatory topics, one can't help but wonder if this is a sore spot for you. In any case, it's amusing because I'm in that set that would prefer Hacker News to actually discuss computer topics and not those such as this. My computing related articles usually go ignored, since you need to read more than the headline before you vomit forth your personal opinions, though, and the topic means not everyone is equally underqualified to give their opinion to start with.

dang13• 7 years ago

Alas, twenty minutes is plenty of time for a flamewar to get going. When I posted that, the thread consisted of comments like these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284379

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284381

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284266

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284355

You're right that there's a sore spot for me, but it isn't religion—it's long experience with how wretched HN threads become as soon as religion is mentioned. But I should have been more careful and not posted hastily and vaguely.

If I hadn't intervened by posting and doing other standard moderation things, though, the thread would likely have become more of a flamewar. These things don't self-correct; would that they did. I made this case more complicated by posting in a way that stirred up additional waves—it was not a splash-free dive, like we usually try for. I was distracted and my irritation managed to grab the steering wheel.

cabaalis• 7 years ago

I am a Christian, and I believe this is caused directly by a few factors:

1. The history of actions taken by theocracies is not good. There is a strong modern social justice movement, and even saying something bad 10 years ago is enough to cancel someone. Now imagine a group that committed multiple genocides over the centuries.

2. A growing rise of "spiritual but not religious" has led young people to eschew attending church. These young people grow up and have young people of their own who are now never exposed to Christianity.

3. Relegation of religion to personal matters alone, taboo in public.

4. Christians have allowed the book of Leviticus to overwhelm their message. Because of what is said about LGBTQ, Christian == bigot in many people's minds.

I'm sure there are fellow Christians who visit HN. I think these are the primary obstacles that must be overcome in order to grow the cause. All the mission work and happy Easter messages in the world won't make a lick of difference against these 4 issues.

teunispeters3• 7 years ago

The intolerance of Christian groups for non-Christian is a part too. I think it has to do with the myth of being persecuted that hasn't been true since Constantine.

teilo2• 7 years ago

Tell that to the Catholics in England and colonial America, or the Protestants in Ireland, or the Jacobites in Scotland, or churches of various denominations in many Islamic countries or territories, such as the Congo.

deftnerd5• 7 years ago

I'm not personally religious, but it always struck me as odd that modern churches don't take more of an socially progressive activism role. The historical Jesus was quite the rabble-rouser, activist, and not conservative in the least.

From my personal observations, the religious groups that seem to be activists tend to be activists with puritanical and conservative motivations (i.e., yell at people who they perceive are doing ungodly things even though modern society has deemed those things to be acceptable)

The other side is religious groups that are socially progressive (be kind and open, pray for people, provide services to those who need it, etc) but tend to be more of a passive supporter of equality.

Churches have had their "brand" tarnished because a few extremist religious groups wrapped up bigotry and social conservatism in a cloth of "religious freedom" and were really loud about it. The more progressive churches didn't speak up to fight back and counter it, and now the whole religious community is tainted. The "abusive priest" controversies didn't help matters either.

If there were churches that supported and encouraged the social justice that actually resonates with today's population, especially the young population, they would find a far more receptive audience.

I would consider going to a church if it was leading Extinction Rebellion marches, organizing protests against businesses that were bigoted, pushing their members to support the community and vote for new libraries, citizen investigation boards in police departments, fair elections, progressive drug treatment diversions instead of prosecution, etc.

deftnerd5• 7 years ago

Some side effects of this that are worth thinking about...

As churches see less membership, at some point congregations merge and one church is shut down.

Many churches do outreach and provide services to the community, the poor, and the homeless. This often includes shelter from the elements, soup kitchens, food pantries, meeting places for groups like AA/NA/etc.

When a church shuts down, the distance that the population has to travel can increase, and there might not be enough room to provide the same resources to those populations.

Additionally, it's not necessarily a problem, but more of a musing... What happens to all those old churches? The impact on the property market has to have local effects...

I wonder how many churches are shut down, but are just maintained by a skeleton crew of maintenance people in the hope that their customer base will increase enough one day to restart their services and reopen the property.

I assume churches don't pay property tax, so as long as the church is in hibernation mode and not actually totally dissolved, could they hold onto the property indefinitely for just the cost of maintenance? Or would them not providing religious services anymore cause them to lose the exemption?

dangus6• 7 years ago

I would think that many churches sell the property. I know people who live in an apartment building that used to be a church.

While churches do provide services and outreach to the poor, I've always wondered about what happens when they're serving the opposite effect by not paying property taxes. Property taxes are the public education base in the USA, and quality education is the way out of poverty.

Churches' outreach programs will also discriminate against causes they don't agree with based on their own teachings - i.e., Christian churches might not recommend that someone use contraception or get an abortion even if those options are the best logical course of action.

deftnerd5• 7 years ago

Those are some excellent points.

You know how some people have pointed out that McDonalds wasn't in the food business, it was in the real estate business to franchise owners? They often hold prime real estate locations.

The Post Office also has prime real estate locations.

I think that Churches, collectively, hold some of the most desireable property locations in our communities. Especially older churches in city centers have been there and grown organically since cities were founded so now they're very valuable.

rinchik• 7 years ago

What else is new?

Religion is the most conservative institution ever created. It does not adapt (well, almost..) it doesn't change (also, almost..) and it's no wonder that with developments in science and culture, religion doesn't seem as important as it used to be.

It's been going on for a while, in suburbia the main purpose of religion has nothing to do with religion, it's mostly about community, church is the place when you meet a talk with your neighbors. That's it.

Well, strong economy is also there to "blame", one talks to God only when one needs something, nothing wrong with that just to make a point that when everything is good religion is on decline.

Invictus0• 7 years ago

If the trend continues, we can expect parity in Christianity and religiously unaffiliated by roughly 2040. However I would expect the decline to increase in rate at some point, as the network effects due to the ubiquity of the Christian community start to fall apart.

AlexandrB2• 7 years ago

What's disheartening to me, a life-long agnostic, is that this change doesn't seem to correspond to an increase in rational, scientific materialism. Indeed, it seems like science is on the outs as well with increasingly common denial of basic scientific facts when they conflict with ideology. Instead, this seems to be a change of aesthetics - trading one set of pseudoscientific beliefs (Christianity) for another (new age mysticism, astrology, goop.com).

nopriorarrests• 7 years ago

When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing — they believe in anything.

G.K. Chesterton, circa 1924

wglb• 7 years ago

A fellow that is not exactly neutral on the subject.

And really not true.

rpmcmurdo• 7 years ago

Good! I come from a family that is split between A) secular/atheist people and B) deeply religious people from the South. Group A has done well, all have happy families, and are overall good people. Group B are, to put it nicely, uneducated bigots who blame a lifetime of bad decisions on everyone besides themselves, oh, and they are also some of the most hateful people you will ever meet. The only people in group B who turned out okay were the ones who rejected religion or turned out gay (and newsflash, they were exiled by their so loving families).

jdietrich• 7 years ago

To pre-empt a lot of comments in this thread:

The decline of religiosity is a global trend, strongly correlated with economic development. The US has historically been an outlier and remains unusually religious. The relevant question isn't really why religion is declining in the US, but why it hasn't declined sooner.

Claims that the decline in religiosity are related to increases in crime or social problems are not strongly supported by the evidence; there is not a consistent relationship between religiosity and criminality or wellbeing.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-worl...

https://web.archive.org/web/20131021065544/http://www.wingia...

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00247.x

diego_moita4• 7 years ago

The relevant question isn't really why religion is declining in the US, but why it hasn't declined sooner.

I believe the reason is that religion has been very different in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. Few countries have the great variety of religious denominations the U.S. has and the relative peace between said religions.

But I agree with your perspective.

deftnerd5• 7 years ago

The relevant question isn't really why religion is declining in the US, but why it hasn't declined sooner.

It's possible that religion is treating the symptom of another problem. Assuming someone religious attends an organized function related to that religion, it's making them part of a community and might be helping them feel less lonely.

2018 study shows that half of Americans feel lonely. [1], but a similar kind of study on people in europe surveying if people had anyone to ask for help or discuss personal matters has a much smaller amount [2]

The European study indicates that income inequality has an effect on social isolation, with the lowest incomes having twice the amount of isolation.

The income inequality in America is even more pronounced, and geographically, many of the areas with the highest levels of religious beliefs seem (on a map) to line up pretty well with levels of poverty and income inequality.

Usual disclaimer about correlation/causation and everything... But perhaps economic conditions that cause people to tend to be socially isolated are being self-treated by pursuit of religious groups because the community it gathers results in a decrease in the isolation symptom?

[1] https://fortune.com/2018/05/01/americans-lonely-cigna-study/ [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/D...

simonsarris3• 7 years ago

A great sorrow I think. Not for Christianity per se but all that comes with it.

What is most essentially "home" in the world is the set of rituals you make for yourself and others, things that allow you to dwell more poetically in place. Traditional rituals, like those found in religions, enhance our sense of belonging in the world, or if the world is a rough and scary place, at least within a society. I think we do not have the words for all the good parts of religion and ritual, and because they are not easily articulated, they are easily dismissed as irrational or nonexistent.

People instead will attack any religion, or any set of rituals that are not easily explained with a dollar value, gleefully as things that need to die, in service of a more rational world, by which they only mean a world more easily explainable to them. Since they cannot easily explain what's lost, they assume it must be nothing. I think this is a mistake due to a lack of attention.

People do not think about this, for that matter I fear people hardly think of our sense of dwelling and belonging at all. Culturally, the idea of "belonging" anywhere has been entirely subsumed by "wandering"[note]. This makes for a more consumer-friendly world, but a much less nice one to live in day to day. I fear that until we have the easy words to properly describe what it is we have lost, people will simply continue to cheer its loss, perhaps pausing once in a while to wonder aloud why they feel somewhat lost.

[note] ask people about their aspirational hobbies, they are amost always quick to point to "travel", and "experiences". Weirdly a lot of the "experiences" wording people use comes from a study commissioned by LivingSocial ("millennials prefer experiences over things", as if that's the dichotomy) to hawk the selling of experiences. The pseudostudy seems to be outliving the failed company.

dangus6• 7 years ago

I would guess that the high level of religious affiliation in the United States is somewhat abnormal for a developed and wealthy country.

Can you find another Western nation out there with similar levels of religious affiliation?

I think I see this decline as a correction. It's not actually normal to have so many people finding religion important to their lives in a large, connected, developed society. The USA's unique history and geography lent itself to high levels of religious affiliation, but since the Internet has connected us all a little closer, it's been harder for religious institutions and religious parents to prevent younger people from obtaining unfiltered information.

Enjoyable secular rituals are also easy to find if you look right in front of you - the Thanksgiving Day parade, the SuperBowl, Halloween and Trick-or-Treating, Valentine's Day, city-wide marathons, County Fairs, street festivals, etc...the list is nearly endless.

And tradition itself isn't a religion or belief in something. The fact that the Catholic church has you cross yourself, stand and sit at specific times, or eat a cracker are not examples a belief in anything, they are physical ritual and tradition. One can partake in all those activities without having a thought in their mind. There are also secular traditions that have no root in surviving religions, like putting a tree in your house during the holiday season. Plenty of atheists put up "Christmas trees" because it's fun!

simonsarris3• 7 years ago

There are so many implied claims in what you say, it is difficult to give a response. We would almost certainly be talking past each other.

I think I see this decline as a correction. It's not actually normal to have so many people finding religion important to their lives in a ...

Why use that as your normative base? Why not say that everything after, say, Descartes or Jesus or the printing press is abnormal level of religion, and that we are in a lull of divinity? Why do you think anything about the religiosity of anyone in the last 1-30 centuries is normal?

in a large, connected ... but since the Internet has connected us all ...

Are we in a large, connected society? Has the internet really done as you say?

tzs• 7 years ago

I haven't found any good source of religious affiliation data, but if instead we go by what percentage of the population say that religion is important in their life, a lot of Western nations had a higher percentage than the US according to a 2009 Gallup poll [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_coun...

diego_moita4• 7 years ago

As someone that has lived in 4 countries, gone through 2 nationalities, 3 languages and 3 professional careers, I strongly disagree.

I suspect your "sense of belonging" is just lazy accommodation or fear of change. Culture, social or personal, can't evolve without changing. You don't become a better person if you don't change your habits, rituals and your deep rooted mental frameworks.

True, a mind too open doesn't hold nothing of value. But a closed mind is stale, stagnant. And, in a world that changes faster each year, stagnation is danger, it is not safe.

I suggest you to embrace change with all its dangers and opportunities.

simonsarris3• 7 years ago

I am somewhat baffled.

You don't become a better person if you don't change your habits, rituals and your deep rooted mental frameworks.

You think, say, monks or rabbis are worse persons, then? Certainly to you they are stale, as you say?

What about Homer, whose rituals you may imagine never changed in his lifetime. Was he a worse person, and lazier, than someone modern, who changes them often?

thatswrong0• 7 years ago

I think some people _have_ found that though in other places. I look at music and going to shows and the community I’m a part of there and do see the sense of belonging and care that you might find in a religious setting.. hell when we go see our favorite artists, I call it “going to church”.

haunter• 7 years ago

Wonder what will replace the community for a lot of people in the near future. In a lot of places the church is a de facto community place. There usually a lot of posts in HN about the modern life, loneliness, depression, isolation etc. and I think if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or being true to yourself, or really thinking about yourself at all. It's in being of benefit to the human beings around you. And in serving those around you, you become something that is worth being. There are parentless children, drug addicts, parks that need cleaning etc. And not christianity per se but local churches do a great deal of job in these. We will see what the future holds.

In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace

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