There are some serious problems with this.
To start with, many Americans became “nonreligious”, *not* because they wanted to leave their church, but because “their church left them.”
Right now several large denominations are effectively having schisms, in which liberals have taken over the leadership, so the conservative rank and file are “voting with their feet.”
So, while numerically smaller, these new conservative churches are rapidly becoming the “real religions” of America, as the liberal churches fade away.
And for a time, it will appear in the statistics that atheists are having a big upswing. But just because someone is not attending church does not mean they are an atheist.
But it likely does mean that when they start going back to church, it will not be to a liberal church.
That is how lib/socialist operate. Wether its a church, or the media, or California or Sports.
They insert themselves, after the fact, into positions of power and then the sensible people willingly abandon or leave as a matter of survival the new imposed socialist order.
Excellent point. I'll to it. To too many Christians, and atheist is anyone who is not a Christian. For many years I was an atheist. Then after the passing of my father, I started attending a baptist church, confessed, was baptized, yada yada. I eventually came to the conclusion that I thought I believed, because I was emotionally damaged. As that damage began to heal, I realized I could not really embrace the Christian faith.
However, I never went back to being an atheist. I'm still left with the belief that there is something bigger out there, I just don't believe it's Jesus. Still, that undefined belief would make me an atheist in many run of the mill Christian's lexicons.