Free Republic

The growing role of religion worldwide will particularly be seen in the political context, says Hanna Salomäki, the director of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s Church Institute for Research and Advanced Training.Speaking at the theological conference of Perusta magazine in early January, Salomäki mentioned how the world’s economic powers have connections with a range of religions. Hence, the influence of faith will not disappear from the world in the future.According to Salomäki, Western countries are the exception to the global rise in religiosity. In regions like Europe and North America, participation in religious events is decreasing, and membership in...

CNN's energetic switch from Trump Derangement to Biden Exceptionalism runs roughshod over their supposed devotion to "Facts First."On Sunday, reporters Michael Warren and Arlette Saenz blatantly boosted Joe Biden as a man of devout faith, touting he would be the only president in decades to attend church. Decades? Really? Did CNN not remember that President George W. Bush was well known as a very religious man who attended church?Oops! Well, apparently somebody pointed out that obvious fact overlooked by CNN and they updated their story which was originally titled, "Biden's Catholic faith will be on full display as the first...

The New York Times smears religious Americans as a 'major source' of COVID outbreaks even as church-related infections represent only 0.02 percent of cases. National tension and tempers are incredibly high over the rising numbers of COVID cases in America. WeÂ’re all on the edge after months of lockdowns, shutdowns, quarantines, economic instability, school closures, and the surreal nature of social distancing.WeÂ’re mad about recommendations that keep changing and the lack of control and transparency in how this pandemic has been handled. Churches shut down during the initial phases of the COVID panic. Many were in localities where officials imposed...

Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread decline” so much so that conservative believers should suffer “growing anxiety”?

And church attendance by Roman Catholics is on the decline again. So, in fact, is the religious affiliation among Americans at large.The drop continues a long trend of declining attendance at mass. In the last three years, an average of only 39 percent of Catholics reported attending church in the past week. That’s down from an average of 45 percent just 10 years ago. And severely off from the mid-1900’s. In 1955, for instance, 75 percent of Catholics reported attending mass during the previous week.On the other side of the aisle, the new Gallup survey found that church attendance...

New research reveals that 31 percent of the adult U.S. population, approximately 65 million people, were at one time involved in church but have since left. This is approximately equal to the number of people still regularly attending church. The study also found that more than 10 percent of adults still attending church are on their way out the door. The top five reasons people gave for leaving are: The church was too judgmental. The church bureaucracy was stifling. They didn't like the lecture style of preaching. The church was not where they encountered God. The church took a social...

In Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital city, 75 percent of adults do not go to church at least once a week, according to the Gallup poll, while only 23 percent do. Another 2 percent told the polling firm they “don’t know” when asked how often they go to church. When ranked with the 50 states, D.C. was fifth from last in the percentage of its residents who attend church services at least once a week. …

AustriA 18% [16]Belgium 7% [17] Canada 20%[18] Denmark 3% [16] Cyprus 25% [16]Czech Republic 11% [16] Estonia 4% [16] Finland 5% [16]France 12% [19] Greece 27% [16]Hungary 12% [16]Ireland 46% [20] Italy 31% [16]Latvia 7% [16] Lithuania 14% [16] Malta 75% [16]Norway 3% [21] Poland 63% [16] Portugal 29% [16]Slovakia33% [16]Slovenia18% [16] Spain 21% [16]Sweden 5% [16]United Kingdom 12% [22]United States 43%[18]

It may not be the reason you think.Details: The Rev. Stephen Fichter understood just how dominant a role sports has assumed in the culture when a family told him they would be out of town Good Friday to Easter Sunday to attend their child’s volleyball tournament.“It’s truly sports that has become like the religion” for many people, said Fichter, a researcher and the pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Haworth, N.J.From youth travel teams to big-time national festivals such as the Final Four, sports have been making increasing inroads in the busy lives of many Americans. Some scholars even trace...

Who is filling the pews in American churches? It is increasingly likely that they won’t be working class white people, according to new research. While religious service attendance has decreased for all white Americans since the early 1970s, the rate of decline has been more than twice as high for less educated, lower and lower-middle class whites compared to more educated and presumably more affluent whites, according to a study presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Las Vegas. “My assumption going into this research was that middle America was more religious and conservative in...

A new University of Michigan study finds that Americans are much more likely to exaggerate their attendance at religious services than are people in many other countries. "Americans have long been viewed as exceptionally religious compared to other nations in the developed world," said Philip Brenner, a research fellow at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the author of the study. "But this study suggests that American religiosity may be exceptional not in terms of actual behavior, but rather in terms of identity. "In the U.S., and to a lesser extent in Canada, the gap between what we...

Maybe 'blue laws' weren't so bad By David R. Francis Recall the political storms in the United States over lifting bans on opening stores on Sundays - the so-called "blue laws." Christian ministers would point to Moses' fourth commandment: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." Owners of mom-and-pop retail shops would plead to keep a legal "day of rest" that prevented big stores from luring away business by staying open on Sundays. But growing numbers of women worked outside the home and found it difficult to shop during the week. States hoped Sunday store hours would boost tax...

Parents miss Mass, kids get ax The pastor of a Staten Island Catholic church is playing holy hardball - kicking hundreds of kids out of religious ed classes because their families aren't showing up at Mass. The Rev. Michael Cichon, pastor of St. Joseph/St. Thomas in Pleasant Plains, used each family's bar-coded donation envelope to track attendance. He's tossed about 300 kids from classes and told them not to reapply until next April. Without the classes, children cannot receive the sacraments, meaning some youngsters who thought they'd be making their First Communion next year will have to wait. The...

I'm just interested. I could do without church. Thanks to all who participated in my other thread on "who believes salvation can be lost". There are just so many responses. How important is church to you as a conservative? I think you can be moral and christian without church.