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That's because the "fled religious persecution" line about the colonists is 100% BS. They were looking to establish single religion zones. A bunch of the colonists first went to Holand (which at the time had religious freedom), but Holland wouldn't put up with them (for them religious freedom meant across the board religious freedom, no zoning). So they came over here and made their colonies. To say the nation was founded by Puritans is also ignoring places like the Colony of Virginia (which was Catholic) and a few other. Our founding fathers didn't have a problem with that as long as it didn't extend past state boundaries (no federal church, state or local level do what you want, Virginia for a long time funneled tax dollars from non-Catholics to the Catholic Church, Catholics got a cut in their taxes for this). Then in the middle of the 20th century certain idiots started screwing with the definition of the words in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and it's all been downhill from there.

As for the terrible rise of neo-paganism, some of my best friends are pagans, no big deal. Instead of decrying all this supposed evil these people need to be asking themselves why people are fleeing Christianity in droves.

>>That's because the "fled religious persecution" line 
>>about the colonists is 100% BS. They were looking to 
>>establish single religion zones.

I don't know what their intentions were ... so I can't judge whether their reasons were genuine or not. All I can judge is the historical reality of what the colonies became ... and it was not *true* religious freedom. For example, people were often forced to pay the salaries of clergy belonging to the colony-approved religion. And you were considered lucky to not be harrassed for acknowledging a religion/denomination not recognized by the colony.

To say the nation was founded by Puritans is also ignoring places like the Colony of Virginia (which was Catholic) and a few other.

Not exactly right. VA was never Catholic, unless you mean Anglo-Catholic (Anglican). MD was indeed founded by Catholics, but was taken over later by radical Protestants who persecuted the original Catholic settlers.

I don't believe Roman Catholicism was ever the established Church of any of the colonies, except perhaps for a short period in MD.

Instead of decrying all this supposed evil these people need to be asking themselves why people are fleeing Christianity in droves.

Actually, they're not. It's just that most of them are leaving "mainline" churches and going to evangelical and conservative groups. This trend has been underway for decades. Such churches are not "respectable" in the eyes of most of the litterati. Those who join them promptly become invisible (as being beneath contempt) to the chattering classes.

Virginia wasn't Catholic- you're likely thinking of Maryland. Virginia, I believe, was pretty Episcopal. The Southern colonies were largely Presbyterian, and later Baptist and Methodist, with various others thrown in, especially along the seaboard. And, I might note, the South never did like the now hated Puritans- and only part of it was slavery. New Englander's tended to have a dim view of Southern culture as a whole.

Actually, that's incorrect. The Putritans were an offshoot of the Anglican church, and they felt the Anglican Church was becoming too liberal, and they started to have their own worship services. They wanted to remove the influence of centuries of Catholicism, ordinances, liturgy, an established priesthood and such, from regular worship. That means they wanted to PURIFY the church, that is why they are called Puritans. The state church of England licensed ministers, and these Puritans held meetings in their own, non state churches or houses, and some were imprisoned. The Pilgrims left because they wanted to practice Christianity according to their conscience, and to escape the persecution of the Anglican Church. Persecution was certainly a part of the reason they left.

Virginia was NEVER a Catholic colony. Maryland was but Maryland was also religiously tolerant and made no effort to exclude non-Catholics. I don't believe that even Maryland took government money and handed it to the Catholic Church as you suggest was done in the Protestant Anglican colony of Virginia. Maryland was so tolerant that it allowed itself to become a Protestant colony in which Catholics were ultimately disenfranchised and the original capital at St. Mary's razed because of Protestant distaste for the name of the community.

Actually, you are eloquent proof that Chesterton knew exactly what he was talking about. As to numbers, there are one billion Catholics and one billion other Christians in this world. Few of them live in Red China or India which have two billion or more people between them. There are a very substantial number of people, mostly Muslim, who inhabit much of the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa. There is a substantial atheist and agnostic hangover in the former Soviet Union and its former satellites which also have substantial populations. There are pockets of continuing paganism in the Third World and some phonies and frauds who claim "Wicca" as a religion, as pointed out by this NR article. There are, of course, those poor souls who are so in love with their favorite sins that they choose those sins over the Way, the Truth and the Life, but God anticipated that and allowed them and us the gift of free will to choose Him or perdition. I think that about covers the question of whether and. if so, why many abandon Christianity (as many enter).

Any questions?

I doubt the they are fleeing Christianity in droves so much as many are abandoning the traditional "liturgical" protestant and catholic churches due to disconnects between the relative piety of the laity and the increasing corruption being found in the church clergy. Many Christians are seeking the true source of Living Water, unpolluted by debauched "reinterpretations" of classical Christain faith and the crass commercialization[read Bible Granola diet bars and WWJD beads and bracelets, much(not all) Christian Contemporary Music.]of religious life.