Free Republic

Around the world, people are beginning to turn their backs on religion. For some time, researchers have observed this trend as it ripples through developed countries, with the United States standing out as the exception. Now, a new study reveals this is no longer the case; with each passing generation, Americans too are steadily becoming less religious. --snip-- Researchers found each generation is subsequently less religious than the one before. In one example, the team found that 41 percent of people aged 70 and older reported they attend church services at least once a month. For people just under that...

"The perception that the Christian faith is extreme," says Barna Group, "is now firmly entrenched among the nation's non-Christians."I'm in the final stretch of completing this book, which I should have finished weeks (or months!) ago. And I have a number of things I plan to post about as soon as possible. But this bit of news from the Barna Group grapt aholt of me (that's a German phrase, by way of Montana): Society is undergoing a change of mind about the way religion and people of faith intersect with public life. That is, there are intensifying perceptions that faith...

Rio de Janeiro, February 20, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has called on Orthodox Christians and Catholics to join efforts in the fight against the ousting of Christian values. "We still have some doctrinal disagreements, but no one is preventing us from fighting, hand in hand, to end the persecutions, the ousting of Christian values, to end the de-Christianization of the 21st century human civilization," the patriarch said, after conducting a prayer service near the Jesus Christ statue on Mount Corcovado, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, on Saturday. All travelers, especially...

A POST-CHRISTIAN era has dawned in Britain, with most white Britons now saying they have no religion, according to a new survey. The increase is most pronounced among those aged under 40 and comes amid claims that they feel alienated from the church’s conservative social values. The poll, conducted by YouGov last month with a sample of 1,500 across the whole population, including recent immigrants, found almost half (46%) have no religion, up from 42% in February 2015 and from 37% in January 2013. This rises to more than 50% among white British.

Iceland seems to be on its way to becoming an even more secular nation, according to a new poll. Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it had been created by God. The poll, which was conducted by...

You want to know one reason why so many Christian marriages end up in divorce? Ronald Reagan once quipped that the trouble with his political opponents, “is not that they are ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” Well, I’ve had a bee in my bonnet for years over something that far too many of my fellow Christians believe in that just isn’t so. I speak, gentle listener, of the whole “soul mate” nonsense, especially when it comes to finding a husband or wife. Let me be perfectly clear: No matter how many ads for Christian...

In a nation that based its Declaration of Independence on the principle that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” a record 58 percent now say they would vote to elect “a generally well-qualified” atheist as president if their political party nominated such a person. In a poll conducted June 2-7, Gallup asked 771 adults living in the United States this question: “Between now and the 2016 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates—their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president...

Tear down that cross and toss it in the wood chipper because the American church is toast. So goes conventional wisdom after recent revelations from the Pew Research Center, which found that in just 7 years, the percentage of Christians in the United States dropped nearly 8 points. The news was met with uncontrolled fits of glee from liberal publications like Salon, where author Patricia Miller gloated that the benefits from the decline of Christianity would be, “huge.” No doubt the scores of natural disaster victims around the globe who have profited from all the atheist relief trucks rolling in...

"This is a Christian nation," said the Supreme Court in 1892. "America was born a Christian nation," echoed Woodrow Wilson. Harry Truman affirmed it: "This is a Christian nation." But in 2009, Barack Hussein Obama begged to differ: "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation." Comes now a Pew Research Center survey that reveals the United States is de-Christianizing at an accelerated rate. Whereas 86 percent of Americans in 1990 identified as Christians, by 2007, that was down to 78 percent. Today only 7 in 10 say they are Christians. But the percentage of those describing themselves as atheists,...

New Evangelization, where art thou? The Pew Research Center reports that the number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen sharply, to the tune of nearly eight percentage points in only seven years.  The survey, carried out in 2014, was the second "Religious Landscape Study" Pew conducted since 2007. Based on the 35,000 people the institute interviewed, the American populace is 21% Catholic. It was 23.9% seven years ago.  While the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014, non-Christian religions are growing. Islam showed the greatest gains, growing half a percentage point...

. . . but there is less here than meets the eye. At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big. So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn’t, because that’s not what’s really happened here....

The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region, according to an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center. Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007.

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among...

Show captionReligiosity index shows the changes in religious activity in the United States. Religion News Service This image is available for Web publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow. Religiosity in the United States is in the midst of what might be called ‘The Great Decline.’ Previous declines in religion pale in comparison. Over the past fifteen years, the drop in religiosity has been twice as great as the decline of the 1960s and 1970s.How do we track this massive change in American religion? We start with information from rigorous, scientific surveys on worship service attendance, membership in congregations, prayer,...

At a recent talk, President Vladimir Putin defended Christian values and criticized the secularization of Europe, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. “We have been able to see many Euro-Atlantic countries effectively embark on a path of renouncing their roots, including Christian values, which underlie Western civilization,” he said. “Policies are pursued that put large families and same-sex partnerships in the same category, belief in God and belief in Satan.” “Excesses of political correctness reach the point where there are serious discussions on the registration of parties that have propaganda of pedophilia as their objective,” he continued. “People in...

WASHINGTON – Southern Baptist theologian Russell Moore challenged his fellow Christians to recover the Church's prophetic voice by first transforming the Church from the inside to reflect the hope of the kingdom of God to the world, and to not lose sight of the Cross as their central mission. Moore was delivering his inauguration speech Tuesday as the new president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. Early in his speech, Moore signaled that his approach to political engagement would be different than a previous generation of Christian political activism. "We...

Christians are less likely than atheists to be promoted to top jobs, official figures show. Nearly a quarter of people with no religious belief live in homes headed by someone with a senior executive position or a job in one of the professions. However, well under a fifth of Christians work in the best-paid and most influential jobs or are married to someone who does. … Barrister Andrea Minichiello Williams, a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, said: “If you hold views that are contrary to the prevailing orthodoxy, you are seen as potential trouble. This is a...

On Wednesday, Great Britain’s Girl Guides (their equivalent of U.S. Girl Scouts) and Brownies removed God from their 103-year-old oath. Instead of the passage where they used to promise to “love God,” they will now vow to be true to "myself" and develop "my beliefs." The organization said the move is intended to attract girls from secular families. Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of Christian Concern, condemned the move, saying, "These values have their roots in a Christian outlook. Taking ‘God’ out of the promise denies the history and foundations of the movement without offering anything in its place, with the...

For two millennia, the birth of Christ has been seen as the greatest event in world history. The moment Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, God became man, and eternal salvation became possible. This date has been the separation point of mankind's time on earth, with B.C. designating the era before Christ, and A.D., anno domino, in the Year of the Lord, the years after. And how stands Christianity today? "Christianity is in danger off being wiped out in its biblical heartlands," says the British think tank Civitas. In Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Christians face persecution...

My company, a major metropolitan newspaper, used to host an annual Christmas party for employees. But, this year, the paper broke with tradition, hosting instead a “holiday party,” so as not to offend the sensibilities of those that do not believe Christ the Son of the God. Well, I respect the Constitutionally-protected right of every American to practice a religion other than Christianity, the faith of this nation’s founders. Or to practice no religion whatsoever (which I suspect of many, if not most of my journalistic peers). What I find objectionable, though, is the insistence of non-Christians that the holiday...