Losing our religion

HuffPo reports that 15% of Americans now say they have no religion, up from 14.2% in 2001 and 8.2% in 1990. 30% of married couples had a non-religious wedding ceremony.

It looks like the world's most religious advanced nation is drifting into line with international norms; we are becoming Europe. This despite the immigration of massive numbers of Catholic Hispanics. Since most religious Americans are Christian (Jews are at 1.2%, Muslims at 0.6%, Hindus and Buddhists at less), most of that non-religiosity comes from Christians abandoning their religion.

Why is this happening? I have no idea, actually. My guesses are usually big economic changes, like increasing urbanization (which isn't happening here yet), technological modernization, etc.

But maybe it's just salesmanship. When Christianity gets on the news these days, it's often for protests outside abortion clinics, or big drives to ban gay marriage, or creationism in public schools, or denying birth control to the third world, or keeping dead women on life support. And that isn't media bias at work; Rick Warren, James Dobson, and dozens of televangelists are out there every day stumping for these right-wing crusades, and you don't see many (any?) big national Christian leaders denouncing them...what else is the media supposed to report?

This is a shame, since I like Christianity quite a bit. It has done a lot on the humanitarian front; it provides a political counterweight to overbearing governments in places like Korea and Taiwan (and maybe even China, in the future); it doesn't support terrorism; and, Dobson to the contrary, most Christian organizations respect the separation of church and state. But, rather like the legions of moderate Muslims who refuse to denounce the religion's terrorist minority, moderate Christians have for the most part refused to come out and say that gay-bashing, abortion-bashing, and science-bashing are not fundamental principles of their faith.

So it's not surprising that a slow but steady trickle of Americans is walking away from the Christian religion. Kinda sad, when you think about it.