Why is Christianity and religion so huge in the USA? (atheist, priests)
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don't know why, but it's annoying as hell. Religion is something that should be private to a person.
I'm pretty sure that a big part of Christianity is to spread the word to non-believers. So, technically, if Christians "keep it to themselves" then they aren't following Christianity. Try to wrap your mind around THAT.
I'm pretty sure that a big part of Christianity is to spread the word to non-believers. So, technically, if Christians "keep it to themselves" then they aren't following Christianity. Try to wrap your mind around THAT.
thats the problem. some people don't want to or have already heard "the word" and don't want to hear it any more. Many "religious people" seem to think that their way is the only way (christians don't have the exclusive rights to annoying proselytizing).
Also remember that christianity started as an obscure judaic sect.
"Spreading the Word" resulted in some of the worse crimes against humanity (again, not exclusive to christianity)
I'm pretty sure that a big part of Christianity is to spread the word to non-believers. So, technically, if Christians "keep it to themselves" then they aren't following Christianity. Try to wrap your mind around THAT.
Most christians teach by example, by living their life according to their beliefs. If you're mad about TV evangelists, perverted priests, and idiot bible thumpers and you spread that to every religious person in America than your hate matches theirs. No pressure trying wrap your mind around THAT, I'm not trying to convert your opinion.
"Spreading the Word" resulted in some of the worse crimes against humanity (again, not exclusive to christianity)[/quote]
Humanity is responsible for the worst crimes against humanity.
As the world becomes more atheist and secular the atrocities contemporary people attribute to religion will continue because for those who've ruled nations and made the decision to send their people to war have never been what the founders of the religions they supposedly follow preach.
As long as people have to compete for land, food, and money they'll kill each other and they'll justify it using any atheist/secular cause as much as a religious one.
I'm pretty sure that a big part of Christianity is to spread the word to non-believers. So, technically, if Christians "keep it to themselves" then they aren't following Christianity. Try to wrap your mind around THAT.
"Spreading the word" can mean different things to different people. I don't evangelize much or at all, in part, because I assume people have already heard of Catholicism. This isn't like ancient times where it was all new to people. I will defend my beliefs and try to clear up misconceptions when appropriate. Otherwise "spreading the word", to me, is more about trying to be a good example.
So "keeping it to yourself" is not really the Christian way, but I think even many Protestants churches don't expect everyone to really preach or evangelize. (Except in the "soft" sense of evangelizing, telling people you're Christian and if asked saying why) There's many places where the people are fairly churchgoing, but aren't going to bother non-believers much or at all.
A diverse city like NYC with a diverse European population has alot of Catholics from different parts of Europe. So even different sorts of Catholicism. Very religious city in my opinion. You don't have to be a Conservative Bible Thumper to be overly religious. That has always been the medias stereotypical religious trope. Those darn "Crazy Bible Thumping Christian".
Dude, you have 8 million people of any type, and you're going to have a ton of people of even the smallest religion or faith.
Newsflash: I'm Catholic, but it is my heritage, and not my practicing religion. Most of my friends are Catholic. But they really don't do anything, even Easter/Christmas, but they will say they are Catholic.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but formal religion is falling apart.
The most religious areas are the least diverse areas.
Kinda like the Orthodox Jews and Muslims of NY or the large Buddhist sects in LA, huh? Or the large numbers of Latino Catholics,white protestant and non-religious white people living together in the Southwest?
That's a swipe against fundamentalists in the South and it falls flat. The only Christianity that gets attention anymore are crackpot fundamentalists because they're the loudest, most arrogant, most confrontational religious people in America. Most people that are in some way christian/religious you will meet you won't ever know they're religious because they don't try to convert people, don't take their religion's book literally, and know that there is truth in science and see value in both science and religion. It's unfortunate, to say the least, that christian extremists have hijacked the word "religion" in America.
Musims? 1.2% in LA? LARGE? There are 5% in Philadelphia, and by nobody's standards is that more than Plurality Black/White City with some Hispanics and Asians as the minorities.
Buddhists? Explain and substantiate this large diversified (spread out) enclave. I can't quite find it.
Dude, Do us a favor, since you have voiced your authoritative opinion:
How many NATIVE BORN PRACTICING Orthodox Jews are there in NY state compared to 10 or 20 years ago?
How many NATIVE BORN PRACTICING Muslims are there in NY state compared to 10 or 20 years ago. Not your cultural muslims, but actual Islam membership and practice? Show us that their kids pray toward Mecca.
My observation of Christian fundamentalists falls flat? Show me a dense county anywhere in the US which is ethnically diverse (more than 30% non-white or mult-generational African American), which has substained or increased any percentage of any one religion over the past 10 or 20 years. Again, NATIVE.
The Catholic church understands that their only saving grace at this point are the Mexican immigrants moving into the area.
Argue yourself. If you are so confident, post links. I'll post links as well.
I will reply with graph after graph, source after source, that religion is falling apart in metropolitan areas. Go ahead, try it. I'll tear your argument to pieces.
There's plenty of ignorance and hype in this thread. (And I have noticed that the non-religious get especially emotional when questions about religion are asked. Pangs of conscience, maybe?) Even the OP's disdain of religion in the U.S. was evident, although she asked a very valid question.
First, one has to remember that for a long time Europe was heavily religious too. Maybe not as much as the U.S. in some cases, but it certainly wasn't the secular wasteland it is today 50 years ago. The Puritan influence on American religion is certainly exaggerated; while they may have been some of the first permanent Europe settlers in the 13 colonies, there were many other groups that followed who were not associated with the Puritans. In addition, most Americans are not descended from the Puritans - they are much more likely to trace their roots back to 19th-century Germany, Italy, Poland, or Ireland than a small colony of religious radicals. A large proportion of the population is comprised of recent immigrants and there descendants, too, and they are largely religious as well (Mexicans, Salvadoreans, etc.) Whoever said that the United States will become less religious as it becomes more "Latin" is reasoning from false premises. Much of Latin America is more religious than the United States, including Mexico, even though the influence of the Church there is declining.
Second, the U.S. has never in its existence had a "state church", nor has it been associated with a specific one. Many of the founders were Deists. There was a large amount of religious diversity from the start: Baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Catholics, Quakers, etc. While the majority of the U.S. has always been Christian, there was no proper church associated with the nation, even informally. This may have worked to the advantage of American religiosity in several ways. One is that there was no central church to blame for corruption or conspiracy with the government. The Franco regime was heavily associated with the Catholic Church, as was the Salazar regime in Portugal; and so-called "religious" wars went on throughout Europe since the Reformation. Another is that religion could be more of an individual and family experience in the U.S., as compared with the more social or popular experience that it is in countries where a single church predominates, because that single church's customs are also the culture's customs. When religion is solely popular - not personally rooted, but customary - when society changes and the custom of, say, "service attendance" ends, it would seem to end for all those who merely go by custom (because there it is no longer customary to attend church). When there is some event in a society that calls into question the existence of a personal God, the custom of believing in a personal God can (possibly; this is all theoretically speaking) change and those who believe in God and the divinity of Christ by mere habit, because it was the culture they were brought up into and no more and the individuals will no longer hold that belief. This would be most of the population in a society where merely popular religion predominates. More likely this decline would be generational, as it is in Europe, where the oldest generation grew up in a period where belief in God was still strong and was able to internalize that belief, and the younger generations grew up when the custom was less strong and abandoned or never received the belief before internalizing it. The multitude of churches in the U.S. and separation of American culture from any one denomination could be a factor in making religion a more individual and personal experience and less of a social experience.
Third, in the U.S. the church not only played a religious role, but also a significant social one. This is seemingly contrary to my second point, but let me explain. In diverse neighborhoods at the turn of the 19th - 20th century, there were often several Catholic parishes in a neighborhood where worshippers of a single ethnicity would gather. A newly-arrived Pole would worship at parish with masses in Polish; a Calabrian would worship at an "Italian" church. Likewise for Protestant denominations associated with countries; Germans would construct German-speaking Lutheran congregations, Norwegians, etc. would do the same. Churches have often been at the center of immigrant communities, and remain so even today. They eased (and perhaps sometimes agitated) the process of "melting" into the "pot". Whatever the case, the played a crucial role.
Although fifth-generation Polish-Americans or Swedish-Americans generally do not attend their neighborhood church or even speak the language, churches continue to play an important social role. Many also have activities whose links to religion are dubious (a youth group going rock climbing, for example) but seek to enhance fellowship and strengthen retention. This is not the same thing as "popular religion" (religion by habit or religion by custom), because it is the individual's choice of what church to attend, and the activities appeal to the individual.
Fourth, on that point, because of the diversity of churches in the U.S., and their desire to obtain and retain members, many have changed with the generation and instituted rock music, hip-hop music, etc. into their services. The churches of Europe do this, but I have a sense that Americans were the first to "diversify" their liturgy. A marketplace analogy can be made: many churches vie to get "believers" of their "religion" and to make them faithful. Also, it is very easy and common to "switch" religions in the U.S.: for example, to go from being a Catholic to being a Lutheran, or to go from being a mainline Protestant to an Evangelical.
(As a Catholic who prefers more traditional worship and believes that a lot of the "innovations" in the Mass over the past 40 years are irreverent and unbecoming to the sacredness of the Eucharist, I still believe this, as I have found other Catholics who prefer them)
Fifth, the U.S. is more economically disparate than most of Europe. Studies have found a positive correlation between religiosity and economic inequality.
Sixth, much of Europe's secularization seemed to take place in the 20th century. I can associate at least three things with this in addition to the fascist regimes associated with religion. The first is the two world wars. While the U.S. fought in both of them, we did not see the devastation that Europe did. This could easily lead people to doubt the existence of a benevolent and personal God.
The second is the rise of communism. Most manifestations of communism (and to a lesser extent, socialism) were associated with atheism or at least non-belief, and Marxist regimes often (perhaps in almost all cases) repressed religion and persecuted believers. While communism did not take hold in Western Europe (which is what Americans usually mean when they say "in Europe..."), many communist and socialist parties throughout the continent gained widespread support after the Second World War, though it's kind of an "out thing" today. The United States, on the other hand, was vehemently anti-Marxist, anti-communist, and anti-socialist. This wasn't only on the government level, which is a superficial way of analyzing things, but also on the citizen level.
The third is the Sexual Revolution. This had an undeniably strong impact on American culture, too. When you combine it with the other things that were happening on the continent at the time, a synergy might have formed, where one thing re-inforces the other.
I could list other reasons as well, but it's certainly not solely to the credit of the Puritans or the Pilgrims.
I don't know why, but it's annoying as hell. Religion is something that should be private to a person.
Why? Why should a person's religion be any more "private" than their personal politics or sexual orientation?
Now, I hasten to add, if you are referring to how some people can make it their personal mission to "convert" you (to whatever), I empathize.
However, I really don't think that is what you mean by "keeing it private". In other words, you aren't saying this out of a desire for mutual respect of another persons religion (or not). What you really want is to just shut Christians up, right? We upset your world vision, as it is.
And hell, I am a beer-drinking Southern Baptist who has been to a lot of rodeos and county fairs...so let's not bullsh*it each other -- as we say in Texas/South -- too much.
Anyway, "annoying" as it may be to you (or anybody else within earshot), I am not ashamed to be a Christian and -- while I will not "force" it on anybody else -- I will not roll over and play dead in the face of those who want to censor it completely.
Like it or not, for a nation to remain a coherent nation, then there are going to have to be a majority accepted values, and religious tradition plays a lot into it. The "face-card" of the secular left -- in poker parlance -- is the obvious and cheap one. In fact, it actually takes advantage and depends on the cowardice of some Christians to not challenge it.
I call your bluff. WHY should I -- or any other Christian --accept yourreligious outlook as to the future of America?
Personally, I think you are violating your own admonishions to keep religion private by forcing your own upon others. I am deeply offended by this...Harumph Harumph
There's plenty of ignorance and hype in this thread. (And I have noticed that the non-religious get especially emotional when questions about religion are asked. Pangs of conscience, maybe?) Even the OP's disdain of religion in the U.S. was evident, although she asked a very valid question.
First, one has to remember that for a long time Europe was heavily religious too. Maybe not as much as the U.S. in some cases, but it certainly wasn't the secular wasteland it is today 50 years ago. The Puritan influence on American religion is certainly exaggerated; while they may have been the first permanent Europe settlers in the 13 colonies, there were many other groups that followed who were not associated with the Puritans. In addition, most Americans are not descended from the Puritans - they are much more likely to trace their roots back to 19th-century Germany, Italy, Poland, or Ireland than a small colony of religious radicals. A large proportion of the population is comprised of recent immigrants and there descendants, too, and they are largely religious as well (Mexicans, Salvadoreans, etc.) Whoever said that the United States will become less religious as it becomes more "Latin" is reasoning from false premises. Much of Latin America is more religious than the United States, including Mexico, even though the influence of the Church there is declining.
Second, the U.S. has never in its existence had a "state church", nor has it been associated with a specific one. Many of the founders were Deists. There was a large amount of religious diversity from the start: Baptists, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Catholics, Quakers, etc. While the majority of the U.S. has always been Christian, there was no proper church associated with the nation, even informally. This may have worked to the advantage of American religiosity in several ways. One is that there was no central church to blame for corruption or conspiracy with the government. The Franco regime was heavily associated with the Catholic Church, as was the Salazar regime in Portugal; and so-called "religious" wars went on throughout Europe since the Reformation. Another is that religion could be more of an individual and family experience in the U.S., as compared with the more social or popular experience that it is in countries where a single church predominates. When religion is solely popular - not personally rooted, but customary - when society changes and the custom of, say, "service attendance" ends, it would seem to end for all those who merely go by custom (because there it is no longer customary to attend church). This would be most of the population in a society where merely popular religion predominates. The multitude of churches in the U.S. could be a factor in making religion a more individual and personal experience and less of a social experience.
Third, in the U.S. the church not only played a religious role, but also a significant social one. This is seemingly contrary to my second point, but let me explain. In diverse neighborhoods at the turn of the 19th - 20th century, there were often several Catholic parishes in a neighborhood where worshippers of a single ethnicity would gather. A newly-arrived Pole would worship at parish with masses in Polish; a Calabrian would worship at an "Italian" church. Likewise for Protestant denominations associated with countries; Germans would construct German-speaking Lutheran congregations, Norwegians, etc. would do the same. Churches have often been at the center of immigrant communities, and remain so even today. They eased (and perhaps sometimes agitated) the process of "melting" into the "pot". Whatever the case, the played a crucial role.
Although fifth-generation Polish-Americans or Swedish-Americans generally do not attend their neighborhood church or even speak the language, churches continue to play an important social role. Many also have activities whose links to religion are dubious (a youth group going rock climbing, for example) but seek to enhance fellowship and strengthen retention. This is not the same thing as "popular religion" (religion by habit or religion by custom), because it is the individual's choice of what church to attend, and the activities appeal to the individual.
Fourth, on that point, because of the diversity of churches in the U.S., and their desire to obtain and retain members, many have changed with the generation and instituted rock music, hip-hop music, etc. into their services. The churches of Europe do this, but I have a sense that Americans were the first to "diversify" their liturgy. A marketplace analogy can be made: many churches vie to get "believers" of their "religion" and to make them faithful. Also, it is very easy and common to "switch" religions in the U.S.: for example, to go from being a Catholic to being a Lutheran, or to go from being a mainline Protestant to an Evangelical.
Fifth, much of Europe's secularization seemed to take place in the 20th century. I can associate at least three things with this in addition to the fascist regimes associated with religion. The first is the two world wars. While the U.S. fought in both of them, we did not see the devastation that Europe did. This could easily lead people to doubt the existence of a benevolent and personal God.
The second is the rise of communism. Most manifestations of communism (and to a lesser extent, socialism) were associated with atheism or at least non-belief, and Marxist regimes often (perhaps in almost all cases) repressed religion and persecuted believers. While communism did not take hold in Western Europe (which is what Americans usually mean when they say "in Europe..."), many communist and socialist parties throughout the continent gained widespread support after the Second World War, though it's kind of an "out thing" today. The United States, on the other hand, was vehemently anti-Marxist, anti-communist, and anti-socialist. This wasn't only on the government level, which is a superficial way of analyzing things, but also on the citizen level.
The third is the Sexual Revolution. This had an undeniably strong impact on American culture, too. When you combine it with the other things that were happening on the continent at the time, a synergy might have formed, where one thing re-inforces the other.
I could list other reasons as well, but it's certainly not solely to the credit of the Puritans or the Pilgrims.
Awesome analysis. On point.
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