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Please actually read the whole article before posting. It's not that long.
From The Atlantic magazine:
The Surprising Reason Why More Americans Aren’t Going To Church
The standard narrative of American religious decline goes something like this: A few hundred years ago, European and American intellectuals began doubting the validity of God as an explanatory mechanism for natural life. As science became a more widely accepted method for investigating and understanding the physical world, religion became a less viable way of thinking—not just about medicine and mechanics, but also culture and politics and economics and every other sphere of public life. As the United States became more secular, people slowly began drifting away from faith.
Of course, this tale is not just reductive—it’s arguably inaccurate, in that it seems to capture neither the reasons nor the reality behind contemporary American belief. For one thing, the U.S. is still overwhelmingly religious, despite years of predictions about religion’s demise. A significant number of people who don’t identify with any particular faith group still say they believe in God, and roughly 40 percent pray daily or weekly. While there have been changes in this kind of private belief and practice, the most significant shift has been in the way people publicly practice their faith: Americans, and particularly young Americans, are less likely to attend services or identify with a religious group than they have at any time in recent memory.
If most people haven’t just logicked their way out of believing in God, what’s behind this shift in public religious practice, and what does the shift look like in detail? That’s a big question, one less in search of a straightforward answer than a series of data points and arguments constellated over time. Here’s one: Pew has a new survey out about the way people choose their congregations and attend services. While Americans on the whole are still going to church and other worship services less than they used to, many people are actually going more—and those who are skipping out aren’t necessarily doing it for reasons of belief.
I've held that in the US church was a meeting place for the community. In the frontier areas women were often stuck on the farm until Sunday, and that's when they got to go to town to meet friends. As the need for this declined, so did the church attendance. So a case can be made that mobility killed the churches.
The church were I attend there is about 50% who go every week and the rest come once or twice a month and a lot more during the fall, winter, and spring, then in the summer months . and for it size on average more people come to the church were I go , as there is a profound evidence in the Holy Spirit through the gifts of Christ , and there is a Sunday school equal to the parents who come and children who`s parents that do not attend the church but show up with friends ......................................Problem I see is that there is a lack of conviction for people to come to church , even though these people may have Jesus spirit on their lives ........For people who do not have Jesus on their spirit , they may not receive any prayer on their lives if they do not come to church as Jesus would pass them by if no one asks forgiveness for their sin
It isn't surprising that religious thinking is still important to many people even if church attendance isn't. One reason a number of theist friends of mine have stopped church -going is not because they stopped believing, but because they got bored with Church.
As the Freak says, it's a win either way. Irreligion is not so much about removing religious belief but Church influence and authority. Doubts about religious belief is a much longer and harder process. And people have to reach their own conclusions. What we can do is answer some of the questions and debunk the arguments put forward for religion by religious apologists.
I think most people are dropping out of church due to something I observed as about a 7 year old.
You have to dress up to go, it's boring, it's too long................... and they ask you for money all the time. I certainly didn't want to put that money I earned by clipping grass and taking out the trash into that stupid offering plate.
I think most people are dropping out of church due to something I observed as about a 7 year old.
You have to dress up to go, it's boring, it's too long................... and they ask you for money all the time. I certainly didn't want to put that money I earned by clipping grass and taking out the trash into that stupid offering plate.
I am quite impressed that at age 7 you were being paid to take out garbage and mowing lawns.
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It's not that long.
