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Organized religion is generally on a decline in the U.S., although not nearly as pronounced as that of Europe over the past decades. Evangelical atheism (the kind spouted by Dawkins or Hitchens), though, is not that common. Rather you have a bunch of people disaffiliating with a religion, or who were never really affiliated in the first place, without abandoning every religious or supernatural belief. Sometimes this is known as "spiritual, but not religious". Rather I think that a lot of them are just spiritually lazy people - doing hot yoga to see that cute guy every Friday does not count as "spirituality".
I have also noticed a severe decline in church attendance at my local parish, especially in the number of families attending church. We used to need rows of extra seating behind the pews in the assembly hall. The last time I went the pews weren't even full. I was impressed, however, at the turn-out for the Assumption Mass, August 15th, at a parish right in the middle of the city. That was full, and usually Catholics in the US unfortunately do not attend Mass on Holy Days of Obligation.
Of course this is no indication of how many people actually go to church, most global polls on the topic say that somewhere between 5-10% of Australians attend church on a regular basis.
There are more Christians in China, but most of the Christianity people go for is quite different from what you see in the US. A lot of the people who identify as Christian barely know anything about the religion or attend services with any frequency; its the same case in the US, but the interesting thing is that in the US this is usually because the people doing so grew up "Christian," and it's more a family tradition, while in China, people convert, identify as Christians, then go on as per normal and it doesn't seem to affect the way they live in the least.
The face of Christianity is definitely changing. I find many Christians with hermeneutically strict regard for Scripture seeking to distance themselves from organised religon. On the opposite end of the spectrum, those with lukewarm beliefs are drifting towards atheism or New Age beliefs.
There is an emerging tendency to view the mainstream Churches as apostate, many of the ritualistic Church practices as non-Biblical or even outright pagan. Believers are moving towards small home fellowships and home Bible study, which, interestingly, resemble the form of the first century and pre-Roman Church.
Those tuned into Eschatology will know that one postulated mechanism for persecution of believers in this period is that it will be sanctioned or even meted out by the established Church itself, which makes this trend all the more interesting.
The organized Christian religions are either married to the world (pro-LGBT, pro-feminism, prosperity doctrine, values relativism) or they're married to Christ. If the churches are increasingly married to the world then adherents who are married in the Spirit to Christ will leave.
And admittedly church ceremonies tend to be either extremely boring and stuffy or wacked out hypercharismatic with few following a sound biblical perspective. There is nothing more boring than the bible being taught by people who don't understand it, and this is the face of christianity that most of the world and the church attendees are exposed to.
For example, the story of Noah and the flood as it's told by those who don't understand the Bible.
Most of mankind becomes sinful.
God gets angry and decides to wipe out everything save for Noah and his family.
Noah builds a cute little boat and fills it full of animals.
God raises up a storm of biblical proportions and floods everything.
When everything is over, Noah and his family go forth and multiply.
As it's told by those who really understand the Bible:
The opening blows of a cosmic chess-match between God and Satan.
God reveals to Satan that his downfall will be the "Seed of the Woman" ... An allusion to Jesus and the fact that Christ will be born from a human woman.
Satan devises a strategy to thwart this plan by contaminating the seed (ie. genetics) of mankind, which would make the birth of Christ impossible.
Mankind is eventually corrupted, making them and their progeny irredeemably evil and incapable of resurrection and salvation.
Only Noah (who is "perfect in his generations") and his family are still human.
God gives Noah instructions to build an ark with hydrodynamically stable proportions and the world is destroyed in a flood.
The post-flood world is very different to the antediluvian world. The atmosphere, geology, even the very nature of reality itself is changed with the flood and the lifespan of man is reduced to 120 years.
Noah and his family repopulate the earth.
God reveals to Abraham of the line of Shem, father of Israel, that the Seed of the Woman will be born from his lineage.
Knowing his first strategy is defeated, Satan, armed with this knowledge, now focuses his efforts against the Israelites. Failing to destroy them in Egypt, he contaminates the genetics of the Canaanite people who reside in the Promised Land, the destination of the Israelites.
When Israelite scouts arrive in the land, they find it full of gigantic mutants ("we were like grasshoppers in their sight"). They report the nephilim tribes such as the anakim (including Goliath and his brothers) and rephaim.
God shows no mercy to the contaminated tribes of the Canaanites, who are not His creation, who cannot be saved and are irredeemably evil.
The second, I think, is just a bit more interesting but how many have heard the story told in this way
If we're talking Christianity as in correct adherence to the gospel doctrines:
- Rising in the parts of the world that are on the up. Really booming in China. Orthodox Christianity is being revived in Russia.
- Declining in the parts of the world that are declining - the EU, USA.
I think London is the only place in Europe that has seen a rise in Christianity in recent decades. London is also doing well.
Evangelical atheism (the kind spouted by Dawkins or Hitchens), though, is not that common.
The New Atheism was doomed from the offset because it is essentially (unwittingly) a revival of early 20th century Verificationism - a philosophical movement that collapsed so spectacularly in the 1960s that it was eventually regarded with contempt, even by its original authors.
Because of their positivist leanings, literature by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris et al. has been panned across the academic spectrum (the most vocal criticism coming from tenured atheist scholars) and their followers are notorious for being both scientifically and philosophically illiterate.
And whatever happened to the "Brights"? Last I heard, their meeting attendances had dwindled to one or two dozen - basically little more than a night out at the pub.
In Canada it is decreasing rapidly among the native-born population but remains high among the immigrant population in general and across all religions.
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