15 Apr 2023 10:03 am
Actually, I am a devout Christian. Just not an Evangelical Nut Job.Beekeeper » 15 Apr 2023, 6:26 am » wrote: ↑ Sure they have. Instead of SUPPORTING the teaching of PRINCIPLES FROM GOD, you LWNJs are not only DESTROYING anything "religious" but you are wanting to INCARCERATE anyone that mentions God or anything relating to God. You truly believe that you have freedom FROM religion, and think anyone that says the word "God" needs to be eliminated.
What you have DONE is tried to replace God's laws with INSANITY and HATE for your fellow man if you don't get on the bandwagon of "acceptance' of your INSANITY!! Now explain how THAT attitude is love in any manner and why CHILDREN should never be around that type of indoctrination!!
The Strange Decline of US Evangelicalism
https://www.christiantoday.com/article/ ... 137169.htm
In July 2021 the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) published new data, as part of its '2020 Census of American Religion', that is very revealing. The PRRI data reveals what can only be described as an extraordinary decline in the number of white Americans who now identify as 'evangelical Christians.' As the PRRI report concludes: "Since 2006, white evangelical Protestants have experienced the most precipitous drop in affiliation, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020."
The data, though, is even more surprising than this. What the PRRI statistics reveal is that, while white evangelicalism seems to be declining, the numbers of what might be called 'mainline Protestants' is increasing. This includes the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church, etc. These churches now represent 16.4% of the US population. In contrast with declining evangelical numbers, this is a movement up from 13% in 2016. As a result, if PRRI is correct in its polling methodology, 'mainline Protestants' now constitute a larger group in US society than white evangelicals. There is evidence which suggests that some members of the latter have shifted to the former.
Not only this, but the PRRI research reveals that these white evangelicals constitute the oldest age-profile of any identifiable group of religious Americans. They have an average age of 56. In short, white US evangelicalism is both shrinking in size and failing to attract younger members. Or, as importantly, it is shedding its younger members who no longer wish to be classified as part of this group. If the current rate of decline continues, we could expect the number of US white evangelicals, as a percentage of the US adult population, to be in single figures by 2030. And they will also be old.
While all this has been going on, there occurred a further political move to the right among Republicans and their (older) evangelical allies. As Diana Butler Bass recently put it: "Evangelicalism became the religious right." It is this polarization of politics – with many evangelicals increasingly seen as the hard-right at prayer – that seems to have caused a gear-change in the process of decline between 2014 and 2021.
A leading US evangelical, in an off-the-record comment to me, described what has happened since November 2020 as "the continued departure by millions of young evangelicals who are disgusted with the toxic politicization of their spiritual community." And it is clear that it is not just the young who are moving out.