Lots of items in the news about the Pew Center's research, indicating that Protestants --including both oldtime Mainline types and the various Evangelicals-- are no longer the majority religion in America.
That is not surprising but it is not good news. It has always seemed to me that the one good justification for Protestantism was that only Protestants --and really, only English Protestants-- could have created America. John Adams pretty much said as much, too. And they, like her, are now passing away.
Not, apparently, because of conversions to other faiths, but because of the growth of the Nones, people who say they are religious, or at least not atheists/agnostics, but who are non-affiliated with a religious body. (I somehow think this is not unprecedented; am I wrong in my impression that a lot of Americans back around the founding and into the 19th century were culturally Protestant but un-churched?) Speculation as to the why of this current crop is rife.
The country remains, as it has been since its origins, vastly Christian, almost 80% so describe themselves --although God forbid anyone should ever describe the USA as a Christian nation unless they're a Muslim or a Jew or an atheist whining at feeling excluded or fending off the ever-imminent and never-arriving theocracy. And we're about 1/4 Catholic...though without the foreign invader Hispanics that number would be less.
My fascination with our fascination --nay, quoth he, pathological obsession--with minorities continues. According to Pew, two tiny tiny tiny minorities are Jews and Muslims. Jews are less than 2%. Muslims .... hold your breath: .6%. Point six percent. There are apparently more Buddhists in America than Mohammedans. So much for Barack Hussein's designation of us as a Muslim country.
Numbers count for a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. Especially if you once had them and then lose them. That's a whole and disorientingly new learning curve. But take the enormous, outsized, disproportionate power, influence, status of some of these minorities.
Numbers count. But they're not all that counts.
PS. Speaking of minorities, why is it so awful when some of them are "underrepresented" but not a problem when some of them are --massively-- "overrepresented'? [Of course, the notion that every element in the world should isometrically reflect the percentage of this or that group in the population is complete BS, but it's part of the lingo and discourse of the Liberal Trance.]
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That is not surprising but it is not good news. It has always seemed to me that the one good justification for Protestantism was that only Protestants --and really, only English Protestants-- could have created America. John Adams pretty much said as much, too. And they, like her, are now passing away.
Not, apparently, because of conversions to other faiths, but because of the growth of the Nones, people who say they are religious, or at least not atheists/agnostics, but who are non-affiliated with a religious body. (I somehow think this is not unprecedented; am I wrong in my impression that a lot of Americans back around the founding and into the 19th century were culturally Protestant but un-churched?) Speculation as to the why of this current crop is rife.
The country remains, as it has been since its origins, vastly Christian, almost 80% so describe themselves --although God forbid anyone should ever describe the USA as a Christian nation unless they're a Muslim or a Jew or an atheist whining at feeling excluded or fending off the ever-imminent and never-arriving theocracy. And we're about 1/4 Catholic...though without the foreign invader Hispanics that number would be less.
My fascination with our fascination --nay, quoth he, pathological obsession--with minorities continues. According to Pew, two tiny tiny tiny minorities are Jews and Muslims. Jews are less than 2%. Muslims .... hold your breath: .6%. Point six percent. There are apparently more Buddhists in America than Mohammedans. So much for Barack Hussein's designation of us as a Muslim country.
Numbers count for a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. Especially if you once had them and then lose them. That's a whole and disorientingly new learning curve. But take the enormous, outsized, disproportionate power, influence, status of some of these minorities.
Numbers count. But they're not all that counts.
PS. Speaking of minorities, why is it so awful when some of them are "underrepresented" but not a problem when some of them are --massively-- "overrepresented'? [Of course, the notion that every element in the world should isometrically reflect the percentage of this or that group in the population is complete BS, but it's part of the lingo and discourse of the Liberal Trance.]
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1 comment:
By 2045, should current trends continue, Mainline Protestant churches (the "bit 7: Episcopal, Presbyterian/USA; United Church of Christ/Congregationalists; Lutherans/ELCA; United Methodists; American Baptists; Christian Church-Disciples of Christ) will be barely 5% of the US population.
Their median age is already nearly 58 and rising; what few children they do have tend to drift away.
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