There are always unintended consequences resulting from hate. I take this as good news.
Christian Right Has Major Role in Hastening Decline of Religion in America
CJ WERLEMAN – AlterNet (U.S.)
The fastest growing religious faith in the United States is the group collectively labeled ‘Nones,” who spurn organized religion in favor of non-defined skepticism about faith. About two-thirds of Nones say they are former believers. This is hugely significant. The trend is very much that Americans raised in Christian households are shunning the religion of their parents for any number of reasons: the advancement of human understanding; greater access to information; the scandals of the Catholic Church; and the over-zealousness of the Christian Right.
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Ironically, the rise of the Christian Right over the course of the past three decades may well end up being the catalyst for Christianity’s rapid decline. From the moment Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980, evangelical Christians, who account for roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population, identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. Michael Spencer, a writer who describes himself as a post-evangelical reform Christian, says, ‘Evangelicals fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith. Evangelicals will be seen increasingly as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.”
Phi Beta Iota: The human trinity is head, heart, and soul. All three have been lost in 21st Century America. The public has been dumbed down and drugged up; all vestiges of “community” have been largely lost to a mix of urban and suburban alienation and the failure of both religions and labor unions to nurture caring — at the same time, charity has become a massive scam, with the “help our veterans” ther lastest iteration; and finally, America is devoid of spirit, of any reverence for the natural and the supernatural, the cosmic miracle of life within which we should be but are not playing a catalytic role for good. Brother Stephen is in error in considering the decline of religion to be a good thing. We point instead to Rabbi Michael Lerner, Michael Down, and Jim Wallis, among others — as well as to the many books that strive to teach the value of spirituality in and of itself without a religious label.
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