American religious disaffiliation in isn't about urbanization or rising literacy or a Baby Boomer cultural revolution, it's really only as old as 9/11. What did this? New Atheist broadsides? Bush-era political Christianity?
American religious disaffiliation in isn't about urbanization or rising literacy or a Baby Boomer cultural revolution, it's really only as old as 9/11. What did this? New Atheist broadsides? Bush-era political Christianity?
@andfogle I'm gonna go with internet. But I can't pick out a specific part. Just a few... shrinking of the world. ubiquity of photos and video. social media. real-time communication. impact on a developing brain.
@andfogle Absolutely the last one. Nothing kills religion faster than politics united with it.
@andfogle Internet/Social media and people seeing other cultures as normal.
@andfogle Popular media, keeping religion "private", and mixing religion with politics, would be my guess. The first two neutralised the moral character religious education is supposed to nurture. The latter turned people off religion (even if they were raised correctly).
@andfogle New atheism + the fact that very few people in the west are genuinely religious at all anyway. Once it became socially acceptable to admit you think it's all bollocks, many that would otherwise claim a religion stopped doing so.
@andfogle been a decline in membership-based organisations more generally like political parties and trade unions