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> It really seems that in the process of masses leaving the church, they've gone on to adopt the exact same behaviors but worshipping other things - government,

> It really seems that in the process of masses leaving the church, they've gone on to adopt the exact same behaviors but worshipping other things - government, advertising, virtue signalling to show you're the most "on board" with the movement. I think that's because these things aren't from church, they're part of human nature. One of the churches I went to as a child was toxic, the other wasn't. The religious community isn't immune to human nature. 50-60 years ago the country was much more religious and you’d encounter people saying they’d never let their child marry a democrat and vice-versa according to my grandparents. To them, things are mostly better and what we have is the appearance of greater division.

titzer 4y ago
> 50-60 years ago the country was much more religious I think religion adapts and changes; religion was more mainstream, less toxic, and uniform than it is now. The median person is probably less religious (in terms of sticking to an established religion) but the upper 1/3 of the spectrum is more religious, in that they believe more extreme things, with less evidence, and are less likely to compromise. The past 40 years of the evangelical movement, which has been coopted by the conservative movement, has been extremely polarizing.
- petsfed 4y ago
  I'm not sure that it was any less toxic, just that the background level of toxicity has decreased. My mother clearly remembers being called out in front of her church for the unforgivable sin of attending a school dance, and that was in the mid-60s. Don't forget why the Southern Baptists broke away from the Baptists.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    just grinning a little at the phrase "breaking away from the baptists" : really, what's to break away from? It's a denomination primarily defined by everyone being a schismatic from everyone else.
hprotagonist 4y ago
> 50-60 years ago the country was much more religious and 100 years ago, much less! at most 40% of the US regularly attended church services in the 1910s.
- adrianmonk 4y ago
  Could some of that be due to the shift from a rural to urban society? If getting to church requires taking a horse and buggy 10 miles down dirt roads, then most weeks you might have a DIY religious observance at home on the farm instead. If you live in a town where you can walk to a neighborhood church, you're probably more likely to make it a regular habit.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    It's kind of the other way around: what was so weird and new about the 50s that performative church attendance was so high? And i can think of ~three answers: post-war trauma, a population bubble, and a percieved need in the white middle class for social discrimination and "order" against internally, integration and externally, "the godless commies". (see: HUAC, adding "under god" to the pledge) I figure that the 50s were an anomaly, not the other way around.
- jlawson 4y ago
  I think the 1910 figure might have more to do with practical concerns. When you have no car and live on a farm far from anything, as a huge number of people did back then, you can't regularly get to church even if you wanted to. So I wouldn't interpret that number as a clean measure of religiosity.
  - hprotagonist 4y ago
    Go for a drive in new england sometime and count the churches in the sticks. There's usually 2-5 congregations per tiny little hamlet, most of them built in the mid-1800s or earlier; most of them now defunct or dying. Sometimes you get 3 schisms of congregationalists in a row! "build a church and school within reasonable walking distance" was rule 1 of new towns for a good long while.

titzer 4y ago

> 50-60 years ago the country was much more religious I think religion adapts and changes; religion was more mainstream, less toxic, and uniform than it is now. The median person is probably less religious (in terms of sticking to an established religion) but the upper 1/3 of the spectrum is more religious, in that they believe more extreme things, with less evidence, and are less likely to compromise. The past 40 years of the evangelical movement, which has been coopted by the conservative movement, has been extremely polarizing.

petsfed 4y ago
I'm not sure that it was any less toxic, just that the background level of toxicity has decreased. My mother clearly remembers being called out in front of her church for the unforgivable sin of attending a school dance, and that was in the mid-60s. Don't forget why the Southern Baptists broke away from the Baptists.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  just grinning a little at the phrase "breaking away from the baptists" : really, what's to break away from? It's a denomination primarily defined by everyone being a schismatic from everyone else.

hprotagonist 4y ago

> 50-60 years ago the country was much more religious and 100 years ago, much less! at most 40% of the US regularly attended church services in the 1910s.

adrianmonk 4y ago
Could some of that be due to the shift from a rural to urban society? If getting to church requires taking a horse and buggy 10 miles down dirt roads, then most weeks you might have a DIY religious observance at home on the farm instead. If you live in a town where you can walk to a neighborhood church, you're probably more likely to make it a regular habit.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  It's kind of the other way around: what was so weird and new about the 50s that performative church attendance was so high? And i can think of ~three answers: post-war trauma, a population bubble, and a percieved need in the white middle class for social discrimination and "order" against internally, integration and externally, "the godless commies". (see: HUAC, adding "under god" to the pledge) I figure that the 50s were an anomaly, not the other way around.
jlawson 4y ago
I think the 1910 figure might have more to do with practical concerns. When you have no car and live on a farm far from anything, as a huge number of people did back then, you can't regularly get to church even if you wanted to. So I wouldn't interpret that number as a clean measure of religiosity.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  Go for a drive in new england sometime and count the churches in the sticks. There's usually 2-5 congregations per tiny little hamlet, most of them built in the mid-1800s or earlier; most of them now defunct or dying. Sometimes you get 3 schisms of congregationalists in a row! "build a church and school within reasonable walking distance" was rule 1 of new towns for a good long while.