Certainly to be an unpopular take: It's the God-shaped hole in western hearts. While religious affiliation has been in decline since the mid-1970s, the rate of

Certainly to be an unpopular take: It's the God-shaped hole in western hearts. While religious affiliation has been in decline since the mid-1970s, the rate of decline between 2017-2022 has sharply accelerated [1]. The distribution of previously-religious but now unaffiliated skews heavily to the younger age brackets [2]. Younger generations are simple much less religious than older generations. Therefore, (American) culture has changed with the decline of religion in a very unfortunate way. Religion created communities and communities supported families and people in emotional, physical, and economic terms. That support system is eroding at an increasing rate. Then beyond that at an individual level, meaning and contentment now rely on the individual creating meaning or deriving it from some worldly source instead of coming from a higher power. Then when that source lets down the person, nihilism becomes attractive. So what is someone to do? In American politics you can only rely on the government less than half the time. Even the best non-profit and civic organizations are prone to corruption. If the person looks inward what happens when they let themselves down? Like it or not, religious modalities play a fundamental part in Western psychology - in other words, people need "a bigger reason" than themselves. Anecdotally the young people in my church (as far as I know) are the happiest young people I know - much happier than many of the children at my kids' school and friends' kids. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2022/09/US-Religious-Projections_FOR-PRODUCTION-9.13.22.pdf https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/wp-content/uploads/site... [2] https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-decline-of-religion-in-american-family-life/ https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/the-decline-of-...