4 ms·

As pop culture becomes more decadent in North America, Christian fundamentalism seems to have grown. So not sure if pop decadence leads to moderation.

tokenadult 14y ago
Christian fundamentalism seems to have grown. Do you have evidence for that? The polling data I have seen suggest that that is NOT how self-reported religious preference in the United States is trending. The United States Census does not keep official statistics on religious affiliation in the United States (thank God), but various private organizations do sample surveys on the issue from time to time. http://religions.pewforum.org/reports http://religions.pewforum.org/reports http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-07-19/no-religion-affiliation/56344976/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-07-19/no-re... "Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the 'default category.' He says, 'Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before.'" http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx http://www.barna.org/faith-spirituality/15-christianity-is-no-longer-americans-default-faith http://www.barna.org/faith-spirituality/15-christianity-is-n...
- Evbn 14y ago
  Mathematically it is simple for a bell curve centered on deists to split into a bimodal distribution of atheists and Christian fundamentalists.
  - dmix 14y ago
    Can you expand on this?
    - Evbn 14y ago
      People from the middle moving to one extreme or the other. Increase in botb extremes, decrease in the middle.
  - alinajaf 14y ago
    Interesting, but why bimodal? I find a lot of my friends who claim to be Christian on further questioning are in fact "Deists in disguise".
    - Evbn 14y ago
      I don't know. Culture war forcing people to choose sides instead of coasting along in a society where no one really cares?
- Alex3917 14y ago
  It's possible that evangelicism is growing even if religiosity on the whole is declining. It's very hard to tell from these sorts of surveys, because what constitutes being religious is extremely difficult to define. Subtle differences in phrasing lead to enormous differences in outcome, e.g. 'are you a Christian' vs 'do you go to church at least once a week' could literally have a 50 point spread in the US. (And god forbid you test if people can recite the ten commandments from memory before counting them as Christian.) And it gets even more difficult than this because most religions don't look or feel anything like Christianity, but because that's the most common religion in the US most surveys are biased in favor of religions that look like Christianity. So you have issues like, is the Church of Subgenius a religion? Is science a religion? Is gnosticism the same as Gnosticism? etc. There are entire college classes you can take on the history of the methodology of the study of religion, that focus on these questions like how do you know if something is a religion and how do you determine if someone is religious or not. edit: A fun quote I snagged from Overdosed America suggesting that the excessive belief in western medicine may in fact have some commonalities with religion: "Could it be that, although we define our era by the tremendous scientific and technological progress that is being made (particularly in medicine), our desire to believe in this narrative of biomedical progress predisposes us to uncritical belief in its real merits? In other words, might the shared belief in the potential of medical science be, in large part, our cultural mythology? We tend to look upon myths with romantic condescension as the stories of primitive societies that provide shared meaning and hope and ease the prospect of suffering and death -- stories that are made of 'facts' that we (scientifically sophisticated as we are) know are not really true. Our belief that we are too scientifically grounded to succumb to such nonrational beliefs may, in fact, be our myth. How else can we explain the widespread agreement that statins or the new antidepressants or the COX-2 inhibitors are genuine breakthroughs that will preserve and restore our health in ways never before possible? These are our myths, merging science and hope into our shared belief."
  - shrikant 14y ago
    Slightly OT: calling it "western medicine" is playing into hands of the quacks and woo-meisters who attempt to spin modern medicine as somehow being inferior to various "complementary" and "alternative" therapies.
spamizbad 14y ago
Christian Fundamentalism was probably caused by the Second Industrial Revolution (which had a much bigger impact on society). It took about 100 years for it to finally "go public" (1980s). The rationale behind going public was mostly driven by politics and money - incidentally this is also the time when Christianity started becoming a multi-billion dollar industry.
- lotharbot 14y ago
  Christian Fundamentalism is easily traced as a response to Christian Liberalism; you can find pretty good information on both on wikipedia. Here's a caricature of how it went down: (mid 1800s, Liberalism): "Hey, it turns out when you look at ancient copies of the Bible from 2 different areas, there are occasional differences in spelling and word order. Therefore, the Bible is totally fiction, but teaches moderately useful lessons, so long as we understand the figurative language it's using." (late 1800s, Fundamentalism): "What? You guys are quacks. The King James Bible is totally reliable because God specially preserved it. Therefore, there's no figurative language whatsoever, everything is literal." It's my perception that Fundamentalism's influence is waning; I run into far fewer "fundies" than I did during my childhood (but I live in the same house and attend the same church.) In surveys I've seen, a lower percentage of people self-identify as Fundamentalist, and a lower percentage agree with certain key Fundamentalist doctrines. They may be louder than before, but I don't think they're any more prevalent.
majormajor 14y ago
It may be louder, but I can't agree that it is stronger than in the past. Most recently, look at the increasing acceptance of homosexuality—and there's a long list of "sins" before that that have gradually become accepted by mainstream America.
- dspeyer 14y ago
  Less political influence due in large part to shrinking numbers. Greater chance of terrorism due to increased fanaticism among those who remain. There wasn't anything like Oklahoma City in the 1950s, was there?
  - philwelch 14y ago
    It's hard to pick out a religious motive for Oklahoma City. There was nothing like that in the 50's because there was no Waco in the 50's, either.

tokenadult 14y ago

Christian fundamentalism seems to have grown. Do you have evidence for that? The polling data I have seen suggest that that is NOT how self-reported religious preference in the United States is trending. The United States Census does not keep official statistics on religious affiliation in the United States (thank God), but various private organizations do sample surveys on the issue from time to time. http://religions.pewforum.org/reports http://religions.pewforum.org/reports http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-07-19/no-religion-affiliation/56344976/1 http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-07-19/no-re... "Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the 'default category.' He says, 'Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before.'" http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx http://www.barna.org/faith-spirituality/15-christianity-is-no-longer-americans-default-faith http://www.barna.org/faith-spirituality/15-christianity-is-n...

Evbn 14y ago
Mathematically it is simple for a bell curve centered on deists to split into a bimodal distribution of atheists and Christian fundamentalists.
- dmix 14y ago
  Can you expand on this?
  - Evbn 14y ago
    People from the middle moving to one extreme or the other. Increase in botb extremes, decrease in the middle.
- alinajaf 14y ago
  Interesting, but why bimodal? I find a lot of my friends who claim to be Christian on further questioning are in fact "Deists in disguise".
  - Evbn 14y ago
    I don't know. Culture war forcing people to choose sides instead of coasting along in a society where no one really cares?
Alex3917 14y ago
It's possible that evangelicism is growing even if religiosity on the whole is declining. It's very hard to tell from these sorts of surveys, because what constitutes being religious is extremely difficult to define. Subtle differences in phrasing lead to enormous differences in outcome, e.g. 'are you a Christian' vs 'do you go to church at least once a week' could literally have a 50 point spread in the US. (And god forbid you test if people can recite the ten commandments from memory before counting them as Christian.) And it gets even more difficult than this because most religions don't look or feel anything like Christianity, but because that's the most common religion in the US most surveys are biased in favor of religions that look like Christianity. So you have issues like, is the Church of Subgenius a religion? Is science a religion? Is gnosticism the same as Gnosticism? etc. There are entire college classes you can take on the history of the methodology of the study of religion, that focus on these questions like how do you know if something is a religion and how do you determine if someone is religious or not. edit: A fun quote I snagged from Overdosed America suggesting that the excessive belief in western medicine may in fact have some commonalities with religion: "Could it be that, although we define our era by the tremendous scientific and technological progress that is being made (particularly in medicine), our desire to believe in this narrative of biomedical progress predisposes us to uncritical belief in its real merits? In other words, might the shared belief in the potential of medical science be, in large part, our cultural mythology? We tend to look upon myths with romantic condescension as the stories of primitive societies that provide shared meaning and hope and ease the prospect of suffering and death -- stories that are made of 'facts' that we (scientifically sophisticated as we are) know are not really true. Our belief that we are too scientifically grounded to succumb to such nonrational beliefs may, in fact, be our myth. How else can we explain the widespread agreement that statins or the new antidepressants or the COX-2 inhibitors are genuine breakthroughs that will preserve and restore our health in ways never before possible? These are our myths, merging science and hope into our shared belief."
- shrikant 14y ago
  Slightly OT: calling it "western medicine" is playing into hands of the quacks and woo-meisters who attempt to spin modern medicine as somehow being inferior to various "complementary" and "alternative" therapies.

spamizbad 14y ago

Christian Fundamentalism was probably caused by the Second Industrial Revolution (which had a much bigger impact on society). It took about 100 years for it to finally "go public" (1980s). The rationale behind going public was mostly driven by politics and money - incidentally this is also the time when Christianity started becoming a multi-billion dollar industry.

lotharbot 14y ago
Christian Fundamentalism is easily traced as a response to Christian Liberalism; you can find pretty good information on both on wikipedia. Here's a caricature of how it went down: (mid 1800s, Liberalism): "Hey, it turns out when you look at ancient copies of the Bible from 2 different areas, there are occasional differences in spelling and word order. Therefore, the Bible is totally fiction, but teaches moderately useful lessons, so long as we understand the figurative language it's using." (late 1800s, Fundamentalism): "What? You guys are quacks. The King James Bible is totally reliable because God specially preserved it. Therefore, there's no figurative language whatsoever, everything is literal." It's my perception that Fundamentalism's influence is waning; I run into far fewer "fundies" than I did during my childhood (but I live in the same house and attend the same church.) In surveys I've seen, a lower percentage of people self-identify as Fundamentalist, and a lower percentage agree with certain key Fundamentalist doctrines. They may be louder than before, but I don't think they're any more prevalent.

majormajor 14y ago

It may be louder, but I can't agree that it is stronger than in the past. Most recently, look at the increasing acceptance of homosexuality—and there's a long list of "sins" before that that have gradually become accepted by mainstream America.

dspeyer 14y ago
Less political influence due in large part to shrinking numbers. Greater chance of terrorism due to increased fanaticism among those who remain. There wasn't anything like Oklahoma City in the 1950s, was there?
- philwelch 14y ago
  It's hard to pick out a religious motive for Oklahoma City. There was nothing like that in the 50's because there was no Waco in the 50's, either.