Demographic future of US Christianity?

[Albion]

You mean you don't have one handy? I don't dispute it but it was not in the OP study, was it?

Some of it was there.

 

[awitch]

What are these examples supposed to be evidence of?

Review your message from earlier in the thread:

From my perspective as a member of a congregation within a liberal and somewhat authoritarian denominational structure, fundamentalists seem to be asserting they have the right to believe their traditional religious beliefs and the more liberal denominations seem to be asserting their right to change those traditional beliefs to conform with modern social mores.

You are suggesting that the conservatives and fundamentalists are just fighting to believe things and that liberals want to change those beliefs. My argument is that is not the case. As I've demonstrated the conservatives, fundamentalists, and evangelicals want to impose those beliefs on everyone (dominionists openly admit this), and feel their beliefs excuse them from following other laws that apply to everyone else. It was a gross misrepresentation.

Were you looking for me to provide the examples on the left? Cannot you come up with them yourself?

You made the claim, the burden of proof is your responsibility.
Also, I want to review the specific instances that you know of so I can analyze the whole story and address any counter arguments to you.

How many threads have there been on CF in which left leaning Christians insist that Jesus was a socialist and that it is Christian duty to get government to force people of all religious or non religious backgrounds to comply with that religious belief?

I wouldn't know. As a non-Christian, the rules forbid me from participating in the vast majority of the site.

Do many Christians try to get their religious beliefs codified into secular law? Yep. Do many Muslims do this too? Yep. Is there any group that does not try to get their beliefs, whether based upon a religion or based upon some other criterion, codified into law? NOPE.

And we stand against them, too.

I cannot see how any anti maskers are in any way trying to enforce their religious beliefs upon others. Like almost everyone in society they are advocating for political beliefs and in this case it is totally unrelated to religion.

Did you not read my thread where the rep from Ohio explicitly said he refuses to wear a mask because it violates his religious beliefs? Did you not read the multiple times I said Christians not only want to enforce their beliefs but want to be excused from laws that apply to everyone else?

It seems to me that some of your examples are of Christians , with political positions you disagree with, expressing their political opinions not their religious beliefs. It also seems to me that sometimes people want to dismiss a political belief they disagree with by labelling it a religious belief hoping that the label itself somehow disqualifies the belief from being taken at face value. It seems to me that one needs to have a better argument against a political position than the idea that the political belief also aligns with some religious belief.

Not really. This is what those Christians are saying: I have a political position based on my personal religious beliefs that affect the population regardless of what they believe, therefore it should be law.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

If accurate it certainly looks like the Democrats better represent the population, especially by race.

 

[dlamberth]

Why? The TEA party groups were not in any way "Evangelical Christian" organizations.

Evangelical Christians were so much a part of the Tea Party it was sometimes hard to tell them apart. It's the same with Trump today. The "organization" spreads outward through the people what it spreads inwards. There's internal pressure within the Evangelical organization to be and think a certain way. And what was seen and how that certain way came across in how those Tea Party Evangelical Christian acted politically I think has had a lot to do with the decrease of the Christian population. I don't think it helped them.

 

[Albion]

Evangelical Christians were so much a part of the Tea Party it was sometimes hard to tell them apart.

That's nonsense, but I guess that this is the point at which I need to ask you why you think what you said is an accurate characterization of the TEA Party people.

The "organization" spreads outward through the people what it spreads inwards. There's internal pressure within the Evangelical organization to be and think a certain way.

You're merely speculating, in other words.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

White evangelical Christians are the driving force of America’s right wing. Nearly 80 percent voted for Trump and about 70 percent still approve of the job he’s doing, although, according to a recent poll, his overall rating at the time of this writing has declined to 39 percent since January.

The Christian Right and Left Share the Same Faith But Couldn’t Be More Different

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Evangelical Christians were so much a part of the Tea Party it was sometimes hard to tell them apart. It's the same with Trump today. The "organization" spreads outward through the people what it spreads inwards. There's internal pressure within the Evangelical organization to be and think a certain way. And what was seen and how that certain way came across in how those Tea Party Evangelical Christian acted politically I think has had a lot to do with the decrease of the Christian population. I don't think it helped them.

Several polls have been conducted on the demographics of the movement. Though the various polls sometimes turn up slightly different results, they tend to show that Tea Party supporters tend more likely, than Americans overall, to be white, male, married, older than 45, regularly attending religious services, conservative, and to be more wealthy and have more education. Broadly speaking, multiple surveys have found between 10% and 30% of Americans identify as a member of the Tea Party movement. Most Republicans and 20% of Democrats support the movement according to one Washington Post–ABC News poll.

Tea Party movement - Wikipedia

 

[Albion]

White evangelical Christians are the driving force of America’s right wing. Nearly 80 percent voted for Trump and about 70 percent still approve of the job he’s doing,

That doesn't make anyone "right wing."

 

[awitch]

That doesn't make anyone "right wing."

Left-wing Evangelicals are like R.O.U.S's. I don't believe they exist.

 

[dlamberth]

That's nonsense, but I guess that this is the point at which I need to ask you why you think what you said is an accurate characterization of the TEA Party people.

I'm looking more at the Christian trajectories into the Tea Party. I'm not characterizing Tea Party people. I think there's a lot of truth in the saying that Christians are their own worse enemy. And I think politics are just one area where we can see the effects of that with the kick back of people leaving the faith.

You're merely speculating, in other words.

I am speculating. But I also draw on the experience of my own sister who is a deeply Evangelical Christian and the division she's caused in my family. It's been a huge Christian turn off. No one in my family want's to be like her, or even be with her for that matter. The anti-Christian noise level in my own family has risen considerably because of my sister.

 

[Zoness]

It's not exactly unfounded, Evangelicals went 4 out of 5 in favor of trump in 2016 and whole they've started to wane they make up a pretty core part of his support.

White evangelical approval of Trump slips, but eight-in-ten say they would vote for him

IMO the two are inseparable. Same with their relative adjacency to things like QAnon because it supports a structural narrative that Christianity is persecuted in the US when nothing could be further from the truth.

 

[Aryeh Jay]

Left-wing Evangelicals are like R.O.U.S's. I don't believe they exist.

First you have to drain the fire swamp.

 

[Andrewn]

You made the claim, the burden of proof is your responsibility. Also, I want to review the specific instances that you know of so I can analyze the whole story and address any counter arguments to you.

I don't think @grasping the after wind will be able to give examples.

How about if you're a Christian female and take the day off to stand in line at the DMV for a few hours to renew your license and the fundamentalist Muslim behind the counter says it's his sincere religious belief that women shouldn't drive and refuses your service. Would you cry discrimination or would you nod and say, "I understand have a nice day" and then drive to another town to wait in line a few more hours. Remember, government officials were also refusing to do their work on religious grounds, for example, refusing to issue marriage licenses after same sex marriage was legalized.

The situation here is very different from a private business denying a wedding cake. You're talking here about government business. So, no, definitely government employees have to obey the law or quit their job. (Unless we're talking about a law that sends people to concentration camps.)

The situation with Kim Davis in 2015 is a little controversial because she was not a government employee but an elected official. This made her feel that she was a representative of the county rather than the federal government. She ended up following the law of the land and issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples after she was threatened with prison time.

 

[awitch]

The situation here is very different from a private business denying a wedding cake. You're talking here about government business. So, no, definitely government employees have to obey the law or quit their job. (Unless we're talking about a law that sends people to concentration camps.)

The situation with Kim Davis in 2015 is a little controversial because she was not a government employee but an elected official. This made her feel that she was a representative of the county rather than the federal government. She ended up following the law of the land and issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples after she was threatened with prison time.

Exactly; she wanted to be excused from her duties because of her privately held religious beliefs even though it negatively affected the lives of some constituents.

Now in the case of private businesses, which you're right, I did switch up the scenario, it's still the same idea. Do you feel that Christian business owners who serve the public have a right to discriminate?

 

[Albion]

I am speculating. But I also draw on the experience of my own sister who is a deeply Evangelical Christian and the division she's caused in my family.

Is she a TEA Party member, then? Because I never encounter that slant, don't see it in the literature, don't find that featured anywhere in the movement.

However, we do find appeals for fiscal responsibility (which gave the movement its start and its name), law and order, upholding of the Constitution, and the usual Conservative themes.

Check out this website, for example. Here's the mission statement. There is also the blog that you can look at and perhaps the candidate endorsements. I don't find a single reference to a distinctively religious issue, the kind of thing that would be expected of an organization operating according to the intentions of and populated by the kind of people you have referred to.

 

[Andrewn]

Do you feel that Christian business owners who serve the public have a right to discriminate?

The other day I was watching a movie taking place in the beginning of the 20th century. In this movie, a black couple were refused service in a restaurant. This is, of course, awful and disgusting. I cannot imagine this happening to anyone, including LGBTQ people.

I have a transgender friend and we went together to church and to restaurants. She was welcomed everywhere and treated like any other person.

So, I definitely feel that business owners have no right to discriminate. If they own a restaurant, they have to serve everybody. If they own a bakery, they have to serve everybody. But if they take their business to a different location, such as caterers or wedding planners, I feel that they can choose which business to accept.

 

[Albion]

If they own a bakery, they have to serve everybody. But if they take their business to a different location, such as caterers or wedding planners,

I feel that they can choose which business to accept.

The issue is more about which services the bakery would have to provide. In one of the famous cases that went to several courts a few years ago, the Christian baker was quite willing to provide a wedding cake to the customers. It was the requested theme of the decorations on the cake that the buyers said conflicted with their religious principles. Even so, the bakers located another bakery that would do all of that for these customers, just as requested. That did not satisfy the customers who alleged discrimination.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Douthat deals with all this. Read some of the reviews.
https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Religion-Became-Nation-Heretics/dp/143917833X

 

[cloudyday2]

The belief that the Second Coming or Rapture might happen any day might be reinterpreted in future Christian theology. This eschatology is considered by atheists to be an obvious prophetic mistake made by a person (Jesus) who should have known better if he was who Christians claim. The eschatology serves no purpose because all of us can die at any moment and face judgment immediately (from our subjective experience of time).

The problem with changing a belief is that people BELIEVE that belief and it is recorded in several books of the New Testament. There must be a social-evolutionary force to gradually change the way that belief is understood by Christians, and I don't know if such a force exists.

 

[Oseas]

I noticed this survey from 2018/2019 ( In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace ) that claims to show the decline in the numbers of US Christians has not slowed. If I understand the results correctly, the Christian share of the population has been steadily dropping about 1% each year for 20 years?

So I wonder when this decline is going to stop and what Christianity in the US will look like when that happens?

I wonder if Western Europe can offer any clues? As I understand it, Christianity in Western Europe began a demographic decline in the 1960s. It seems odd that Christianity in America did not decline along with Western Europe.

Just wondering what others think. I wonder if there is any chance of reversing the decline.

THE TRUMPET SHALL SOUND

This is the message that must be preached in all TRUE Christian Churches around the world as One in Christ JESUS.

See, the work of testifying of the righteous Judgment of God, and respective God's punishments, and vengeance, and pour plagues, against the nations ruled by the spirit of Devil, the spirit of antichrist, -Revelation 11:v.6-, yeah, this is the work of the saints of the Most High God within the TWO CANDLESTICKS of the END of the times: - the true Jewish Christian Church in particular-Revelation 7-, and the true Gentile Church of Christ JESUS of all nations as One, as also prophesied Daniel-Dan.7:v.13-14&18 & 21-27 combined with 2:v.44-45, among other biblical references.

The message of the Word of God for God's people, in the present time, is: Revelation 2:v.25-29

25 But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.

26 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the END, to him will I give power over the nations:

27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

28 And I will give him the morning star.

29 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

THE TRUMPET SHALL SOUND

May our LORD God bless and keep us, and give us His protection
Amen