One can speculate as to causes, and a case could be made for everything from market saturation to the rise of something called "secularism."
I see it as further evidence for my "9.11 theory" of the decline of religion in America. Americans were becoming increasingly skeptical of religion anyway, but, post 9.11, this has accelerated.
The terrorist attack on 9.11 was done in the name of religion. It was not perpetrated by the Christian religion, to be sure, but when any violent act is done in the name of any religion, all religions are called into question.
At one level, people know that, though 9.11 was perpetrated in the name of religion, that act is not representative of the broad mainstream of that particular religion. They recall, too, that Christianity had its own periods of violence. Even the pacific Buddhists have been known to get riled up.
And then, at another level, people began to think: Maybe this religion business is more trouble than it's worth. Attendance is falling everywhere. For mainline protestants, this is not a new phenomenon, nor even for Roman Catholics, whose decline has been masked by immigration from Latin America.
Even the evangelicals are seeing their tide crest. Southern Baptist attendance and baptisms have declined for the last four years. Among evangelicals as a whole, birth rates are declining. (For this and many other reasons, now is not a good time for a church to have a large debt.)
This does not mean, however, that people are rejecting God--religion yes, but not God. Most surveys indicate that people would be very interested to learn more about God, and experience God, but are mistrustful of religion's ability to help them do it. Christianity has a case to make--indeed, a vital one--but, clearly, it is not making it.
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