Originally published at: Religion is losing importance to Americans, new survey shows | Boing Boing
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Cannot happen fast enough. Tax the churches, too.
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I can’t imagine an existence where religion is the most important thing in your life.
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I wonder if they’ve traded in their church buildings for FOX and Newsmax.
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Time for a new MAGA panic.
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29% of respondents said they “never” attend religious services
Is that all?
I thought that number would be a lot higher. If that means that 71% of USians sometimes attend religious services, then religion still seems pretty important to them as a population.
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Some of the “sometimes” attendees are probably saying that because they have elderly relatives who drag them to services once in a while or on Xmas and easter. I used to, but they eventually stopped too when the local minister pissed them off too much by being a highly visible and unrepentant hypocrite.
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Most people likely get dragged to them by their proselytizing relatives at least once or twice a year. And then there’s weddings.
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https://www.axios.com/2023/05/16/rising-number-americans-switch-religions
The jump in religion-switching comes as many Americans say they no longer believe in their initial religion’s teachings — or, in many cases, disagree with a religion’s stance against LGBTQ+ people.
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I guess regular church attendance can give comfort and community to those who have nowhere else to turn. If one has a non-religious post-secondary education, though, the idea of spending a couple of hours of one’s precious time off work sitting on a hard bench or the floor in a stuffy building listening to someone ramble on about supernatural entities who make outmoded demands of humans understandably would feel like a profound waste of time. Add in clergy who bloviate about how unworthy congregants and/or non-believers are and who make financial demands and the idea gets less appealing still.
Aside from weddings and funerals and similar events, and tourism or cultural or entertainment purposes, I haven’t attended religious services in decades. My own life is the better for it.
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Define religious service. I’m an atheist, but we do Pagan rituals every once in a while as a way of “centering” and just for fun. My nesting partner and I have “woken up the Sun” at the Winter Solstic almost every year over the last 18 years together. I also love my camp’s burn (a huge bonfire on our last night of camp) and always get a strong emotional flow from it.
However I don’t actually believe there’s anything supernatural or mystical about it. I enjoy the feel of these activities, but I don’t believe for a second there’s any deity anywhere. If I do a ritual, it’s for me, not for anything beyond.
I’ve performed weddings, but not of them have been in a church. The closest I can think of was a Pagan couple that wanted a ceremony that held meaning for them, but wouldn’t set off their extremely Christian parents and grandparents. I not only pulled off a handfasting ritual right in front of the whole crowd, but I had one of the grandmothers thank me for such a beautiful ceremony.
“I just wanted to ask, what church are you with?”
“I’m ordained through the Church of Universal Life.”
“Oh, that sounds like a wonderful Christian church.”
“Yes ma’am it does, doesn’t it?”
I’ve never performed one, but I’ve been inside a church for a funeral. I wouldn’t count that as attending a service so much as observing one. Even if someone really wanted to count it, that’s once in … five years?
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LOL!
Also - well done you for threading the needle and making everyone happy on a special day. We need more of this sort of awesomeness.
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It all depends on how you phrase it. Is my religion important to me, as a pretty lazy agnostic, no. Is religion important to me as an American, as I watch a tiny minority of well-funded fundies try to destroy America? um, hell yes.
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finally! so, are you allowed to say, is it tony or angela?
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That is magic 
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Thank god! I meant…
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I not only pulled off a handfasting ritual right in front of the whole crowd
So, handfasting isn’t a euphemism for refraining from abuse of oneself?
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Religion is important to me, organized religion not so much.
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I can imagine it but I couldn’t live it.
but falling from a very great height. See you in 50 years.
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