I found that it was mighty easy to pass the border by saying that I was headed to a yearly religious retreat in southern Ohio, rather than trying to explain X-Day. Pra-BOB!
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That’s a different ritual entirely, but it does involve a keymaster … or something like that, at least!
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Huh. Now I wonder if we’ve been going to the same campground. Without saying the name, large grounds, a recovered strip mine, lots of trees, fairy shrines? Location looks like you should be hearing banjos any second until you turn off the road? Almost entirely primitive camping, very few electric sites?
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It’s a start!
I grew up in a primitive, backwards South American shit-hole controlled by an authoritarian religious cult (Tennessee/Southern Baptist Convention), but my parents were Beatles-loving hippies. “So what really happens when you die?” was answered with “whatever you believe happens!” Once or twice a year we attended a Unitarian Universalist church. So I was constantly exposed to Christianity by the “culture” at large but not actually indoctrinated into any religion as a child… THANK GOD (lol)
What made me a hardcore religion-hating atheist AT AGE FUCKING ELEVEN was the old “sleepover bait and switch” - little Billie Bob invites you over to stay up late and watch movies and play Legos or whatever, but really it’s all about KIDNAPPING YOU on Sunday morning and FORCING YOU to attend their creepy ass church service, where a bloviating red-faced demagogue screams for two hours straight about FORNICATORS AND SINNERS GOING STRAIGHT TO HELLLLLL PRAISE JEEZUS!!! while the veins are throbbing on his sweating forehead and you think he’s about to have a FUCKING HEART ATTACK on the stage and then when it’s over (and they pass the plate) everyone files out, “Oh what a lovely sermon,” like it’s all completely normal and healthy.
But it’s really NOT. It’s the Two Minutes of Hate (except two hours), it’s the fucking Nuremberg rallies - EVERY SUNDAY.
Thank you for listening to my TED talk. I really fucking hate preachers.
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Losing importance… Hmmm…
For me, no, not really.
(This is why I hate opinion polling)
In fact religion is gaining importance to me…
it has become a danger and a source of social ills and so people need protection from religion and religious groups.
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Yep. That’s the one! I had to pull up some of our pictures, but yes, that’s 100% it!
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Gee I wonder if it has anything to do with so much of American organized religion getting in bed with immoral right wing fascists? There’s still a piece of me that believes in God and thinks Jesus had some pretty good things to say. But I’m honestly scared to step foot into a church service now. Feels a little too cult-like these days. I’m sure some of that was always there and it has a lot to do with me growing up and experiencing people and cultures outside my own experience. But it does feel like there has been an insane shift in this century.
Edit: digging up personal demons now but I think my disillusion really started with hard sell evangelism I came in contact with in high school. My church I grew up in was pretty bland and inoffensive but these things were the ones that lure you in with pizza and tell you you’re going to go to hell and you better go evangelize everyone you know or they’re gonna go to hell too.
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Lets get high!
I’ll have whatever Ezekiel and John of Patmos had. Some of that qaneh-bosem would be nice too.
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Partly I’m sure it’s just the US following the trends of other countries. In the UK, religious beliefs, especially Christianity, are becoming less common.
(src)
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Unfortunately, as the article states, churches are often the only provider of (certain) social services in many areas. I get it, they saw a void and filled it. Good for them. If the taxpayer provides it, rather than tithers, Republicans will clutch their pearls and exclaim, “That’s socialism!” Call it whatever, but it’s necessary for a civilized society. Instead, Republicans will undoubtedly redouble their efforts to direct tax money to churches.
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Well … kind of good for them. Like the free pizza bait @Jim_Campbell mentioned above, most of the churches that step up to fill those missing needs put a high price on them. They can place limitations on receiving these needs that the government can’t (currently or legally, anyway.) It’s the way of cults everywhere – you want to eat? Then you’ll wear red pajamas and blow kisses towards the Bhagwan’s 43 gold Rolls Royces. These churches may cry “socialism,” but what they really mean is they are fine with providing these things, but they want tight control over them to ensure the “right” people are getting them.
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They also use the resources to control and intimidate.
Vulnerable people are easy to exploit and churches make billions doing just that, often using our taxes to do so.
Charity my ass.
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As with all surveys, the exact wording of the question skews the numbers enormously one way or another (arguably making the whole field nonsense, but that’s a discussion for another day 
).
In this case, some people surely include funerals and weddings under “religious services”. Lots of non-religious people (arguably most) have those in churches anyway.
Someone might answer yes if they attend just because their parent does but they don’t actually believe. It’s just a nice way to spend time with dad or whatever. Someone might say yes because they like to think of themselves as the kind of person who attends church but they don’t actually do it. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories like that and people are rarely totally honest on surveys.
You could even argue the word “attend”. Some people might check that box because they listen to Christian Rock music or they find comfort in reading the Bible.
When trying to estimate how many “not very religious” people there are, the number varies wildly from 10% to 75%, all depending variables like this. It’s a really hard thing to answer.
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Then why is so much of our infrastructure, media, and politics all aimed and pandering to and largely run by people belonging to as subset of organized versions of a specific religion?
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I think church charity predates a government-backed social safety net. Both churches and organizations like ethnic benevolent societies played those roles well before the New Deal.
And this was the solution to cutting the safety net that W. Bush promoted during his administration as part of his “compassionate conservatism”. The problem is that privatized services can more easily come with strings attached and can actively discriminate, where as a state-based social service should not.
The current crop of Republicans embody the worst aspects of all of this - no state-based social services, and no help for “outsiders” to their faith.
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