Religion Decline

In the midst of my daily reading the other day, I ran across an article stating that Americans are becoming less religious. At first glance, that revelation seemingly goes against the values that our country has long held close to our hearts. We have been a proud Christian nation since our inception. The latest news showing that more and more of our citizens are rejecting religion all together is discouraging… frightening actually.

Our current social times has placed being “religious” into what many consider some sort of horrific stigma. Nobody wants to be labeled the “Bible Thumper” within your group of friends. People have been led to believe that being “religious” must mean that everyone is closed minded and all followers must abide by some specific doctrine or they are not accepted. The last I checked, Christianity is much different than the religion of Islam… However, people have associated nearly all religions with such radical ideology and have thus started turning their backs to religion of all forms and fashions.

I’m not so sure that these times are any different than the past. It seems to me that religious people have been generally treated differently and persecuted throughout our world’s history. But, the United States is a relatively new society as compared to history and we were founded upon Christianity and the freedom of religion as one of our fundamental building blocks. If we are losing contact with our roots, where are we going?

Some people may think that we are becoming more affluent and intelligent as we gain more knowledge regarding the science of life. Some people may think that religion was just a figment of our immature minds looking for meaning to our otherwise mundane existences. Whatever the case may be, more people are choosing to not believe in anything rather than believe in something.

A fast rising segment of society is the so-called Atheists. These people have rejected the idea of God and choose to believe in nothing. The number of Atheists has doubled since 1990 according to the report. Another segment that is growing is the agnostic group. This particular segment has not completely rejected the idea of God… they just choose not to believe at this point.

Another alarming fact from the report is that those who call themselves Christians has declined from 86 to 76 percent. There are several “reasons” given for the decline… from various political parties establishing footholds within certain religious segments to the horrid news stories of religious leaders doing unthinkable things while in power. If these are reasons to discount or reject God in your life, I would say God was never in your life…

America has long been the hope of the free world. Our personal ties to Christianity have long been one of the building blocks of our great society. If you follow the tumultuous existence of our last few generations, you can very easily track the increasing number of Americans who have no faith to the increased violence, lack of hope, and general downward spiral our society has undertaken. Some of these are fact and some are opinion, but who can argue that the United States is in the best of times these days? That’s right, no one can.

As we allow our faith become overrun by those with no faith and no hope, our society will continue to pay the price. Our nation is a Christian nation… at this point. The remaining Christians in our society must make it a point to make the right decisions and live our lives according to our Christian roots. We have seen that the mistakes made can be devastating and can turn people away from hope and Christianity. It is up to us to turn the tide and show the world that being religious and being a Christian is nothing to be ashamed of. I’m proud to call myself a Christian, even though I am not perfect… the last I checked, neither was anyone else.