Stephan: More on the great demographic shift that is occurring. It has profound political implications, particularly when understood in its context of the country becoming majority-minority, and as we go through climate change. As this shrinkage becomes more and more evident the desperation over the diminishment of the Evangelical community will become more extreme. For Fundamentalist Premillennial Dispensationalists I think the end time fervor and sense of persecution is going to become almost unbearable, and all kinds of crazy acting out will occur.
The great mistake the media makes in even considering these developments is that falling away from organized religion (which will not vanish just become a smaller percentage) means atheism will greatly increase. I do not think that is correct. All the trends point, as I read them, to a growing sense of what we now call spiritual, but which I think we will come to see as our linkage in the great matrix of life. Learning how to deal with the Earth's meta-systems will be required to cope with climate change and that will encourage this trend. The sense of this linkage while often linked to religion does not require and religious belief or affiliation, and that will become culturally recognized.
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A new study reports that white Christians, long understood to be the primary shapers of American politics and culture, are rapidly losing their majority status across the country — even in traditionally conservative states.
Earlier this week, Jonathan Merritt of the Religion News Service dug into data from the American Values Atlas, a website unveiled late last year by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) that aggregates polling information on the political opinions, values, and religious affiliations of Americans. The wealth of data is a lot to sift through, but Merritt pointed to a striking revelation: white Christians, once the majority in virtually every major population area in America, are now a minority in 19 states.
For their surveys, PRRI defines “white Christian” as evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians who list their identity as “white, non-Hispanic.” (Interestingly, PRRI also includes white Mormons in this group, who are sometimes listed by sociologists as separate from the rest of Christianity due to their unique religious views and texts.)
Taken together, the PRRI […]
