Re: Atheists Are Losing The War Quickly Than You Think
Just in time for Holy Week, Newsweek’s April cover proclaims, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” In its Easter issue in 1966, Time asked “Is God Dead?” on its cover. Yet only 5 years ago, mainstream media trembled at the vast popularity of “The Passion of the Christ” and warned of an imminent takeover by Christian theocrats. Ongoing speculation and raging public debate on big questions of life, death, God and eternity may signify new beginnings for Christian America, not its “decline and fall.” Today’s poll numbers show that America remains remarkably religious by the standards of other advanced countries – with three-quarters of the country still firmly Christian.
Topping off Easter Week 2009, The Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” blog featured a post that belittled the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Discovery Channel aired a documentary that painted Jesus as little more than an opportunistic politician who caught a bad break in a trial. The assault on Christian beliefs and morality is ongoing, so with Easter upon us, a secular attack is of no surprise to the Christian community. Despite the fact the data the Newsweek article presents from the American Religious Identification Survey was available many weeks earlier, the magazine timed the cover story perfectly for the Christian celebration of Easter, thereby making a profit off religion while biting the hand that feeds it.
Newsweek editor, Jon Meacham keyed his article around the March 2009 American Religious Identification Survey results that showed 76 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, compared to 86 percent in 1990. He also noted the rise in number of Americans who now state they have no religious affiliation, 15 percent compared to 8 percent in 1990. Meacham goes on regurgitating statistics: He points out that the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen ten points in the past two decades and that, in the same period, the number of Americans who describe themselves as atheists has increased from 1 million to about 3.6million. And while Meacham’s general tone appears at first to be sympathetic to the Christian reader who would see these numbers as a negative trend, he eventually reveals his hand, by following up the data with his own opinion – a rather secular one – rather than with journalistic analysis: “…our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing – good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance.”
http://www.sociableblog.com/2009/04/14/christianity-dead-in-america/
Just in time for Holy Week, Newsweek’s April cover proclaims, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” In its Easter issue in 1966, Time asked “Is God Dead?” on its cover. Yet only 5 years ago, mainstream media trembled at the vast popularity of “The Passion of the Christ” and warned of an imminent takeover by Christian theocrats. Ongoing speculation and raging public debate on big questions of life, death, God and eternity may signify new beginnings for Christian America, not its “decline and fall.” Today’s poll numbers show that America remains remarkably religious by the standards of other advanced countries – with three-quarters of the country still firmly Christian.
Topping off Easter Week 2009, The Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” blog featured a post that belittled the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Discovery Channel aired a documentary that painted Jesus as little more than an opportunistic politician who caught a bad break in a trial. The assault on Christian beliefs and morality is ongoing, so with Easter upon us, a secular attack is of no surprise to the Christian community. Despite the fact the data the Newsweek article presents from the American Religious Identification Survey was available many weeks earlier, the magazine timed the cover story perfectly for the Christian celebration of Easter, thereby making a profit off religion while biting the hand that feeds it.
Newsweek editor, Jon Meacham keyed his article around the March 2009 American Religious Identification Survey results that showed 76 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, compared to 86 percent in 1990. He also noted the rise in number of Americans who now state they have no religious affiliation, 15 percent compared to 8 percent in 1990. Meacham goes on regurgitating statistics: He points out that the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen ten points in the past two decades and that, in the same period, the number of Americans who describe themselves as atheists has increased from 1 million to about 3.6million. And while Meacham’s general tone appears at first to be sympathetic to the Christian reader who would see these numbers as a negative trend, he eventually reveals his hand, by following up the data with his own opinion – a rather secular one – rather than with journalistic analysis: “…our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing – good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance.”
http://www.sociableblog.com/2009/04/14/christianity-dead-in-america/
Of course, unless you don't know this kind of maths.
