Chapter 1 – Homophobic Christianity can be brought down. They are vulnerable. Updated.
Chapter 1 – Homophobic Christianity can be brought down. They are vulnerable. Updated.
For the forthcoming book, "Disable, Defeat and Demolish Homophobic Christianity."
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Chapter 1 – Homophobic Christianity can be brought down. They are vulnerable.
They are vulnerable. Christianity is in a historically severe decline in the United States. This Gallup News article, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” by Jeffrey Jones shows total religious membership declining to 47% in 2020. Membership in this article includes churches, synagogues, and mosques. As late as 1985, it was 71 percent who were members of a religious groups. What is also significant is that the decline hasn’t been a steady drop. From 1985 to 2000 it declined from 71 to 70, and to 61 about 2008, (chart is a little hard to read). The percentage then drops to 47 in 2020.
The article points out that church membership is “strongly correlated with age,” with those born before 1946 being religious group members 66% of the time, those born between 1946 and 1964, members 58%, those born between 1965 and 1980 members 50%, and those born between 1981 and 1996 members 36%.
Population replacement doesn’t explain all the decline with newer generations replacing older generations. For each birth cohort, that is those born in a certain range of years, there was a decline in church membership from the 1998-2000 survey to the 2018-2020 survey. The three groups, before 1946, 1946 to 1964, 196 to 1980 lost 11%, 9%, and 12$ over 20 years. For the birth cohort of those bornt from 1981 to 1996, there is no 1998-2000 date, but there is 2008-2010 date and in ten years they have dropped from 51% to 36%, a delta of 15%.
For the younger generations, it shows that people aren’t joining up once they settle down, get married and have children. The church membership isn’t going to be increasing as they get older. Christianity is in in catastrophic decline. Though it might seem small when you look at it as being about roughly 1.5% per year, years pass quickly. It could be that by 2030 the percentage would drop 15% from 47% to 32%. Given that many churches rejected safety practices and vaccines during the covid pandemic, and the fatality rate was much higher among older persons, the percentage might be much less in 2030, it might be significantly less than 47% now.
The report shows that the decline is among all subgroups, whether they review it by geographical region, sex, political party, college education, and other factors.[1]
Another measure of engagement is another Gallup report, “U.S. Church Attendance Still Lower Than Pre-Pandemic,” June 26, 2023. This shows that church attendance is for a May 1 to 24, 2023 survey was 31%. This is down from 42% in a 2009 survey. Gallup has a chart and it shows that attendance had gone up and down at or about 40% since 1940, and the fall off is in the last roughly 15 years.[2]
There are opportunities for a Gay campaign to accelerate this decline.
As they decline and they increasingly are given over to extremism, they will be more isolated in public opinion and easier to target as a smaller group.
One major development since the 1980s and the advent of moral majority is that an increasing fraction of Americans are annoyed by right-wing Christians and their self-indulgent, self-serving, and self-righteous ways. If Gays mount a campaign against homophobic Christianity, it will have the sympathy of a large number of people who might pick up some useful tactics from us.
There is another reason Christians are in a vulnerable situation. Gays come from all backgrounds and almost everyone has a Gay relative. Gays have siblings, parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, co-workers, colleagues, and though they may have issues with homosexuality, they don’t want to see the Gay person they know hurt or be the target of anger. The Evangelical Churches have recognized this and have adopted, “Love the Sinner and hate the sin,” slogan realizing that their older outright hostility was working more against them than the Gays.
Further, given that Gays come from all background, the point of contesting homophobic Christianity is among relatives and in families. This also has been recognized by Evangelicals and there is book and class on how to not alienate your Gay kids but still be bigoted in Jesus. There is “Uncommon Love: God’s Heart for Christian Parents of Gay Kids,” which is, as the webpage for the book states, “A Bible Study for Parents of LGBTQ Kids.” The webpage for the book states:
… more and more kids are coming out—and many of these are from Christian homes with Christian parents. These parents don’t know what to do, how to respond …
According to the webpage having Gay children is “heart-wrenching” and book intends to avoid the following from happening.
… the parents blow up the relationship by rejecting their kids or their lifestyle in harsh or inappropriate ways, or they completely compromise their faith in God and their own identity as Christians.
The primary purpose of this Bible study is to help parents to maintain loving, mutually respectful relationships with their LGBTQ children, offering them compassionate understanding and unconditional love without compromising their own identity, faith, and values.[3]
The homophobic churches are realizing that rather than reject those they love, people start critically thinking about their religious beliefs and change them. Evangelical Christians are often in it for the emotional fun ride and hating their children isn’t so much fun.
If we could get the Gay children of Evangelical Christian parents to be somewhat more aggressive, we might just bring down homophobic Christianity in a very short period of time.
Evangelical Christians aren’t the best or brightest. Demographically the members of homophobic churches are not typically that educated. They burble out inanities in explaining why they don’t believe in evolution. There are some members of the elite educated which have religious beliefs, but largely the intellectual classes don’t believe in religion or have strong religious beliefs and are perpetually annoyed by the braying of the Evangelicals.
This is not to say that homophobic Christians lack strategies and tactics for their homophobic agenda, or that we shouldn’t take seriously their abilities to conduct homophobic campaigns, it is that we should be able to out smart them.
Major powers have arisen in the world which are hostile or wary of Christianity and they also see threats from Christianity. These powers are not against specifically homophobic Christianity, but Christianity in general realizing that it is an essential threat to them and in some cases their civilizations. The historical record of what Christianity has done to other religions and how Christianity has persecuted them is very clear, especially outside the Christian influenced West where Western history often is filtered to not offend Christian sensibilities. Homophobic Christians can hardly plead tolerance and a defense of human rights when they loudly attack tolerance and human rights in the West. Further, these other group might have methods, tactics, strategies, and information which we could learn or use that might be very useful in combatting homophobic Christianity. As an example, there is this article, “How Christianity and Islam decimated Africa’s traditional religions,” in the Hindu Post.
When some African Christian homophobe is ranting how homosexuality is Western we can point out that Christianity is an import brought in by the European imperialists to their nation and destructive of their society. The Hindu Post shouldn’t be necessarily considered a trusted source for all things and they have their own issues, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use what is useful generated by these other anti-Christian forces.
Other groups, also realize that Christianity is an essential threat to their existence. In East Asia surely the persecution of Korean shamans and Indigenous religion is instructive to similar religions in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Observing the historical record of Christianity obliterating the religions of the Norse, Romans and Incans surely gives pause to other religions.
The essential fact in considering who else might be also allies or just in opposition to Christianity, is that we are not isolated in recognizing a serious threat to ourselves arising from Christianity.
Another thing is that the LGBT are not now Christian.
This Pew Research Center study, May 24, 2019, “Lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans are less religious than straight adults by traditional measures,” reveals that 49% of LGBT are not with any denomination.
The distribution of LGBT religious faith is: Christian 48%; non-Christian 11%, and Unaffiliated was 41%. The 41% unaffiliated was: Atheist 8%; Agnostic 9%; and Nothing in Particular 24%.
In discussing the non-Christian faith LGBT, the article states:
In another contrast, while only 6% of the general public affiliates with a non-Christian faith, almost twice as many (11%) gay, lesbian and bisexual adults do so. And almost half of these gay, lesbian and bisexual adults (or 5% of adults overall) said they belong to one of the smaller faith groups, including Unitarian Universalist and other liberal faith traditions (2.9%) and New Age groups (2.4%), such as Wiccans and pagans. The Jewish and Buddhist faiths also attracted small percentages (2% each) of LGB adults.
One out of four LGBT persons are nothing in particular, but not atheist or agnostic either. In other reporting this demographic for young people in general is called Spiritual, but not denominational. The Nothing in Particular, 24%, is more than Evangelical 13%, Mainline Christianity 11%, Historically Black Christian 5%, and Catholic 17%.[4]
A more recent study, “Religiosity Among LGBT Adults in the US,” by the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, corroborates that about half are religious and half aren’t, and also like the general population, being religious declines with younger LGBT.[5]
Though there will be likely some LGBT opposition to a vigorous campaign against homophobic Christianity, it won’t have an overwhelming support of the LGBT who are dropping Christianity faster than the general population. Further, the is a large faction of LGBT who strongly resent homophobic Christianity.
The homophobic Christians are a declining fraction of the nation, they are resented by a large part of the public, and the LGBT is likely to be very supportive of a Gay campaign against homophobic Christianity.
There are also the reasons given in the Introduction for this book as to how society has changed such that Christians are longer in the position where they can dominate society as they once were able.
The reason that Evangelicals and other homophobic Christians have been able to campaign against Gays is that there hasn’t been a strong aggressive campaign against them. Instead, the campaign has been mostly throwing sentimental syrups at homophobic Christians and with suggestions such as, fight hate with love and other silly nonsense.
When tend to think that Christianity is a permanent feature of life because it has been present in Western society in centuries previous and that we just have to live with their homophobia and it will be a running struggle going on indefinitely into the future. However, the modern age has been a world of changes and flux, nothing can be assumed to be permanent, and the situation Christianity finds itself in is certainly in flux.
There are very many opportunities to disable, defeat and demolish homophobic Christianity. We need to start.
[1] Jones, Jeffrey M., “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx, downloaded 12/3/2023.
[2] Jones, Jeffrey M, “U.S. Church Attendance Still Lower Than Pre-Pandemic,” June 26, 2023, Gallup, https://news.gallup.com/poll/507692/church-attendance-lower-pre-pandemic.aspx, downloaded 12/5/2023.
[3] https://marycomm.com/consulting/resources/uncommon-love-bible-study/, downloaded 12/3/2023.
[4] Schwadel, Philip, & Sandstrom, Aleksandra, “Lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans are less religious than straight adults by traditional measures,” Pew Research Center, May 24, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/05/24/lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-americans-are-less-religious-than-straight-adults-by-traditional-measures/, downloaded 12/2/2023. For the more detailed number, Murphy Caryle, “Lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans differ from general public in their religious affiliations,” Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2015/05/26/lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-americans-differ-from-general-public-in-their-religious-affiliations/, downloaded 12/3/2023.
[5] No author, “Religiosity Among LGBT Adults in the US,” Oct. 2020, UCLA School of Law Williams Institute, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-religiosity-us/ , report, https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/LGBT-Religiosity-Oct-2020.pdf, downloaded 12/3/2023.
