Collapse of some Christianities, some that still need to be dealt with and how.
This new survey and longtitudinal study indicates where Christianity is being crushed and where it is enduring and where might those Christianities need to be attacked.
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PRRI Poll results. Some Christianities are facing extinction.
https://www.prri.org/research/census-2023-american-religion/
Some are not.
When you break out the numbers for different Christian groups, you can see that some Christian groups, though obnoxious are crashing, but other groups are not and we don’t have a strategy for them.
The efforts of atheists have been directed at Christianity in general which misses key opportunities. Breaking it out by different groups show that the current fast decline may reach a plateau if we don’t start thinking of new strategies.
White Evangelical Christianity. Declining fast.
They are in serious trouble. On a historical time scale Christianity is basically in free fall. One of the major reasons given by pollsters is that the homophobia of Christians alienates young people especially, but all age groups. So they try to manage their image to seem like they are loving homophobes, and also try to not have their homophobia be upfront.
This just came out. Unaffiliated is increasing. White Protestant Evangelicals are declining fast. From 23% in 2006 to 13.4% in 2023. (9.6%/17 years comes out to 0.56%/year. That is the decline of the percentage of the population as a whole.
(13.4%/0.56%/year) = 23.7 years. (Rounded off)
Linear projection is that Evangelical Christianity is extinct in less than 24 years.
Looking at it another way, in 17 years they have dropped by 41.7%, if it is exponential decline, then in 17 more years they will only 6% of the population, however, it seems to be linear and in 17 years it will be down to 3.8%. Likely the result will be somewhere in between. I am doing a crude mathematical assessment with some assumptions.
However, the report shows a very linear curve, not an exponential decline. It suggests that they are aging out, that is a primary driver is young people not joining and old people dying.
That doesn’t mean we should be complacent. The future is never guaranteed.
Also, in 20 to 25 years the White Evangelical Christians can do a lot of harm to Gays.
https://www.prri.org/research/census-2023-american-religion/
I place this ad in the Nov. - Dec. 2024 Gay & Lesbian Review which goes out to 10,000. I am working on getting a Gay Atheist strik force going.
Also, you can download a pdf for free.
Mainstream Non-Evangelical Christianity declining also. Not so fast.
The white mainline/non-Evangelical Protestants went from 17.8% to 13.4% from 2006 to 2023. One surprising thing is that due to the slower decline of mainstream Christians, and the more rapid decline of White Evangelical Christian Protestants, they are now about the same percentage. Their rate of decline is 0.23% a year.
(13.4%/0.23%/year) = 58.4 years. (Rounded off)
The efforts against Christianity has been primarily against Evangelical Protestants since they are much more obnoxious and have repugnant social policies, and also are easy to attack because of their clownery.
Mainstream Non-Evangelical Christianity is also a problem for Gays. Not as bad as Evangelical Protestants, nor Roman Catholics, but still a problem. We need to come up with a strategy.
I am going to write up a review of how they are not good for Gays. I think that for many Gays they look good when looked at in comparison to White Evangelical Protestants, but they aren’t good. There hasn’t been a good critical review of them since the focus has been on the Evangelicals.
The first step is to realize they are a problem.
Catholics White
White Catholics have declined from 16% in 2006 to 12.2% in 2023. The rate of decline is 0.22% a year.
(12.2%/0.22%/year) = 59.9 years. (Rounded off)
We need to come up with strategies. One thing is to focus on how Catholicism crushed out of existence indigenous religions.
Maybe we need to start publicizing Catherine Nixy’s book, “The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World.”
https://www.amazon.com/Darkening-Age-Christian-Destruction-Classical/dp/0544800885
We need to come up with a strategy. The current decline in white Catholicism is going to be very long and a lot can happen to reverse it.
Christians of Color not declining.
From the report:
In 2023, one-quarter of Americans identify as Christians of color (25%). This number has remained consistent over the past decade. [Boldface added.]
White Christianity is declining, but not minorty Christianity.
Once the rapid crash of Evangelical Protestant White Christianity finishes, we are not likley to see Christianity declining very fast.
African American Christianity
From the report.
More than seven in ten Black Americans (72%) are Christian. Around two-thirds identify as Protestant (64%), including 38% who identify as evangelical and 26% as mainline/non-evangelical. Only 5% identify as Catholic, 2% as Jehovah’s Witness, 1% as Latter-day Saint, and less than 1% as Orthodox Christian. … In 2013, Black Americans were more likely to identify as Christian (79%) and less likely to identify as unaffiliated (16%).
The drop from 2013 to 2023, for AFrican Americans over ten years is 6%.
There are African Americans who point out that the Christianity of African Americans comes from slavery. We should be helping to publicize these texts.
Also, the destruction of indigenous African religion by Christians and Muslims needs to be emphasized.
Whereas American scholars often avoid critically examining the role of Christianity in Africa, outside the West there are often cutting analyses. We need to make these more known in the United States. The title of this article is “How Christianity and Islam Decimated Africa’s Traditional Religions.”
Western writing is often a mush on this topic.
There are resources that need to be publicized.
For example, “Religion as a weapon of imperialism,” in the Ukombozi Review.
https://ukombozireview.com/2021/04/06/religion-as-a-weapon-of-imperialism/
The power of this is revealed by the frantic efforts of Christians and some scholars to deny that Christianity in Africa is an artifact of colonialism and white supremacy.
In this recent report about the African Methodist Episcopal Church vote against Gay marriage, I hit hard of the essential nature of African American Christianity. Click on image.
There is a book denouncing Christianity by an African American militant. I unfortunately can’t remember the name. We should make sure we know a few of these books.
The Bible is very solidly pro-slavery both New and Old Testament. Jesus uses slavery examples to explain his religion.
Though Jesus uses slavery frequently in his stories and never spoke out against slavery, since he didn’t specifically speak a lawyer’s type statement endorsingslavery, he isn’t considered pro-slavery either. The secret of anti-slavery Christianity remained undiscovered until the 19th century.
Would Apostle Paul tell John in the advertisement below to go back to his master? From the Dallas newspaper in 1856. If you thought the mechanisms of Swiss watches were complex, listen to Christians explain away the issues of slavery and the Bible.
Also, Africa and African Americans have suffered centuries of horror. Where was their god?
There is endless giggly gushing rationalizations about the origins of African American Christianity by supposedly credible establishment historians. There is a lot of sly manipulations and conflations of the historical record.
The homophobic African American churches don’t use the Ethiopian Bible.
They use the Bible of the slave traders, slave owners and European imperialists, they don’t use an African Bible. We need to make it clear to these homophobic African American churches that their Bible is a Bible used by the persons who enslaved, abused, exploited their ancestors. I am going to be developing resources to specifically deal with these homophobic African American churches.
Hispanic Catholicism
Three-fourths of Hispanic Americans (75%) identify as Christian, with around half (48%) identifying as Catholic. About one-quarter of Hispanic Americans (23%) identify as Protestants, including 16% who identify as evangelical and 7% as mainline/non-evangelical. … Compared with 2013, more Hispanic Americans identify as Christian (79%) and slightly less identify as unaffiliated (18%).
Essentially, Christianity isn’t declining at all for Hispanics.
However, Hispanics Christianity originates from the brutal conquest of the Americas by the Spanish.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is a story to assist Spanish colonial administration of Mexico. It was built over a previous religious place to blot out indigenous religion and help pacify the indigenous.
From the Univ. of South Carolina, “Lady of Guadalupe avoids tough truths about the Catholic Church and Indigenous genocide.”
https://sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2021/06/06_conversation_lady_guadalupe.php
https://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/obriene/art111/readings/virgin%20of%20guadalupe.pdf
More generally we need to point out that China, Japan, India and other places have their ancient cultures and temples since they resisted successfully colonialization.
Christianity in Africa, in Latin America and among people decendend from slaves, needs to be represented as colonialization and Stockholm syndrome.
We need to seek out what critical writing their has been against Christianity by persons of color and popularize it.
