People are walking away from organized religions in droves. Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back | PRRI ____________ JAG Writes: * God and "organized religion" are not the same thing. * You don't know that they are without God and without the Lord Jesus Just because they are walking away from organized religion, does not automatically mean they are walking away from God and the Lord Jesus. * The Holy Spirit has direct access to every human mind and heart 24/7/365 everywhere on the planet. You do not know what He does with that access or how He uses it. * Many Christian theologians have correctly said that people can experience the Lord Jesus, in principle, without the actual content of the Bible. * Think about that! * In principle. * You don't know that this, in principle, is not true. * Think of water. A Small Stream leads eventually into a Huge River. * The Small Stream is water just as the Huge River is water. * The water is the truths of the Bible. * The Huge River is ALL the Biblical truths. * The Small Stream is only a small part of the ALL ie. "the light they do have." *The Small Stream is not the "full light" of ALL the Bible. * But if they obey "the :light they do have" -- then they would also obey the "full light" if they had it. * If they obey the "small part" they would also obey the "ALL", the Huge River. * The Holy Spirit can, therefore, save any human being anywhere in the world because they have "in principle" obeyed the "light that they did have" even thought they did not have "all the light" ie. did not have the Huge River -- but only the Small Stream. * In other words water is water whether it is a "Small Stream" or the Huge River. * The so-called "Nones" are not necessarily in the Camp Of The Non-religious. * They may not fully understand the Bible, but that can mean no more than they do not fully understand the Bible. Read that again. * We have no knowledge of what takes place in the secret minds of human beings. * We can't use polls to tell us about people's true spiritual condition. * Polling is nothing more than a snapshot of the moment. * Pew Research cannot predict the future 10 years hence . . or 20. * Pew Research cannot know what is in the secret places of the human heart. * Read this next point carefully: * Billy Graham made an interesting statement: "I think that everybody that loves or knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ ... [God] is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven." "___Billy Graham Billy Graham - Wikipedia _________ * I don't know that Billy is correct. * I do not say that he is. * Neither one of us can know. * But I do know that God loves humanity. * And that He is Merciful and Gracious. * And that He has a Plan to save the Human Race. * He will not allow His "Human Race Project" to be defeated. *Those people that check the box None {the Nones} are not automatically in the atheist-camp. If you read those Pew Research Polls carefully they explain that the "Nones" are NOT saying they are atheists ---rather they believe in some kind of Higher Power This below is typical of what the "Nones" actually believe: Start quote. "For all the (digital) ink spilled in the coverage of nones over the past couple of years, there are some complexities in the data on nones that are often missed in both public reporting and religious handwringing about the “decline of religion in America.” First, we should bear in mind that the majority of nones—nearly 70 percent in the 2012 Pew data—report that they believe in God, a higher power or a transcendent life force of one sort or another. A scant 3 percent of the population identify as atheists, the proportion of the unaffiliated that has grown the least since 2007." End quote. The Gospel According To the ‘Nones’: Reading Scripture without religion * So nobody knows what is actually in the secret places of the minds of the so-called "Nones." JAG Scot me up Beamy. ``
I suspect it is already too late for that however I am going to use this as an opportunity to demonstrate how to use another aspect of the Quote function and how to paste images in your posts. Since this thread is about the Non-Religious and I want to remain On Topic I have opened an article by Pew Research in another tab and I am copying and pasting the link below so that you can go there and verify it for yourself. It is accepted practice to always provide the links to anything that you quote from other sources outside of the forum. https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ If you look at the toolbar at the top of the Response you will see the [ Insert ] icon just to the left of the [ Save ] icon. That opens a drop down menu and the first choice on the menu is "Quote. Select that and you will see the quoting HTML appear below. The cursor is between the Open [q] and Close [/q] because that is where you will post whatever text you want to cut & paste. I highlighted the Heading on the Pew Research tab and copied it and then returned to this page and pasted in between the quote boxes. This means that when I post the Reply it will be shown in a quote box so that makes it distinct from my own text. On the Pew tab there is a graphic image that I right clicked on and selected Open Image in Another Tab. That copied the image into a new tab and I can now open that tab and copy the URL of the image. I come back to the Response toolbar and click on the [ Image ] icon immediately to the right of the [ Emoji ] icon and that opens up a pop up window where I can paste the URL of the image. I click on the [Insert] button and the image from the Pew article now appears in the Response below. That completes my response to the OP essentially establishing that there is an ongoing DECLINE in Christianity while there is an INCREASE in those abandoning religions.
Do you realise that what you're writing here is exactly the kind of thing turning a lot of people away from organised religion? It's true that many non-religious people still believe in some kind of higher power but don't claim to know what that power is. When you make such definitive unconditional statements about what God is, does and wants (even as you say "nobody can know") and especially with the angle that what you believe is true regardless of what anyone else believes, you're inevitably going to put people off. Quoting controversial and morally questionable religious leaders probably doesn't help either. The shift away from organised religion has little to do with atheism (though more to do with agnosticism) but it is a continuation of the shift away from monolithic religious institutions and towards a recognition of the importance of the unique individual.
Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I still cannot figure it out but I'll keep trying. The article was very interesting. I knew there was a sharp decline but didn't realize it had reached those levels.
The graph may not represent the south well. We have a saturation of churches. Its the godless Yankees and the perverted left coast! Lol
