Eye Recommend --- White Christian America is in Decline

WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICA IS IN DECLINE: THIS IS WHY YOUNG PEOPLE ARE SICK OF CONSERVATIVE RELIGION, by Amanda Marcotte -- 
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/white-christian-america-in-decline-this-is-why-young-people-are-sick-of-conservative-religion/

what eye thynk:  And I would add, not just "young people."

The article begins with some statistics on American white Christians, vs. other Christians, vs. other religions, then gets into the guts of the issue. (Any underlines are mine.)

"This isn't some kind of side effect of their youth, either...The millennial generation is becoming less religious as they age.

These changes explain the modern political landscape...  While not all white Christians are conservative, these changing numbers definitely suggest that conservative Christians are rapidly losing their grip on power...And conservative Christians aren't taking these changes well at all.

To look at the Christian right now is to see people who know they are losing power and are desperately trying to reassert dominance before it's lost altogether.  The most obvious example of this is the frenzy of anti-abortion activity in recent years.  Anti-choice forces have controlled the Republican Party since the late '70s, but only in the past few years have they concentrated so singlemindedly on trying to destroy legal abortion in wide swaths of the country.

None of this is a reaction to any changes in people's sexual behavior or reproductive choices. It's not like there was a spike in abortions causing this panic...Despite continuing media panic over adolescent sexuality, the fact is that teenagers are waiting longer to have sex, on average, than in the past.  Despite this, not only are you seeing a dramatic increase in attacks on legal abortion, the Christian right has expanded its attacks to contraception access, suggesting that something has worked them into a panic they believe can only be resolved by trying to reassert their religious and sexual values.

That something isn't changes in sexual behavior, but it's reasonable to believe it's because of changes in sexual values.  People might not be having more sex, but they are feeling less guilty about the sex they are having."

A 2001 Gallup poll indicated that consensual, premarital sex between adults was deemed acceptable by 53 percent of Americans.  Today that number is 66 percent.

An ABC poll taken in March 2014 indicated that 59 percent of American adults support the legalization of same-sex marriage.  That is a 21 point jump from 2003, when Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex unions.

"The fact that these changes in attitude are rising alongside the growth of irreligiosity is not a coincidence.  More perhaps even than the 1960s, Americans are in a period of questioning rigid sexual and religious mores... Some of them--now a whopping 22 percent of Americans!--are leaving religion entirely.  Some are continuing in their faith but choosing to interpret their values differently than Christian conservatives would like.

And so we see Christian conservatives cracking down in a desperate bid to regain control.  They claim that they're being oppressed... They have latched onto, with some success, the claim that 'religious freedom' requires giving Christians the right to oppress others.  The Republican Party is in complete thrall to the religious right...

...The irony is that this panic-based overreach is just making the situation worse for the Christian right.  One of the biggest reasons the secularization trend has accelerated in recent years is that young people see the victim complex and the sex policing...and it's turning them off.  And they're not just rejecting conservative Christianity but the entire idea of organized religion altogether. In other words, the past few years have created a self-perpetuating cycle:  Christian conservatives, in a panic over changing demographics, start cracking down.  In reaction, more people give up on religion.  That causes the Christian right to panic more and crack down more.  In the end, Christian conservatives are going to hasten their own demise by trying to save themselves." 

Personally, that demise can't come soon enough.  Conservative interpretation--and  interpretation is indeed the correct word--is what moved me away from being a church-every-Sunday adolescent to an occasional-church-on-Sunday adult and finally into a maybe-once-every-ten-years older adult.   

I haven't given up my moral upbringing.  I haven't become evil.  I simply find it impossible to accept that Jesus meant "Love thy neighbor" to come with exceptions: Love thy (poor) neighbor--except if he doesn't work as hard as you'd like.  Love thy (ill) neighbor--except if he wants health coverage.  Love thy (gay) neighbor--except if he wants marriage rights equal to those you enjoy.

Modern conservative Christians and their current, all-consuming focus on Biblical sex to the exclusion of any other of Christ's teachings, reduces this beautiful book to a piece of ancient pornography--like Playboy without the redeeming articles.   

They are screaming (and Republicans are listening) that their interpretation of sexual mores is paramount and gives them the right to rule on your sexuality--or my sexuality, or the right of a gay person to have a sexuality at all.   They claim their right by virtue of belief in a Bible they see as an exact and literal record of the word of God.

At the same time, these champions of the literal Bible choose to ignore biblical lessons they find inconvenient. (Ask the most conservative Christians in New Orleans if they ever eat jambalaya.) 

When their demise comes, it won't be because Karen got an abortion.  It won't be because Tom and Kevin got married.  It won't be because Barack Obama saw to it that every American got health coverage. And it won't be because they were persecuted out of existence.   It will be because they came to believe that their judgements, and the prejudices they employed to reach them, mattered more than the lessons taught by the God they worshipped.