When Gallup first started surveying the American population about their spiritual habits back in 1937, 73% of respondents said they were regular church-goers — good Christians and devout Catholics, mostly, with a smattering of other denominations like Muslima and Sikh.
We were clearly much closer to “God” back then. But slowly the effects of social reform, political progress, sex, drugs and, of course, rock-and-roll started taking their toll on this great nation. We began devolving into a bunch of agnostic spiritually ambiguous savages, slowly at first, until the turn of the century.
Since 2000, though, that decline in church membership has gotten dramatically steeper. Today, only 47% of Americans identify as members of a church.
It’s no wonder things have gotten so fucked down here on planet Earth in this foul year of our Lord, 2021. Between the pandemic, the social upheaval, political disarray and division, madness, confusion, and general tension we’ve endured over the past year, it’s clear that God is angry with us. And it’s more than likely got something to do with his attendance rates dropping below 50% for the first time in American history.
The dramatic decline in church membership is being largely attributed to a growing number of Americans who don’t identify with any religion. In 1998 that was just 8% of the population — today it’s ballooned to 21%.
Even among the Americans out there who DO affiliate with a specific religion, church membership numbers have been on the decline. It’s gone from 73% of religious Americans belonging to a church in 1998, to just 60% in 2020.
If you’re looking for someone to blame for all this viral infidelity, point your fingers at millennials (of course). That generation of well-educated, globally adjusted, largely progressive and liberal leaning sinners has been waging a war on America’s Churches, just like they’re waging wars on Christmas, racism, and bologna sandwich meat.
If this doesn’t represent the beginning of this country’s spiritual spiral into godless anarchy then we don’t know what would. No doubt we can expect locusts to start swarming across the American Breadbasket, as blood starts raining from the skies; as frogs flood the streets and people start breaking out in boils. Surely, then, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse won’t be far behind.
And that’s when the real fun begins: when America can embrace its apostate state of spiritual non-conformism, and go boldly forth into the dark night of the End Times. Why not? At this point, there’s no clear or easy way of slowing our descent down this slippery slope of godlessness — so we might as well enjoy the ride.
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