The way JD Vance rants on about the US being a Christian nation turns a lot of people off. It sounds like he’s advocating for a 21st century version of the Crusades. Charlie Kirk statues everywhere, 10 Commandments mandated in schools and public buildings. CBS fawning over Erika Kirk. Christians claiming to be persecuted for not getting their own way. Yeah, count me out.

There was a time when church leaders didn't tell their flock how to vote. That started to change with Karl Rove and GHWB.

And Catholic priests- with their secret crimes- made Catholics stop trusting the Church. And it isn't just the abuse, but the way it was consistently covered up.

Ronnie Ray-goon was openly supported by the (IM)Moral Majority.

I always hated the phrase, Moral Majority. It implies that others are immoral.

It started with that and infected the rest. But Karl Rove was the one who told Republicans that some Christians were like sheep and could be easily convinced that voting Republican was the righteous thing to do... even though the values of the party are really antithetical to Christianity.

As long as you hate gays, love guns, and hate women's rights - you're a good Christian. Because Jesus spent so much time talking about these things.

Nixon's thing was the Silent Majority.

a lot of cars had a bumper sticker that summed it up:

The moral majority is neither.

We have our share of religious wackos, but by and large, we're an independent-minded lot up here.

and fuck us on your family

And I also watched a film about clergy sexual abuse in Ireland, a Catholic country. It was happening all over the world.

That church of medieval political control is STILL way too powerful, in this nation where we are supposedly free to practice, or NOT practice, any religion.

Extra weirdness: When I first searched the title on duck duck go, some of the entries were for purchase on Amazon. I closed search tab, opened a new on and entered same search words.Absolutely NO listing of the movie being available on Amazon. Huh? Went to the evil Amazon and put DVD in my cart. Might see if my local library would like it for their movie lending library.

any Evangelical/Mormon/Roman Church.

12 years of catholic school, agnostic here. My soon to be 18 year old daughter would probably fit that mold, although she does go to some Jewish holiday services. The only catholic/christian services are funerals.

She’s an amazing kid who works tirelessly to help fundraise and do food drives for the less fortunate. No fear of hell compelling her.

I’m a proud papa! 😀

When I pose this question to Evangelical Christians who follow Trump, I ask them this..."Pray tell me! In what ways does Donald Trump embody the Virtues and Values that Jesus Christ taught in the New Testament?"

All I get are nasty responses or silence. The question basically shuts them up. When they respond nasty to me, I repost the question.

as long as he delivers for them. They're that kind of people. Rather unChristian from a Gospels point of view. They much prefer the Old Testament mean god.

Because Jesus Christ rocked the boat while he was in it and preached the Old Testament in a different manner that espoused Hope, Forgiveness, and Life Eternal through actions rather than words.

Methinks the ability to access information on the internet has opened a lot of minds

They want to make Christianity the national religion and people not having a church affiliation will be legally discriminated against to force them to join a church where they will have to tithe "donate". Turning Point was supposed to generate Christian Nationalist youth.

That's also why they want to pass all these laws forcing Xtian indoctrination in schools and defunding public schools and enacting voucher programs to give the money to private Xtian schools. Same with Moms for liberty. They want to avoid teaching the truth about American history especially in relation to the treatment of slaves and native Americans.

Kids aren't going to feel bad about themselves for what they learn in school about what other people did. They're going to point out that they were lied to when they learn the truth in school. These racist parents don't want their kids learning the truth and realizing that they were lied to at home and in school.

A perfect example is the Topeka Kansas Baptist church. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps church. Fred became a minister after being disbarred as an attorney for attacking the character of a female witness in one of his cases by calling her a jezebel and other insinuations. The little kids who they dragged off to their protests holding their disgusting signs depicting images of sodomy eventually reached college age and stopped going to church. That meant that their parents were no longer considered elders in the church because their adult children weren't baptized members. So they also quit since they had no say in the finances of the church. Fred's grandkids left, his kids quit. He was out and some other grifter took over the church ministry of trying to incite a response with their disgusting protests so that they could sue.

Just a thought.

Mega churches and pastors supporting maga and trump does not make religion too attractive.

Being held up as a good Christian. They don't want any part of it.

It's becoming too obvious that most religious leaders are only in it for the money. The tax exempt status of their churches and related properties make it the preferred home of many Elmer Gantries fleecing their flocks of gullible people. Many flaunt their wealthy lifestyles living in mansions and traveling in jets all paid for by "tithes" to their church. How many televangelist TV shows are on the air presenting sermons which are really thinly veiled sales promotions begging for money so they can keep the grift going? And they justify this barely legal thievery often preaching the "prosperity gospel" which says being filthy rich is god's way of bestowing blessings on the faithful. And you too can be rich if you just believe and pray harder for those blessings. But above all, send your money to them so they can pray for your prosperity while they really make you more impoverished financially and spiritually.

I knew it was a lot but that's a lot of land. I wonder how much the other religions own-- Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu holdings? Why don't they all sell it and help the poor? Grifters gotta' grift. And some big religions are always ready to spark the new Crusades and call it a holy war.

They founded the YMCA, fought for child labor laws, consumer protections, women's suffrage, regulation of big business, ending corruption in government, and a whole bunch of things we still enshrine as progressive ideals. The only tenant I disagree with was their support for temperance and prohibition.

Too bad the religious progressives aren't around today. They started dying out with the start of World War I and the Red Scare of the 1920's.

Alcohol was very unregulated and the bars of the time (Saloons) were mostly for men so men would often come home drunk. Women were a big part of prohibition happening and they were also a big part of it ending. The bars during prohibition and after included women more often and they liked to consume alcohol themselves. After prohibition they enacted regulations related to alcohol which many are still in place today.

There was a strong anti-German sentiment during and after the war, and Prohibition was a pretext for shutting down German beer halls in the USA immediately after WWI.

That there is no god.

But still religious – still believing in some sort of ‘god,’ that’s the problem.

We believe that alcohol binds with the evil within and is expelled down the toilet. We're going for tax exempt status so we can write off our bar tabs.

My father told me, when I asked if he was religious said "I haven't had time to think about it."

Basically his way of shrugging off a nonsense question. My mother was a "social" Episcopalian (xmas, easter, church socials, etc.) but "god" was never part of our family conversations.

... I just haven't been to church in sixty years.

As an atheist, I can say this about Trump. He has done more than anybody to destroy Christianity and religion than any atheist could have.

is ORGANIZED religion, and I can't say I blame them. Between the sexual abuse, the gimme gimme, and the anti-woman and anti-LGBTQI, it's just all so NEGATIVE. I'm not religious, but I've probably read more of the Bible than plenty of card carrying Christians. Jesus said NOTHING about abortion, homosexuality or anti-immigrant nonsense. I have a trans cousin who is a devout Christian and his church accepts him with loving arms, just like Jesus would have done.

Those holy rolling Trumpers have themselves to blame regarding the growing number of people who want nothing to do with their religion.

Our freedoms are Reason's children.

When delusion rules as it does now, our freedoms cease to exist in application.

Our nation's long and sordid history of enshrining malevolent delusion as the rule of law has brought us to today, an Americanized Spanish Inquisition Y'all Qaeda Nazi style.

When the populace embraces reason, they expect reason to rule.

This fuels the second order change our democracy direly needs to survive.

This is great fucking news!!

'...one nation under REASON with liberty and justice for all.'

just take your favorite Christian, Donald Trump, into your holy embrace....

If they looked at the "others," they would find that they are growing.

I am disgusted by the way Israel and the orthodox community have embraced Rump. I have lost total respect for these people. Somehow I ended up on the local Chabad mailing list and everything they send me goes into the recycle bin even the annual Jewish calendar which I actually like but can’t stomach looking at it anymore.

they have lost a lot of goodwill because of that crap

Happy shopping.

Americans aren’t rejecting religion, they’re rejecting religious affiliation – not the same thing.

Some may claim it’s a distinction without a difference, that organized religion is the problem, not spirituality or a belief system.

But to believe in the supernatural, that there’s some omnipotent deity controlling things is just as problematic.

The flying spaghetti monster himself:
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I think the 6 conservative clowns on the SC are christo-fascists. Pushing their agenda at every turn. Ruining our country in the name their religion. 3 were there before the fat orange imbecile. Like Cardinals in a conclave. Pathetic.

That only fosters hate, ignorance and fear. All religions are the same. No exceptions.

some worship the Orange Idiot. Bonkers!

Doubling down on racism, classism and hatred.

I believe that many of us have "private" religious convictions of one kind or another. Most of us were raised to believe in some kind of religion. It's the organized churches and all their failures (already mentioned above) that have turned us off.

I'm a baby-boomer, raised as a Catholic, and I almost never attend church any more. But I don't believe I'll ever join another church, it's just the idea of organized religion that turns me off. Also the anti-liberal politics and sexism that's prevalent in the Catholic Church now, why would anyone want to call themselves a "Christian" anymore?

the difference between right and wrong and also about our real history of mans origin....

except when you return the the old testament and cherry pick,

you get a lot of bad ideas......like we have not learned anything about anything is 2000 years

Honor to Theodosius I, he had the vision of his times.

I would think it is double that. Maybe because of who i hang out with . i might be biased.

According to the article below (dated January 2024) most of the people who don't have a religious affiliation "believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any religious service." Unfortunately, churches are full of people.

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226371734/religious-nones-are-now-the-largest-single-group-in-the-u-s

I go to a United Church of Christ church - very liberal and accepting. Our pastor is black and gay - not easy things to be in Texas!

My father had no religious affiliation. His father came to the Chicago area from Bohemia, and like a majority of the immigrants from that country who settled there, left the church. I remember him saying, "I'll vote for Kennedy even though he's Catholic and I know he wouldn't vote for me because I don't go to church."

At the park near where I lived as a child, in the summer people told bible stories to the kids in the only building that was there at the time. I had to have been six, because I wasn't allowed to cross the street the park was on until then. I took a friend of mine with and we listened to a couple of stories. He was Catholic and his parents forbid him to go again. I remember complaining to my parents, saying "They're just MADE-UP STORIES! "

especially in the South and West, driven significantly by Hispanic growth, though its overall percentage of U.S. adults has remained stable or slightly declined since 2007. While some sources report a recent surge in adult conversions and a positive shift in converts vs. leavers, the long-term trend shows a slight dip in percentage, but a significant rise in total numbers (from around 48M to 60M+), with growth concentrated in specific regions and demographics.

In millions of daily Masses across the world, priests and congregations pray, "Lord, look not upon our sins but on the faith of your church..." Jesus is building his church because over a billion since the Last Supper, have said yes to the world's no.

I'm an atheist myself but if people actually live by the religious principles they espouse, I can respect that.

the fewer people believing in these ridiculous delusions THE BETTER

The real reason is there are more things for people to do, especially on the weekends. Social media with the younger cohorts has made a big impact. Churches are having a hard time competing.

A lesser reason is the increasing political activities by too many churches is a turnoff for many. This doesn't mean more people are turning atheist or agnostic.

If you really want to know why church attendance has declined for decades, the REAL culprit was the repeal of the blue laws beginning some sixty or seventy years ago, and some are still being repealed today.

If you are old enough to remember them, like I am, there was NOTHING open on Sundays when I was a child. The main activity for us, since we didn't go to church, was to go on Sunday drives. Those were great memories from my childhood.

These days, not just people want stores and other places open on Sundays, businesses also want it. There is no turning back the tide. Churches have to adapt or they will close.

It's important to also keep in mind that disinterest in being affiliated with an organized religious institution is distinctly different from being disinterested in, disbelief in, or a lack of faith in a religion, a god or gods, or spirituality. Both could be true, of course, but one doesn't necessarily make the other a given.

Religion is a bane of mankind.

Nor did it matter if you were part of said religion.

Now, they grift, overtly political, etc. The evangelical movement in the 70's did a lot to move it in this direction. Now they wonder why they can't fill the pews. People can still be religious, but they don't need organized religion if that religion runs contrary to what they believe.

Many believe in God or are just spiritual without following a specific religion. I expect the percentage of atheists is still in the low single digits.