Interesting article…

An interesting precis of why the USA is in decline…

Church attendance in the United States is at an all-time low, according to a Gallup poll released in April 2019. This decline has not been a steady one. Indeed, over the last 20 years, church attendance has fallen by 20 percent. This might not sound like cause for concern off the bat. And if you’re not a person of faith, you might rightly wonder why you would care about such a thing.

Church attendance is simply a measure of something deeper: social cohesion.

From ammo.com, HERE.

This is one of the reasons there are many little ‘family groups’ forming in various parts of flyover country, whether or not they are actually related. They have a level of trust across the group that, while not necessarily religious in nature, is critical to the success of the group in the long term.

I’m not talking about preppers, per se, but more about folks with common interests and mutually supportive abilities within the groups. I also see this as a response to the attempts by the left to drive people apart by using race and/or orientation as wedges to destroy cohesion in family structures and any kind of support for the country.

Comments

Interesting article… — 15 Comments

  1. Agreed. Does your faith encourage you live a virtuous life ? Does it encourage compassion toward others ? Does it encourage you to be a model citizen that others should emulate ? Be a good parent – spouse – friend ?

    Hey – mine too !

    So even if we disagree about certain details, we have a lot in common. There are many paths leading to same destination – THAT is the important thing.

  2. My church went another way, so I stopped going and supporting it. Spend my tithes on feminism and illegal immigrants? Goodbye. Haven’t found another, considering converting to Orthodox.

    • Yep. I didn’t leave the Church, it left me, after punching me in the moral kidneys and curb-stomping my moral neck when I hit the ground.

      Electing a commie as pope was way past the last straw. It was the ‘meh./ straw, actually.

      That’s how bad the Church of the 80’s had deviated already from the Church of the 60’s in which I grew up.

      Want people to come back? Stop ‘ecumenical dance interpretation of scripture’ (yes, it is actually a THING, straight from demon worshiping and wicca) and pleasing people on the physical aspects. Return to the moral aspects of religion, you know, actual right and wrong stuff and redemption and forgiveness and all the things that seem to be forgotten in today’s materialistic and hedonistic Church.

      • ‘ecumenical dance interpretation of scripture’?!?

        Alright, I am, if not atheist, mighty close and that… that… unless it somehow involves Terpsichore, which I find Highly Doubtful – at best… oh, come on now. Really? No, not doubting you. But… sheesh.

        • Yep. Interpretive Dance in the church service. Made my head hurt.

          Made my head hurt bad.

          Just wondering when the priests and nuns are going to go ‘skyclad’ like the wicca do (which, knowing some wiccans, is an affront to anyone’s eyeballs…)

  3. It’s also interesting how denominations are splitting. Presbyterian churches saying “Syonara” to the main denomination over “new understandings” of the Scriptures, the Episcopalians having trouble… I have a feeling that the United Methodists will dis-unite in a few years if certain US bishops get their way on one doctrine in particular.

    But the Christian sub-groups that have very strict “this we believe, this we don’t. If you disagree, go in peace” are doing well. “Outreach Consultants” tend to squirm and twitch when I mention this in discussions about reaching potential new members.

  4. Hey Old NFO;

    Tweell touched upon part of it, Catholicism is the same way, I am Methodist now. When your church as a group starts supporting stuff that you don’t believe in because they are trying to stay “relevant” it makes it hard, we almost had a schism earlier this year over gay clergy. Church and religion is part of a high trust society except for islam, that creates a low trust society because if you believe that “non believers” are evil and that you should rip them off any chance you can, it doesn’t help in the building blocks of society.

  5. jrg- Yep! That it is.

    Tweell- Sorry to hear that, but I understand what you are saying.

    TXRed- Excellent point. The Baptists split almost 100 years ago due to similar issues.

    Bob- I hadn’t thought about the Islam issue, but you’re right. Although it IS interesting that Islam seems to be split in at least three or four sub-religions.

    • According to scriptures, I am more catholic than the current pope or many of the clergy. Which isn’t hard to be, by the way. Which is a shame. But they’ve done it to themselves. And they don’t include me in their inner discussions either.

      Making buddy-buddy with Muslims, seriously? Walls are ‘immoral’ and bad? Are you (Il Papa) trying to run people into the arms of the Mormons?

      St. Peter needs to come down and pimp-slap the College of Cardinals.

      Heck, if I was Pope, I’d bring back the militant orders. “Hey, Stalin, ya wanna see how many divisions I have now? Hahahahahaha.”

      And, yes, I do feel that there is a religious war a’coming. And I don’t want to be on the losing side. Though it does look like the Poles may be coming to Vienna’s rescue yet again. (well, at least the Polish Leopard tanks work, unlike the Germans. Guderian and Rommel must be rolling in their graves…)

  6. Our parish is hurting because of the sex scandals. Which is unfortunate because we work so hard for those who need help both locally and in real Appalachia. But here’s the thing about people who bail because it turns out that there are sinners in the Church: does Church teaching say they aren’t sinners? Has Church doctrine changed? No, the Church still says they are sinners. No, Church doctrine, even with this rather annoying pope, has not changed. So bailing on the Church is a rather intellectually lazy act. Particularly since there isn’t a group in the world that isn’t struggling from sin in its leadership.

    I’ve been through all the stuff released about sex abuse among Catholic clergy. The PA report is a disgusting, painful read. And I know from personal experience that the same evil exists everywhere. So it has zero influence on my being a Catholic.

    • Well, in my experience, being told to stop sinning, being shamed for my thoughts and my interpretations of scripture, by people who are sinning majorly and misreading and misinterpreting scripture and are supposed to know better, is painful to deal with.

      It’s not that I’m not Catholic. I am. I am very old-school Roman Catholic. Now, is the Church? Is the Pope or most of the princes of the church or a good portion of the clergy? My experience is… nope. They call themselves ‘Catholic’ but they aren’t.

      There are still lots of ‘real’ catholics amongst the priesthood. You can sense it. The real ones have an ‘aura’ of spirituality around them. The others? When you get the same feeling from your priest that you get from the local serial killer or politician, well….

      I want my Church to return to what made it great. Opus Dei has some really good points, contrary to what Dan Brown wrote about it. And bring back the Latin mass. Bring back the mysteries. Quit secularizing everything and trying to make the Church fit today’s amoral society. Instead, be the moral church that people can find and return to.

      Ahhh, too late, too much soap box. I just want the Church to be what it should be, not what it is.

  7. I’m an evangelical. Not a “mainstream” denomination, but one of the largest and fastest growing in the world. AOG.
    And we are NOT going the way of the world.
    However, my church is aging out, the kids are marrying and moving to their spouses church, and not a lot of soul-winning going on.
    Of course, Ypsilanti is a hot bed of BLM, LGBTQ etc.
    Not really receptive.

  8. When the church services becomes indistinguishable from the “-studies” department of Liberal State University, the people leave. When the clergy ignore the Bible in favor of the Narrative, the people leave.

    Some things really are just that simple.

  9. There was a study started in 1960 with eight-year old kids that has been ongoing.
    It is called the Columbia County Longitudinal Study.
    One of the findings was that regular church attendance inoculated the kids from doing jail time.
    Interesting study.
    Lots and lots of papers regarding the various findings are available on the net.