Why Are The Number Of Religious Supplicants Declining In America? Does Religion Now Stand for Tyranny Or A Launching Pad for Racism?

By Donald A. Collins | 13 August 2022
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

Mr. David Spadafora’s letter in the Monday August 8th Wall Street Journal responded to a book by Byron Johnson and Jeff Levin which suggests reasons for optimism in the U.S. (“Religion Is Dying? Don’t Believe It”). He cited some facts about that how the numbers religious citizens in America are substantially decreasing.

He writes: “Relevant data in a key study they cite, the General Social Survey, present a more complex picture. It has found that across the past half-century, the proportion of people that never attend religious services increased from 10% to 30%. In a question about the strength of religious affiliation, those who report having “no religion” increased from 8% to 23% during that time.”

Read his letter here.

I would not presume to argue for either side for what defines people’s search for religious motivation. The reasons are highly variable and often have little to do with “faith” in the stated orthodoxy or any version of belief in God, whatever god may or may not be.

Examples abound! Let me cite some so you can vigorously agree or disagree with my examples.

1. If a business owner moves to a community whose citizens are mainly Protestant, he or she likely will join the congregation of the largest or most influential church.

2. If you were born in Utah your family’s tie to the Mormon Church makes your benefit from gaining the group power attained thereby prompts your decision.

3. The recent rise in a group described as by one author cited below “The GOP’s Army of Christian Nationalists and White Supremacists” should make us all nervous as the milk of human kindness and any love of so-called Christian charity is not reflected in either of the articles referenced below.

Read here.

Are we talking about a white racist group seeking more temporal power?

This definitive NY Times article is frightening, read it here.

As the result of suffering slavery and racism since 1607, African Americans often established Christian churches of various Protestant demonstrations as refuges, places where they could gather socially as well as religiously when too often they faced vicious attacks from white segregationists.

As our telescopic reach into the vast distances of space, many of us wonder if the specific orthodoxy of any religion can span the light years away of even the nearest star Alpha Centauri (4.37 light years away) which we humans will never reach. Any residents of Alfa Centauri’s planets may not know about how Jesus rose from the dead.

Only humans could have made up the religious fantasies many people embrace for many personally comfortable reasons but with no evidence of a god’s existence either way. For those so affected, try listening, if you need an antidote, to the late George Carlin’s routine on religion. Laughing a lot is a wonderful religion.

Certainly, you know the long history of the terrible tyranny that the acquisition of supreme temporal power that came with the merger of church and state, our founding fathers so carefully kept the two separate in our Constitution.

Now with Roe’s killing by our Supreme Court we face in the ultimate rejection of one of our key founding principles.

Dangerously, now all of us citizens of multi religious or secular beliefs are faced with the long-term dominance of one of our 3 federal branches of government by religious zealots. The Supreme Court’s last term’s decisions on Roe, guns, and climate control were widely disapproved by most of our citizens. Justice Clarence Thomas has mentioned the possibility for additional decisions against LGBTQ citizens, misogyny and contraceptive users in the Court’s next term.

What we can do about the fact that a far-right majority of religious extremists have rammed their religious beliefs right into the vaginas of women. It’s rape, Folks!!!

VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!

The immoral claims of these religious pro-lifer Justices that states should decide on abortion law offers a permanent stench on the Court’s reputation as Justice Sotomayor so aptly observed. Look at the turmoil which has erupted since this Constitutional right, for the first time in our 247 year history, was taken away.

Why should any US government authority, claiming its religious fantasy as the ultimate truth be allowed to regulate women’s pregnancies at any time during a pregnancy since difficult health circumstances can arise anytime until birth?

Only women and their health providers are qualified to help women make these decisions.

Who says 15 weeks should be the law? Why any limit for a complex private decision? Up to quickening (that the fetus can survive outside the womb) was what Roe provided, but emergencies requiring medical intervention can emerge anytime in the 9 months!

The main point: This entire unfortunate crisis with Roe is rooted in religious extremism. And remember no one is forcing a prolife mother to have an abortion, nor should anyone—especially a state law—demand a woman have a pregnancy she did not want.

That our Supreme Court is now dominated by religious racism should sicken us.

Why racist? Am I being too extreme? Not at all!! Because inflicting a religious based law on peaceful nonviolent citizens in a country founded on secular principles is racist!!

Our historical US racist record is formidable: In addition to African Americans, Asians and before that against native Americans.

So now on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court majority imposed its ultimate racism against women.

Caveat: Any time a monopoly gets in power injustice is sure to follow.

No wonder religious grasps for power are so dangerous.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote” and “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”.

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