Moving On

by digby

It looks like the Religious Industrial Complex is swimming against a strong tide:

The percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians has dropped dramatically over the past two decades, and those who do are increasingly identifying themselves without traditional denomination labels, according to a major study of U.S. religion being released today.

The survey of more than 54,000 people conducted between February and November of last year showed that the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990.

[…]

The survey substantiated several general trends already identified by sociologists: the slipping importance of denomination in America, the growing number of people who say they have “no” religion and the increase in religious minorities including Muslims, Mormons and such movements as Wicca and paganism.

The only group that grew in every U.S. state since the 2001 survey was people saying they had “no” religion; the survey says this group is now 15 percent of the population. Silk said this group is likely responsible for the shrinking percentage of Christians in the United States.

These trends really do fly in the face of the RIC, especially the self-identified liberal lobbyist types who have been beating the Democrats over the head for years trying to get them to become social conservatives. The fact is that the religious vote has always been misrepresented, especially during the past decade when every religion lobbyist was running around taking credit for garnering the all important “values vote” when such a constituency never existed outside the hard core right.

One of the only only upsides of this miserable economic situation is that at least we seem to have moved beyond that puerile obsession for the moment.

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