NON-DOBSONISM ON THE RISE

(Via Josh Marshall)

When you combine this report with the fact that most people 18-40 think evolution is a fact, the revolt against Dobsonism seems to be growing.

Crises of Faith

America is becoming more secular;
Europe is becoming more religious.
Both trends could mean trouble.

by Ross Douthat
The Atlantic Monthly
July/August 2007

NOTE: This is not available for free online. I used EBSCO through the University Library to get the text.

(excerpts)


Americas secular turn actually began in the 1990s, though it wasn't until 2002 that two Berkeley sociologists first noticed it. In a paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Haut and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had "no religious preference" had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population. This unexpected spike wasn't the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as "a symbolic statement" against the religious right. If the association of religiosity with political conservatism continued to gain strength, the sociologists suggested, "then liberals' alienation from organized religion [might] become, as it has in many other nations, institutionalized."

Five years later, that institutionalization seems to be proceeding. It's showing up in an increasingly secularized younger generation: A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 20 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds reported no religious affiliation, up from just 11 percent in the late 1980s.