It’s not news that Christianity has been in decline for some time in America and Europe, so it might seem comforting that a Gallup survey released over this summer found that 81 percent of U.S. adults still believe in God. The bad news is that this number represents the lowest percentage ever reported in that survey:
Up until 2011, over 90 percent said they believed in God, but the number has continued to drop, now down eight points from the 89 percent who expressed belief in God in 2016. The previous low was set in 2014, when 86 percent said they believed in God.
When Gallup asked the same question in 1953, 1954, 1965, and 1967, 98 percent said they believed in God.
Ninety-eight percent. As recently as 55 years ago.
And the decline is most precipitous in young people. A Survey Center on American Life report from March of this year found that “over one-third of Generation Z, 34 percent, consider themselves unaffiliated from religious groups. That figure decreases to 29 percent among millennials, 25 percent among Generation X, 18 percent among Baby Boomers, and nine percent of the Silent Generation.”
The decline is also steepest, perhaps unsurprisingly, among those on the political left. The Survey Center report noted that 57 percent of them were members of a church or other type of religious organization in 1998. By 2021, that figure had dropped to 35 percent. That’s a 22 percent drop in as many years. A December 2021 analysis from Gallup found that one-quarter of the political left indicated that religion is “not very important” in their world.
It’s not very important anymore across “the Pond,” either, where Christianity is in such accelerating decline that last month it was reported that Christians are now, for the first time, a minority in England and Wales. Only 46.2% of the population described themselves as Christian in the 2021 census, down from 59.3% a decade earlier. More than 37% claimed no religious affiliation at all, up from 25% in only ten years.
Christianity is not only diminishing demographically in England, but also culturally and legally. A soldier-turned-evangelist there named John Dunn was charged two years ago with using “threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.” Apparently Dunn told two lesbians he encountered on the street that the Bible says “homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
In court recently, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) argued that such language “has the potential to cause harassment, alarm or distress.” Indeed, the CPS went so far as to assert, “There are references in the bible which are simply no longer appropriate in modern society and which would be deemed offensive if stated in public.” [Emphasis added]
David Smyth, head of the Evangelical Alliance in NI, said in response:
The CPS holds a really important role in the public life and administration of criminal justice in England and Wales. However it is not their role to govern what is ‘appropriate’ or ‘offensive’. These comments are unwise and concerning, revealing a lack of understanding and faith literacy. We hope and pray that this does not result in a chilling effect on Christians sharing the Bible and their faith in public.
But it will have that effect, and that is the intent of the CPS and of other secular authorities in the oh-so-multicultural UK: to suppress expressions of Christian faith and to marginalize the Christian community. Try to imagine the British authorities taking a similar line with the Koran.
In a further shockingly Orwellian bit of news from the UK, video recently emerged in which Birmingham police are seen interrogating and eventually arresting a pro-life activist who was silently praying alone across the street from a U.K. abortion clinic. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of the U.K. March for Life, was standing in an area Birmingham authorities call a “censorship zone” near the BPAS Robert Clinic when police approached her after an onlooker complained she might be praying outside the abortion facility. Fox News notes:
The clip shows the woman silently standing on a curb across from an abortion clinic as British law enforcement officers approach her. One asks why she is standing there and responds that she’s there because of the abortion clinic. She denies that she is part of any protest.
The officer then asks, “Are you praying?” to which she responds, “I might be praying in my head.” The officer then asks her if she’d be willing to go to the station for questioning about her actions. “If I’ve got a choice, then no,” she responds, after which the officer states, “You’re under arrest” and claims she’s charged with “suspicion of failing to comply with Public Spaces Protection Order.”
Wrap your head around this if you can: a lone woman was standing across the street from an abortion clinic praying in her head – harassing no one, obstructing nothing, not even counseling anyone. Someone suspected that Miss Vaughan-Spruce might be praying – Horrors! – and felt threatened or outraged enough to alert the police. Instead of telling the busybody snitch that praying silently at a distance is not a crime, and then going about their rounds looking for actual criminals, the officers confronted, searched, and interrogated Miss Vaughan-Spruce. Then, when she refused to be hauled down to the station for further harassment, they arrested her.
Social media lit up in protest over the video. Anglican priest Rev. Calvin Robinson tweeted, “This is terrifying. What have we become?!” Pro-life advocate Emily Rarick wrote on Twitter, “This is absolute madness. How can someone be arrested for praying?” Conservative pundit Lauren Chen tweeted, “People are literally being arrested for thought crimes in the UK. Free speech is NOT a western value, it’s a uniquely American one.”
For now, perhaps. But how long before law enforcement here in America begins investigating and prosecuting Christians for similar thought crimes?
The aforementioned statistics and incidents are ominous signs for the civilization that used to be called Christendom. As I have written elsewhere,
The word “religion” comes from the Latin ligare, “to bind” or “tie together.” Faith in God is the force that binds a community, a society, a nation, a civilization together. When we dissolve that bond – in other words, when we believe that we, and not God, are “each other’s answers” – society will disintegrate too, into meaninglessness and fear, lawlessness and chaos, and an empty sexual libertinism masquerading as personal freedom. When a culture rejects the humility and sense of greater purpose that faith sows in us, and degenerates into hedonism and aimlessness, its end is near.
As Christianity fades in numbers of believers, and in cultural power and significance, and as Christians themselves become more and more marginalized if not actually persecuted, who and what will bind us together?
Robert O'Donnell says
Again: the fulfillment of Romans 1:28 – “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting”
David says
Absolutely – all God’s fault and nothing to do with the failure of the Church in obeying the cultural mandate in our time and place.
dani says
No matter what your opinion is about abortion, the treatment of this woman is horrible – and frightening.
internalexile says
Thought crime, for sure.
Jason P says
Interesting that the most violent and hateful rant from a Muslim will be overlooked while the silent thoughts of a Christian is grounds for concern. If I were to guess this has less to do with religion but more to do with the hatred of “whiteness” and penchant for xenophilia, The religion of “the other” is beyond criticism. Could this be?
THX 1138 says
At 38 seconds the cop says, “Will you come with us now volutarily to the police station we need to ask you some questions about today and OTHER DAYS where there are allegations where you’ve broken public space protection orders…”
There seems to be something more going on here than just this one time of this woman ONLY standing there silently praying.
What’s the full story leading up to this arrest? Does this woman have a history with this abortion clinic, does she have some kind of prior history with the police? Because that’s what the cops words imply.
The Left and the Right, the Left more than the Right, use out of context video clips to promote their biased narrative. Then later on the full context and more facts are revealed and the biased narrative falls apart.
Mark Sochor says
How open minded and reasonable you seem. But if she often stood there silently praying that could also account for the officers words. This is outrageous and and no amount of bias assumptions justifies. This isn’t a unique case. The time for pandering is over.
THX 1138 says
To me it seems that she’s loitering, she’s done it before, she keeps doing it. Maybe the abortion clinic called the cops on her. Why is that wrong?
There are many cases of someone standing around on a corner or walking around a neighborhood where nodobdy knows them, they look out of place, and the cops are called by the neighborhood residents to check what this stranger in the neighborhood is doing there and they get escorted away. Or the person is known to the neighborhood as a nuisance or a stalker and the cops are called to escort the person away or arrest them. I don’t know all the facts in this case and neither do you. I’m sick and tired of skewed, out of context, video clips, being used by the Left and the Right to B.S. me.
“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on” – Mark Twain
Hannah54 says
“The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”
— Mark Twain
W. Layer says
This is happening under a Tory government, the party that is supposed to protect historic liberties. What a joke, Where is the PM speaking out for free speech and freedom of religion? Absent. Time for a new party to hold the premiership, Labour and the the Tories need to be given the boot.
Siddi Nasrani says
Where is the Prime Minister you might well ask, well he is not at home in his head.
Are you in business?, Rishi Sunak asks homeless man during shelter visit.
THX 1138 says
You don’t need to be a Christian to believe in freedom, liberty, individualism, capitalism, and the pursuit of happiness. Those secular, worldly, values are sufficient to unite a culture and a country.
The history of Christianity is a history of one-thousand years of brutal theocracy. And then 300 years of the brutal wars and persecutions between different sects of Christians which are called the Reformation and the Counter Reformation.
Not to mention the legal persecution of the Jews by Christendom. And the fact that Holy Scripture was used for centuries to defend slavery, misoginy, and Apartheid in South Africa. But some Christians just love to whitewash and evade the bloody, brutal, history of Christianity.
Freedom, liberty, individualism, capitalism, the pursuit of happiness, and the Bill of Rights, are all RATIONAL and philosophical values that do not need religion to be believed in, cherished, understood, embraced, and defended. They are SECULAR values that can only be defended on provable, demonstrable, and verifiable ground by pointing to the facts of reality and the requirements of human survival and flourishing on earth.
THX 1138 says
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life.” – John Galt, “Atlas Shrugged”
David Ray says
If the bobbies were to take the same approach to islamists, I’d be impressed.
But they won’t, and it’s much worse than that.
They looked the other way while these islamist scumbags subjugated & enslaved young girls in Rotterham & several other places. (When not rapping, they’re running over people with cars & slashing them with knives.)
Kynarion Hellenis says
The Islamists will one day get the same treatment or worse. They are tools of evil. When they have served their purpose, they will be destroyed. Devils are consistently eaters of their own. Death is their sacrament.
THX 1138 says
No, they won’t. In a war between the atheist-communist-fascist-Globalists and Islam or Christianity, Islam or Christianity will win in the end. Of that I assure you 100%.
The religious zealots will eventually overthrow and kill the atheists. In the end the war will be between Islam and Christianity.
In the long run an atheist totalitarian state can only survive more than 75 to 100 years by going back to religion.
Christianity prepared the ground for Marxism and Marxism is preparing the ground for an eventual return to religion. Marxism is essentially religion pretending to be secular science. Marxism is a religious fish out of water and must return to religion to sustain its totalitarianism.
Fritz the Cat says
“Christianity will win in the end.”
FIFY
THX 1138 says
Which means a return to the Christian Dark Ages. Some fix.
Kevin says
There is a very real level of hatred non-Christians have toward true Christians. When the light of truth shines on darkness, the darkness responds with hatred.
How long will it be before the West is like China where Christians are put in prison? Maybe 10 years from now, but not too long into the future.
Marlow says
Have you considered the possibility that your “light” is hurting their eyes and they’d like you to go away?
THX 1138 says
Your atheist-socialist mysticism, your atheist-socialist religion that pretends to be science has killed many more humans than Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism combined.
Those of us that love life and know how to define it rationally, and know what rational values life requires, would like all of you IRRATIONAL MYSTICS and MAGICAL THINKERS, secular or religious, atheistic, monotheistic, or polytheistic, to get the hell out of the way.
“Get the hell out of my way!” Said by John Galt as the leaders of the country tried to make him become their dictator.” ― Ayn Rand
Marlow says
If you’re referring to me, I’m neither an atheist nor a socialist, but I do think stupidity needs to be called out, even when it comes in the guise of religion. Or Objectivism, for that matter.
In any event, I would never get out of Mr. Galt’s way. I’d fight that capitalist Hitler with everything I had.
THX 1138 says
Capitalist Hitler?! LOL!
You’re as stupid as they come.
Marlow says
I don’t think there’s really any other way to describe Galt. He clearly wants to impose a totalitarian capitalist state in which he and his fellow ubermenschen will rule perpetually. And if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll “stop the engine of the world.” The fact that he trades a swastika for a dollar sign is a distinction without a difference.
Do you really think that Galt and his minions would ever allow a free and fair election if there were the slightest chance they might lose?
THX 1138 says
What’s a TRUE Christian? Who gets to define who is a TRUE Christian? Who gets to define Christian orthodoxy? There lies the problem with supernatural mysticism, supernatural claims. There is no way on earth to verify the supernatural.
You Christians killed and persecuted each other for centuries over who was and was not a true Christian.
Dr2xFour says
THX 1138 a mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste.
I am praying silently for you now.
You are added to my daily prayer list.
This is my silent prayer for you…
Heavenly Father reveal
your true majesty, your love and light to this dark heart. In your most Holy name I pray.
THX 1138 says
Awesome, I’m waiting. Objectivism is a philosophy dedicated to discovering the FACTS OF REALITY beginning by using our natural human senses. We gather the evidence provided by our sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell and from there we use reason and logic to connect the dots of reality provided by our natural senses in a coherent, NON-CONTRADICTORY, way.
It’s one thing to believe in an Almighty Heavenly Father, it’s a whole other thing to swallow the mythology of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, line, hook, and sinker. Let your Heavenly Father reveal himself to my senses and reasoning mind. I’m waiting.
“Let me know you’re up there, Ole Timer! Let me know you’re up there. Come on. Love me, hate me, kill me, anything. Just let me know it….
[He looks around]
I’m just standin’ in the rain talkin’ to myself.” – Cool Hand Luke
WJ says
Therefore has He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardens. You will say then to me, why does He yet find fault? for who has resisted His will? No but, O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why have you made me this way? Has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel to honor, and another to dishonor? Romans 9:18-21
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for what a man sows, that shall he also reap. Galatians 6:7
Kit_Jefferson says
What has been lost, first and foremost, is common decency.
Spurwing Plover says
In the UK a woman was arrested for praying near Abortion Center if this shows any signs of socialism were seeing socialism for what its all about
Jason P says
Mark talks about the belief in God. Rarely do I ask a religious person about their belief in God. I’m more interested in what they believe God wants them to do? Wage jihad? Become a pacifist? Or SJW a la Pope Francis?
Religious conservatives worry about something similar about those who abandon God. What do they want in society? A rights-respecting regime found in our liberal tradition going back to the Greco-Roman philosophers such as Cicero and culminating in the philosophy of John Locke? Or a welfare-dependency, a paternalistic tradition found in both secular and religious writings?
Reason fixes ethics in reality. Subjectivism leaves everything open. That includes both religious faith and secular subjectivism. Unless you’re lucky and pick the right authority (religious or secular), absorb a virtuous disposition from one’s parents, or just luck-out, emotions (or mere faith) that rejects reason leave one blind and adrift.
In the age of jihad, the belief that religion will be a panacea doesn’t have much pull … perhaps that’s why many have wondered … which religion, how can I tell, does any of it make sense?
THX 1138 says
I cannot tell who is a true Christian and who is not. I cannot tell who is a true Jew and who is not. I cannot tell who is a true Muslim and who is not. I cannot tell who is a true Hindu and who is not. I cannot tell who is a true Buddhist and who is not. NO ONE CAN. Not even other co-religionists. No one can read minds or hearts. And who is to define what a true Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Muslim really is?
I cannot tell who is a true Objectivist and who is not just because they say they’re a true Objectivist.
I cannot tell who is a true honest person just because they say they believe in true honesty.
But I will tell you what I CAN tell — who is ACTING peacefully and respecting the Bill Of Rights — and who is not. And if peaceful, rational, benevolent, social, co-existence and the pursuit of happiness on earth within a social context is our goal, then what crucially matters is how people ACT.
What religion or philosophy people say they believe in is only meaningful in relation to their ACTIONS. Actions speak louder than words.
370H55V I/me/mine says
Christianity in decline in the US and Europe, but not elsewhere:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Next-Christendom%3A-The-Coming-of-Global-Jenkins./34395b8ee50596e8c000a4955bfb90716e7a343f
J. Keith Reese says
But, but, but, we were told that Trump and conservatives are fascists?
Walter Sieruk says
One reason that “Christianity has been in decline for some time in America and Europe,” is because there so many mainline churches who’s ministers no longer know or understand the Bible and likewise don’t read from it to their congregations or give Bible based sermons . Instead they preach to their assembly a sermon based more on human philosophy or even Sigmund Freud concepts with a few Bible precepts sprinkled on it. Some of them , at most tell a Bible story but not directly read from the Bible with little to not genuine Christian understand of it.
So its no wonder that so many people of America and Europe have lost belief and faith in the one true God of the Bible.
Spurwing Plover says
When they replace God with False Gods and False religions we see that all the time like in Southern California where they erected a idol to the Aztecs Quetzalcoatl the serpent god whom the bloodthirsty Aztecs sacrificed people to by ripping their hearts out
Ken says
Does this woman have the legal right to stand silently on the sidewalk? If she does, then she has been falsely arrested, and there should be consequences for the authorities. If not then she may be dealt with according to the law.