Between the New Year and Easter, you can count on two things: the Christian liturgical season of Lent and the Pew Research Center publishing their annual national religious poll. For the legion of political junkies, there can never be too many polls. But some numbers are more significant societal gauges than others.
Pew’s annual religious poll is one of them and it discloses plenty.
According to Pew, 28% of Americans say they are atheists, agnostics, or nothing in particular. With its steady growth, the group has been labeled: “nones.” Not to be confused with nuns those Catholic religious women who have dedicated their lives to Christ and His Church who wear traditional habits or the liberal ones with their unsightly pantsuits. In my youth, nuns wearing habits were the norm where today one wearing a pantsuit seems heretical.
Provided nones were a religious denomination, they would be the largest in the country and their numbers are growing. In 1972, the General Social Survey found that five percent of Americans considered themselves nones. In 2007, it was 16%.
So much for the efforts of the Catholic Church’s “New Evangelization.”
Just who are these nones?
They are overwhelmingly young and white who vote Democrat. Most have college degrees proving again how academia is overrun with Marxists who have conquered. It seems not too many served as Marine or Army grunts. However, I bet they love having Col. Nathan Jessup on that wall even though they loathe all that he represents when he is throwing a few back at the Gitmo O-club.
The survey discovered “by a variety of measures, religious ‘nones’ are less civically engaged and socially connected than people who identify with a religion.” Moreover, “they are less likely to have volunteered, less satisfied with their local communities and less satisfied with their social lives.”
Democratic societies depend on vibrant institutions like family, church and voluntary social organizations that serve as an intermediary between the individual and the state.
There was no data on how much complaining they do but chances are the percentage is high.
A September Gallup poll revealed 47% of Americans identify as “religious,” while 33% describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” It is a New Age creed – an umbrella term for contemporary Paganism – where adherents worship nature and themselves.
The spiritual, but not religious crowd favors the secular sacraments of diversity, equity, and inclusion for its social and cultural acceptance rather than the sacraments of the Church. Their self-serving credo accepts abortion, transgenderism and homosexuality as being tolerant – the left’s greatest virtue.
Being religious, rather than spiritual, means conforming one’s life to the truth and rejecting what society accepts as “naughty, but nice.” It is where the eternal outweighs everything else.
Both polls correspond with the steady decline in belief in God that lends itself to declining religious service attendance and church membership.
Barack Obama was right about one thing: We are no longer a Christian nation. He left out the part about how such a path only leads to ruin. Obama referred to it as “fundamentally transforming.”
Such a transformation is easy to find as any internet search will not take much time:
The First Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether a public middle school can ban a student from wearing a T-shirt saying, “There are only two genders.” The Massachusetts school encouraged students to wear shirts with pro-LGBTQ messages during a school-imposed Pride week.
The Air Force Academy featured a transgender officer at a recent leadership conference. During my service days, I was unfamiliar with the term: transgender. Today, the Pentagon tells us how transgenders not only improve our military leadership but increases morale.
Bloomington, Indiana, has renamed Good Friday “Spring Holiday,” while Columbus Day is recognized as “Fall Holiday.”
Despite the 5.6 million preborn lives lost to the abortion pill, the FDA wants children to have access. The FDA approved the chemical abortion pills that teens can now obtain at any pharmacy with a prescription from their school nurse. In many states, this happens without parental consent.
Given these headlines perhaps these poll numbers are much greater than advertised.
Does this read like a nation heading in the right direction?
