That old time religion's time is past!

Since we have been on a bit of a religious kick for the last few articles I thought you might be interested in this piece that was in the "Religious News Blog" today!

When it comes to religion, the USA is now the land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

Conducted between February and November of last year, ARIS 2008 is the third in a landmark series of large, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults in the 48 contiguous states conducted by Kosmin and Ariela Keysar.

Employing the same research methodology as the 1990 and 2001 surveys, ARIS 2008 questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish. With a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent, it provides the only complete portrait of how contemporary Americans identify themselves religiously, and how that self-identification has changed over the past generation.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today.

It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

By the same token, Theism is also losing prevalence in Europe in favour of Atheism, and religion losing prevalence in favor of secularism.

European countries have experienced a decline in church attendance, as well as a decline in the number of people professing a belief in a god.

The Eurobarometer Poll 2005 found that, on average, 52% of the citizens of EU member states state that they believe in a god, 27% believe there is some sort of spirit or life Force while 18% do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god or Life Force.

3% declined to answer. (It's believed that most of these were Frenchmen!)

“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ” says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

Among the key findings in the 2008 U.S. survey:

• So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, “the challenge to Christianity … does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,” the report concludes.

• Catholic strongholds in New England and the Midwest have faded as immigrants, retirees and young job-seekers have moved to the Sun Belt. While bishops from the Midwest to Massachusetts close down or consolidate historic parishes, those in the South are scrambling to serve increasing numbers of worshipers.

• Baptists, 15.8% of those surveyed, are down from 19.3% in 1990. Mainline Protestant denominations, once socially dominant, have seen sharp declines: The percentage of Methodists, for example, dropped from 8% to 5%.

• The percentage of those who choose a generic label, calling themselves simply Christian, Protestant, non-denominational, evangelical or “born again,” was 14.2%, about the same as in 1990.

• Jewish numbers showed a steady decline, from 1.8% in 1990 to 1.2% today. The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6%. Analysts within both groups suggest those numbers understate the groups’ populations.

Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky-Lexington, says that most national telephone surveys such as ARIS undercount Muslims, and that he is conducting a study of mosques’ membership sponsored by the Hartford (Conn.) Institute for Religious Research.

Meanwhile, some Jewish surveys that report larger numbers of Jews also include “cultural” Jews — those who connect to Judiasm through its traditions, but not necessarily through actively practicing the religion. Meanwhile, nearly 2.8 million people now identify with dozens of new religious movements, calling themselves Wiccan, pagan or “Spiritualist,” which the survey does not define.

Wicca, a contemporary form of paganism that includes goddess worship and reverence for nature, has even made its way to Arlington National Cemetery, where the Pentagon now allows Wiccans’ five-pointed-star symbol to be used on veterans’ gravestones.

(The "Church of Allan" just to give you a good comparison, has had NO declines, but rather, has seen it's membership increase from 4 to 6 people in the last few years! So, if you want to join, send in your donation!)

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-Interesting. Maybe a lot of people are like me, they got tired of the mean people in churches. Some of the meanest people I ever met called themselves christians. They were nice as long as you agreed with them, but watch the mean come out when you dare to disagree with them. I separated myself from them. I always thought God was supposed to be a God of Love. Wonder what happened?
Nice article.
Lee P

-I have never liked organised religion, I saw, from an early age, that the majority of the parishioners were something else than what they protrayed entirely. i went to church, with my parents, every Sunday and all I got from it was a sore bum from sitting on the hard benches! When I reached the age of reason and no longer had to attend I finally could explore my own mind, heart and soul and create a belief system that worked for me. I continue to learn all different forms of understanding the Universe and, though I wouldn't call it searching I have found what satisfies me. Organising anything is cultish and I don't think such a personal thing as understanding should really be broadcast around. Relifion, like going to the toilet, is a private ritual for me!
Georgiana S

-An excellent overview of religion in the U.S. The same is true worldwide. Voodoo, like any religion that is thousands of years old is bound to lose membership because of declining relevancy.
Thomas Millington,

-The Baha'i Faith, the most recent independent, divinely revealed religion, grew, in the U.S. as follows: 1900 - 2,800 members; 1970 - 138,000 members; 1995 - 300,000 members; 2000 - 753,423 members.
Thomas Millington

Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know......!) and is available as an E-Book H E R E ! and as a paperback H E R E !

Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com