Christianity Redux?

From: Alan Patrick (a.patrick@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue 26 Apr 2005 - 09:15:19 GMT

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    Seems that the US is now experiencing the same rapid drop in Christianity
    "market share" as happened in W Europe & Canada c 10 years ago....prods some questions in my mind:

    (i) Why is the Western world starting to abandon the "Christainity" memeset so rapidly now
    (ii) Why is the US noticeably later than the rest
    (iii)Why, as the US is dropping the religion, is the impact of the evangelical right (who apparently have stayed a constant c 9% of population over last 20 years odd) rising so rapidly?

    I have no firm answers, but I think understanding the issues for this memeset would be educational. My initial hypothesis would be that:

    (i) Overall, Christianity has not made the leap to our post Industrial society (if anything, the fastest rise appears to be from resurrected, pre-agricultural, nature religions). I think Luther et al managed to move it into the Age of Reason, but as yet there has been no real movement now - unless evangelicals/fundamentalists are the response (I suspect not, I think its a a reaction to the falloff in numbers)?

    (ii) The US by implication is a more rigid society memetically than Europe, in terms of social memes anyway....or maybe US Christianity memes attached themselves more tightly to the industrial/capitalist memes in the US and it has taken longer to prize them apart?

    (iii) As mentioned above, as the overall religion loses ground the fundamentalists become more active, to the extent (in my perception) of seizing political power - maybe its a major meme's attempt at survival when long term decline beckons - iirc quite frequently political power is fairly often seized by groups who are losing overall market share?

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