from Sean's thread on leaving Afghanistan, since it applies here as well;

Paradigm shift
Much of the world's problems can be traced to our top down moral model of viewing good and bad as some overarching meta-conflict. but the attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental is the primordial biological binary code on which all our thought processes are based. Amoebae distinguish between good and bad. We are just very complex manifestations of that basic impulse. Idealizing good vs. bad creates a brittle linear morality, where if a little of something is good, than a lot must be that much better and anything at all bad, is all bad. There is no conceptual valuation of reciprocity, reaction, balance, laws of unintended consequences, etc. This complexity is usually derided as moral relativism and everyone must chose sides. The logical flaw with the absolute as moral determinant is that the absolute is basis, not apex. It is the neutral state, not the singular set. A spiritual absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. Remember that it was the polytheists who invented democracy, because multiple gods had to compromise, while the monotheists gave us the divine right of kings as the chosen authority. As much as we admire and desire ideals, they don’t hold up logically and tend to congeal into idols. Between black and white are not just shades of grey, but all the colors of the spectrum.
This isn’t to say a top down perspective isn’t valid in many contexts, but it is relative effect, not primary cause. The crust that is shed when it is no longer useful. Now the only moral contrast is between a intellectually stagnant monotheism and and a spiritually rootless, reductionistic atheism. A bottom up spiritual paradigm would undermine the authoritarian structures laying claim to our lives.

..on things to fear, out there in Wingnutland...

Be afraid of the scary brown man
Be afraid of Gays teaching your children immorality
Be afraid of the guvmint coming to take your (insert noun here).
Be afraid of the liberals doing what conservatives have been doing for the past decade.
Be afraid of what might be in your water, food, air, etc...
Be afraid that Obama's gonna give the nation over to the Ay-Rab, Mooslim, Rag-heads.
Be afraid that there are fewer self-identified Christians saying so to the Press.

So much to fear, so few brain-cells....

-5.75,-4.05
"God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." -- Robin Williams

:)

The Beatitudes sum up christ's teachings. The book of revelations (the stick), is an abomination.

Not the "wrath of god", Jehovah is a wrathful angry, intolerant, petulant (in Job) God, with hate filled dogma, smite this, slay that, from the fundamentalists, who appear only to use the words "Jesus Christ" or quotes from Revelations from the New Testament.

As for their prayers, pure blasphemy "Our Lord Jesus Christ" indeed. Christ would be appalled. Here's Christ’s prayer (King James' English:

Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil:
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever.
Amen.

Matthew 6:9-13 - Jesus

I think you are dead on in terms of the "threat" to the nation if we abandon adherence to religious identification. It would be quite an interesting study to have questions on compassion added to the religious identification survey. "Who is my true family?" -- would the affiliated by more compassionate than the non affiliated? I doubt it.

The strength of identification is based, to some degree on fervency of belief. The hard line factions of American Christianity have gained members and whipped up fervency through hate of "the other." That works for a while, but when you have best selling series on Jesus portrayed as Rambo slaughtering people, only the totally ignorant fail to get that message.

The inter generational transmission of identification is problematic also. Children of the fervent may not, frequently do not share the hatred needed to push fervent adherence. Theres a great deal of tolerance among teens and 20 somethings. It's not studied, it's just there. Who will they hate? Do they even want to define themselves by who they hate. Not this new generation.

I suspect that the next round of surveys will show a greater drop off among the larger religions and, at that point, nobody will even care. We'll be dealing with much larger problems. Maybe the drop off in fervency will create a rational population intelligent enough to deal with those problems.

..at least in the northeast, along with the conservative politics it was entwined with.

But Christianity has many threads. In the not so distant past, a more dominant thread was based on Matthew 25, the Beatitudes, and caring for your neighbor - completely opposite of the conservative view. As Eugene Debbs (a famous socialist from the 1930s) once put it, his politics were entirely based on the Beatitudes.

And so, what I see going on, is a period of confusion, as a once dominant worldview is discredited, along with the potential for Christianity to be reborn embracing a more generous and holistic view of humanity. The hardline, conservative thread has hopefully had its day. Christianity has always adapted to the circumstances it has found itself in.

"People are leaving the churches in droves — and going back to God."

it became a political party. I would agree with others that it is not that people are all becoming atheists, but that now becoming a Christian means becoming a Republican. It is a political decision, not a spiritual one. It is a statement of how you are going to vote, not how you are going to worship.

I used to joke that I could not become a Christian because I couldn't accept George W Bush as my personal savior. Obviously it's an exaggeration, but I think the point the joke makes is very real. During the bush years the political bond was cemented Christian = Republican hardliner. Christian "values" became pre-emptive war, corporate/market deregulation in the extreme, fierce anti-choice sentiments, and a strong pro-death penalty stance. If a more moderate Christian church stated opposition to these hard line positions, they were branded traitors and shouted out of the debate.

No wonder they started scaring off people.

And the people who have fogged up that distinction, on purpose, in the quest for political power and wealth are the ones who are to blame. I'm talking about Tom Delay, who never went to church until he realized it was sitting duck market for voters, (and in fact didn't go to church that much, either after he started wooing them) and other "Christians of Convenience." The church could marshal up soldiers of pamphleteers and voters, all who would blindly follow orders, a point not lost on people like Dick Cheney (that bastion of religiosity!). What a politician's dream come true!

The Newsweek article notes the shift away from hard-core conservative Christianity in the Northeast. This also is a direct result of the "Southern Strategy" used by the GOP since the 1970s. Notice it isn't called the "NewYork Strategy", and there's a reason for that.

The Newsweek author also lauds what he says is a good trend, and that is that people are returning to a preference for keeping their personal worship practice out of politics.

Christians didn't leave God. They just got tired of being used by the "leaders" they were told to follow.

The question Conservative Christians leaders should be asking themselves is not how they can bring their people back to the failed "Southern Strategy", but how they can return to a more authentic form of religion to offer their people.

personally, I think that Christianity is dying; I see churches closing their doors around me. some of the mega-churches, of course, are growing but then that takes "local churches" away.

the church we all go to is America; as far as I can tell, its myth hasn't died yet. some people are worried that Obama will sell our dream at the G20 and the have/have not problem will keep getting bigger.

The religion of which we are speaking is called "normative religion." Normative religions are characterized by norms or rules regulating doctrine, ritual and observance, i.e., dogmas, rubrics, and codes of conduct. These rules are man-made, and they arise from a variety of reasons, mostly cultural and social.

In contrast to the teaching of normative religions, the mystics of all tradtions, as well as those who claim to be universal, testify that genuine spirituality is not normative and externally directed, but rather personal and inwardly directed.

There is no general rule or method applicable to all who aspire to realize God. Every man must work out his own salvation, and must choose his own method, although his choice is mostly determined by the total effect of the mind impressions (sanskaras) acquired in previous lives. He should be guided by the creed of his conscience, and follow the method that best suits his spiritual tendency, his physical aptitude and his external circumstances. Truth is One, but the approach to it is essentially individual. The Sufis say, 'There are as many ways to God as there are souls of men.'

Meher Baba, God Speaks, Walnut Creek, CA: Sufism Reoriented, 1973, 2nd Edition, Supl. 2, p. 206.

As Jesus is reported to have said in The Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus said: If any say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the heavens,' then the birds will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the deep,' then the fish will precede you. But the kingdom is of the inner and of the outer. If you will come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know who you are, you are in poverty and you are that poverty.

The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 3

Jesus saw some infants being nursed. He said to his disciples, “These little children nursing are like unto the kingdom of heaven.” They said to him, “(Then) will we enter the kingdom by being as little children?” Jesus said to them, “When you make the two one, and the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner, and the above as the below, and when you make the male and the female to be one and the same, so the male be not male nor the female, female....

The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 22

Quotes from CoreSpirituality.com.

"God" is a word. Words are tricky. One is tempted to think of "God" has having a referent in the way that "Socrates" refers to a historical personage or the way that "chair" refers to the concept chair, which is instantiated by many members of a particular set of things. This is the label function of meaning, where a word functions as a name to denote a persons or things or as as a concept to denote classes of things or classes of classes.

Generally speaking, normative religions that are theistic conceive of God as a person, using the anthropomorphic analogy of a human being. While there is a certain value in this, it also leads to a whole lot of confusion and theological nonsense when pushed to far, as it often is.

Words (signs) have many other uses as symbols. For example, an arrow may signify an instruction to proceed in a particular direction. Mystics use the term "God" more as a sign that functions like an arrow pointing inward. The notion of God used by mystics is an instruction: Look within if you want to discover what I talking about. This cannot be captured in words but has to be experienced."

Buddhism is especially insistent on this, and as a result Buddhism is often inaccurately pictured as atheistic or at least agnostic, whereas it is mystical in the sense of experiential. Every wisdom tradition has a similar mystical teaching at its core, even the normative religions — Qabalah in Judaism, the Way of Jesus in Christianity and Sufism. All of these can also be viewed and practiced universally, independently of normative Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In ancient times, spirituality was propagated across generations through story (Greek mythos). These stories were designed to fascinate the young, inspire those maturing to seek the inner meaning, and enlighten the mature who had discovered the inner meaning. They were not taken to be explanations in the literal sense but as symbols of transcendental truths that are only revealed through development of supramental faculties.

Modern psychology is now coming to appreciate this ancient testimony and teaching. C. G. Jung was one of the first to set this forth, along with William James. Recently, that investigation has been renewed by transpersonal psychologists.

This study of traditional wisdom is showing that the ancients were prescient in suggesting the most fruitful analogy (model) for approaching metaphysical study is consciousness, because everyone experiences their awareness as non-localized. Moreover, meditative practices show that a fourth state of "pure consciousness" is a possible experience, in addition to waking dreaming and sleep, as the ancients said.

The state of pure consciousness is reported as one of non-duality, i.e., the duality of subject and object are transcended. It is reported as a state of unboundedness and fulfillment. This experience gives a taste of what the mystics might be pointing to when they use God-talk.

Of course, those who adhere to literal interpretation of normative religion denounce this as heretical because it violates the norms. Therefore, the mystics of such religions, e.g., Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, often used ambiguous testimony. People who stepped over the line often met with persecution — Spinoza, Meister Eckhart, and Al Hallaj. However, the testimony in many other traditions — Vedanta, Buddhism, and Taoism, for example, is quite explicit.

This is not yet well known in the West and as a consequence there is a lot of controversy raging. But Buddhism is one of the fastest growing traditions in the West at present, and there is growing interest in other Eastern traditions as well, especially Advaita Vedanta and Taoism. This has sparked renewed interest in the mystical teachings at the core of Judaism in Qabalah, in Christianity as the Way of Jesus, and in Islam as Sufism.

Paraphrasing what Jesus reportedly said, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead. Come, follow me." Unfortunately, normative Christianity has for the most part lost its way, and most normative Christian sects are zombies, having vacated the spirit.

...American Religious Identification Survey, 2008 [prime mover of the article] can be downloaded here: pdf.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass