Have you heard the good news from Richard Dawkins? There is no God. If you already knew that, or suspected in the recesses of your frail but wondrous human mind (admit it!), we have more news to make even the most hardened half-man, half-ape atheist stop raping virgin teenage America on the sidewalk long enough to crack a smile. More young people are trending away from self-identifying as Christian and organized religion in general.
One reason that Christianity’s image is changing is due to the shifting faith allegiances of Americans. Simply put, each new generation has a larger share of people who are not Christians (that is, atheists, agnostics, people associated with another faith, or those who have essentially no faith orientation). The new book refers to this group as “outsiders” because they are describing what Christianity looks like from an outsider’s perspective. Among adults over the age of 40, only about one-quarter qualify as outsiders, while among the 16 to 29 segment, two-fifths are outsiders. This represents a significant migration away from the dominant role that Christianity has had in America.
Evangelicals in particular are about as popular as George W. Bush is to the average Iraqi, garnering a 3% favorability rating among 16-to 29-year-old non-Christians. If that statistic is to be believed, having your by-proxy politicians desecrate everything that’s good about American, acting shamelessly hypocritical and condemning everyone outside your moral orthodoxy doesn’t win over many friends.
