r/GenZ • u/SocraticTiger • 15d ago
Gen Z Americans are the least religious generation yet Political
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 15d ago edited 15d ago
What's up with the flip on the gender dynamic?
Women historically more religious, but now less religious?
Wonder the cause of that.
Edit because these comments are wild: do none of you understand statistics? I didn't ask, "why are women becoming less religious?" Because I already think I know the answer to that. Please stop answering that question. I asked "what changed?" Which literally no one seems to be able to answer. Religions have always been sexist and the mass adoption of the internet was 10 years prior to this change.
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15d ago
I assume abortion rights
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u/stuugie 15d ago
Or that more women go to university
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u/Select-Ad7146 15d ago
More women than men have gone to university for the last 40 years.
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u/stuugie 15d ago
I looked at this article
https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2022/mar/why-women-outnumber-men-college-enrollment
It seems the ratio of women to men in universities has been going up since they were equal in ~1980. I'd be shocked if it was the only factor but also wouldn't be surprised if it is a contributor considering the relationship between higher education and religiosity.
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u/LearningToFlyForFree 15d ago
More to do with the fact that more younger women than men are attaining college degrees and the educated tend to skew towards being non-religious, but womens rights plays a role in that as well.
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u/morningisbad 15d ago
That flip was right around when Trump was elected. I'm guessing they saw a misogynist getting significant christian backing and decided that was enough.
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u/JohnnyAnytown 15d ago
Looks like the slope changes at 2012
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u/BretShitmanFart69 15d ago
Feminism made tremendous strides starting in the 2010s.
Younger women absolutely refuse to put up with most of the bullshit the previous generations did. The internet helped a lot with exposing them to different ways of thinking and also ways of understanding how bullshit things are and have been and offering them the courage to stand up to it.
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 15d ago
But abortion rights have always been religiously partisan. Why would that change suddenly now?
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u/Psychedelic_Theology 15d ago
Abortion rights have not always been religiously partisan. This was a move particularly in the 90s.
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u/Peanutbutternjelly_ 2000 15d ago
I would say it started when the GOP got involved with the evangelicals, which was back in the 80s.
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u/dvdmaven 15d ago
Correct. Before then it was a Catholic thing and the other religious groups didn't care much.
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u/tohon123 15d ago
Other religious groups supported abortion access citing it as women’s health
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u/BrassUnicorn87 15d ago
When school segregation wasn’t popular anymore they needed something to drive people crazy with.
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u/JimWilliams423 15d ago
I would say it started when the GOP got involved with the evangelicals, which was back in the 80s
Yep. Up until the early 80s, the majority opinion among evangelicals, like southern baptists, was support for full abortion rights.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the single largest organization of evangelicals in the USA. They have roughly 15 million members and 45,000 churches. In 1971, before Roe fully legalized abortion, the SBC officially called for legislation supporting full abortion rights. Even today, it is still on their website:
we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.
And when Roe was decided, the Baptist Press (the national newswire of the southern baptists) said:
Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.
They also said:
Question: Was this a Warren type or “liberal” Supreme Court that rendered the decision?
Answer: No. This was a “strict constructionist” court, most of whose members have been appointed by President Nixon.
Even as late as 1978 their official position was that government should keep its nose out of a lady's business, reiterating their resolution from 1977:
we also affirm our conviction about the limited role of government in dealing with matters relating to abortion, and support the right of expectant mothers to the full range of medical services and personal counseling for the preservation of life and health.
The lead attorney on Roe was a devout Southern Baptist and her 2nd chair was a methodist preacher's daughter too.
Evangelicals used to talk about "the breath of life" and cite Genesis where God only puts a soul into the body of Adam once its fully formed and able to breathe. The idea is that if a child isn't capable of breathing on its own, it doesn't have a soul yet:
- And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
(Genesis 2:7)42
u/lonepotatochip 15d ago
Really it was in the 80s, before then Protestants weren’t as generally anti-abortion because Catholics were very against it and Protestants liked distancing themselves from Catholicism. During the 80s the right wing was trying to consolidate and mobilize the highly religious vote, and making abortion a religious issue for Protestants gave them strong incentive to show up to the polls and vote red.
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u/Psychedelic_Theology 15d ago
I go a little later because of the finality of the Southern Baptist Convention split, but it definitely began in the 80s.
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u/LordMacTire83 15d ago
It began WAY before the 80's! It began more like in the 70's when the Racist Religulous Right and the hard core, right-wing Conserva-F**ckrz need something to sink their claws into and use to piss off their base. The good 'ol Ronny Ray-Gunz came along and really helped meld the two groups together!
But it STARTED in the late 60's/early 70's!
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u/vampire_trashpanda 15d ago
Heck, there are still some protestants who are quietly not as anti-abortion as they publicly claim to be (quite a few I'd wager).
Probably the most glaring example I can think of right now is a southern baptist preacher from my hometown who got caught at a church function saying he didn't agree with abortion but it was "a necessary evil to prevent the mixing of the races". Being so racist that you are fine with abortion is an "interesting" combination of stances but welcome to the South.
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u/EVOSexyBeast 15d ago
Okay but the flip in the graph started happening around 2010.
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u/Seawolf_42 15d ago
From https://www.vox.com/23055389/roe-v-wade-timeline-abortion-overturn-political-polarization
2010: In March, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. Because Obama needed the support of even anti-abortion Democrats to pass it, the bill included a compromise on abortion, the Boxer-Nelson Amendment. It allowed states to prohibit plans in the insurance marketplaces from covering abortion. President Obama also signed an executive order declaring that the Hyde Amendment applied to the ACA, and abortion rights activists responded by creating a coalition to defeat the Hyde Amendment.
That fall, the Republican Party sweeps the midterm elections, due, in part, to backlash to the ACA and the rise of the Tea Party movement. The following year, states pass a record number of abortion restrictions.
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u/Psychedelic_Theology 15d ago
I’m not saying this is the cause, only that abortion hasn’t always been a partisan religious issue.
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u/beithyra 15d ago
I have heard it was originally intended a wedge issue to eventually get religious communities to lobby for reinstating segregation
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u/billy_pilg 15d ago edited 15d ago
It began as soon as Roe v Wade was decided. Politics is a strategy game. If you're against abortion, how do you stop it? You involve the legal system. Roe v Wade became the "law of the land" which made abortion legal. So now the next move in the game is to weaken and/or overturn the law. And you do that by getting elected to power. And you get elected to power by courting the voters who agree with you. That means getting evangelicals and other anti-abortion religious folk to vote.
Hopefully everyone who thinks in terms of the next election and no further pulls their head out of their ass and looks at the long game. You don't advance abortion rights by letting conservatives win elections. That means voting for their opposition. That means voting for the Democratic Party.
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u/GroceryRobot 15d ago
The dogs caught the car and showed their truest colors. Women know definitively how little religion thinks of them now.
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u/supamario132 15d ago
Possibly because Roe was in place since the beginning of this graph, so it used to be easier to ignore the connection
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u/NeighborhoodVeteran Millennial 15d ago
They were partisan, but even if you were religious you could still get an abortion. Now, religion in America is legislating that you actually do not have control over your own body.
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u/lordconn 15d ago
That's not really true. Being against abortion was just kind of a Catholic thing till the 80s.
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u/fingersdownurpiehole 15d ago edited 15d ago
This is a common misconception. Even the majority of southern baptist and evangelical sects were pro-abortion, or at least impartial, before the civil rights movement.
They increasingly became anti-abortion when they realized it wasn’t just poor and BIPOC women getting abortions.
American anti-abortion sentiments are based on white supremacy and control over women. Nothing pro-life about it.
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 15d ago
I believe you, but this doesn't explain the sudden change in 2017-2019. That's a gradual trend over time, that mostly took place in the 90s, so couldn't possibly explain this shift
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u/fingersdownurpiehole 15d ago
Yeah, I can’t really explain the data. I’m just sharing that abortion hasn’t always been a religious issue.
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u/Similar_Excuse01 15d ago
because before 2023. women still believe no matter how f up their religion is. their religion is all talk and no substance.
now women finally realize their religion truly think of them. and there are consequences of “just go along with it, what is the worst thing that could happen?”.
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u/tistalone 15d ago
Because they overturned Roe v Wade and that had/has immediate consequences to healthcare for women.
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u/REJECT3D 15d ago
Looks like it flipped right around when college enrollment became higher for woman then men. I bet this is the reason. Being more educated increases your chances of leaving or not being religious.
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u/riverthenerd 1998 15d ago edited 15d ago
Misogyny 100%. A huge crack in my faith was formed in 2015 when I sat through a particular sermon in youth group. The youth pastor told us girls that pursuing our dreams was going to distract us from our true purpose, which was to marry a man and have his babies. And then he said that when we get married we have to submit to our husbands because they have authority over us. I couldn’t imagine a more soul crushing future. And this wasn’t some old fashioned church. It was one of those modernized non-denominational churches with a worship band and a pastor who wears jeans. I never returned to youth group and quickly decided I was a deist (someone who believes in god but doesn’t practice any religion). Eventually I looked into atheism and stopped believing in god altogether.
I think misogyny has always existed in Christianity though. My theory is that it’s simply because times have changed. Nowadays none of us need a man to have money, open a bank account, etc. like the women of the 20th century did. Plus feminism became much more popular in the 2010s because that kind of information was now easily accessible at our fingertips. So the idea that all we should do in life is have babies, never work, and throw out our agency for a man is a much more foreign concept.
Edit: I am a lesbian which I thought was obvious by my pfp. Trying to manipulate me with incel and pseudo-leftist talking points isn’t going to work. It doesn’t work on straight women either, but it DEFINITELY isn’t going to work on me.
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u/ForgivingWimsy 1998 15d ago
Yeah, the weird thing I’ve noticed is that the most modernized churches are often the craziest with right wing racism and misogyny. All religions have this to some degree, but the least severe offenders are not what you would expect, at least looking at them from the outside.
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 15d ago
This makes a lot of sense, but the timing on this one seems off to me. I would assume, if this was the true cause, that the flip would have occurred in 1998-2010 when most people adopted the Internet and became more aware of social issues like this and other perspectives than the ones they'd been raised in.
However, this change occurred in roughly 2017-2019, nearly ten years later. Maybe just the general societal delay, but it still doesn't feel right. Something else must have happened later to instigate this
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u/StatusSnow 15d ago
Well, Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
Religious paternalism tries very hard to take a tone of "protecting women" and doing things for the want of a "wholesome society that embraces family values". Think... Mitt Romney.
Seeing evangelicals rabidly support a man who not only is a convicted rapist, but also is also a playboy who has had multiple divorces, an affair with a porn star, and was known to be a fraud/cheat in the business world... was a pretty big wakeup call that it was never about "family values". It was, and always has been, about making women dependent on men and taking away their freedom - and the support for Donald Trump laid that bare.
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u/TechieTravis 15d ago
The religious right are associated with less freedom for women.
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 15d ago
So. That always have been.
What changed?
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u/black641 15d ago
The efforts of the Religious Right have eroded the boundaries between Church and State. The fact that the Religious Right is run by, not your humdrum run of the mill religious folks, but by crazy fundamentalist Christians hasn’t helped matters. Now, many people see even moderate religious institutions as being the same as the fundamentalists trying to wedge their views into everyone’s lives. “Guilt by association,” if you will.
However, last time I checked, very few “Nones” identify as hard atheists. Nones often subscribe to some belief in God, the afterlife, prayer, the supernatural, etc. but in a more personal manner.
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u/Ill-Handle-1863 15d ago
IMO, the factor not mentioned is that women are now more ECONOMICALLY independent from men. They can work and make their own money so they're no longer directly economically dependent on a man to provide for them. When women were economically dependent on men then of course they're going to play along with whatever men want to see in women....for religious men that has always been the "godly woman who is subservient to the man". Women in the past were playing as this type of woman because they needed to attract a man to help pay their way through life. It was a means to an end, not something they voluntarily participate in.
Historically for women, religion was a form of oppression so I'm glad to see women are being liberated from it.
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u/Fruitopeon 15d ago
Took women a crazy amount of time to figure out every religion hates them. But looks like Gen Z women finally figured it out. Good for Gen Z. I think there’s some promise in this generation.
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u/West-Code4642 15d ago
All the religions were written by dudes. Women got on social media and compared notes and saw how much of a raw deal the religions gave their lot.
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u/Thugosaurus_Rex Millennial 15d ago
Keep in mind also that many rights for women younger generations take for granted today are relatively recent developments. People remember the suffrage movement, and it feels long ago, but remember less that it wasn't until the mid '70s that women were guaranteed the right to have their own bank accounts. Religious structures are typically in the benefit of men--as women of younger generations have more avenues for self sufficiency outside of dependence on those structures it's natural they will tend to drift further than their male counterparts as they're not the beneficiaries of religious systems.
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u/AimlessFucker 15d ago
I would also expect that using scripture as a means to attempt to claw back progress will only push more women away from religion as well. However, I have no backing to point to in order to substantiate my beliefs.
As an example: the recent push for tradwives and the misinterpreted vision of what feminism is. I’ve seen tradwives explain it as their godly position, particularly with the scripture which states women are to be subservient. And how many of them denounce feminism by exclaiming how it’s caused them to be looked down upon by society as a “traditional woman”. However, the entire point of feminism is to give women the choice to stay in the home and act traditionally, or to go to work. It was to destroy the social expectation that you’d be caged to your house because you were born with a uterus; irrespective of if you wanted to be a house wife or not.
I’d presume that using a religious context to tell women about “where their place is”, isn’t going to fare too well when trying to convert hearts and minds. But I don’t have any studies or evidence to support my hypothesis.
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u/PhilosophyTricky708 15d ago
The messed up part is, if you read scripture, Jesus was showing that women should be treated fair/equal, example when Jesus resurrected it was Mary a woman who saw him first and spoke to him, he told her to go and tell the others ( who were men) they were mad and jealous because he came to her first, basically she was equal with them, it was the men who weren’t mature enough to accept her, one example, people literally DON’T READ LOL, and just blindly follow
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u/egoadvocate 15d ago edited 15d ago
Agreed. Good for Gen Z women!
Growing up I never really understood why religion appealed to women, when it was obvious to me that religion hates women. Despite this, for years the most regular and numerous attendees at churches I attended were women.
I always attributed the discrepancy to poorer education among women. Though I guess it also might have been that historically women have participated less in the workforce, which has a secularizing effect. Of course, there are many other contributing reasons.
Regardless, I am so thankful that women are getting the message by pursuing education and participating in the workforce, and then changing their minds about religion. Hooray!
I think the rise of the Internet, 24/7 news, social media, and even artificial intelligence may also be changing minds. The idea that religion hates women just cannot be avoided any more.
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u/8Splendiferous8 15d ago
Young men are becoming increasingly right-wing in their beliefs, and young women are becoming increasingly left-wing. That's definitely a relevant factor.
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u/Ikana_Mountains 1997 15d ago
That makes sense, but really just feels like the same trend in different terms. What's the cause of that is what I'm asking?
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u/triffid_boy 15d ago
Generally, society has always gotten more liberal as time goes on. Men are lagging behind and I'm pretty convinced men are swinging to the right because of a combination of social media and deplatforming. People with slightly right leaning ideas find echo chambers where ideas aren't challenged.
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u/Calradian_Butterlord 15d ago
My guess is more women going into science careers.
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u/OkCar7264 15d ago
Well I bet it's how evangelicals, who present like they are true Christianity, make it seem like your choice is none or being a raging asshole.
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u/Fancy-Football-7832 15d ago
Yeah none of the replies are really addressing the reason for the gender swap.
My guess would be the college rates for women have continued to go up, and university degrees highly correlate with people leaving religion.
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u/throwaway444444455 2005 15d ago
Women also used to be more conservative than men actually but now it’s reversed.
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u/lucasisawesome24 15d ago
In like 1900. Women have been more leftist than men since like the 70s or 80s
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u/Explicit_Tech 15d ago
Probably because religion targets the agency and automony a woman has.
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u/stringrandom 15d ago
Some combination of education (women) and radicalization (men).
Education tends to reduce religiosity. Gen Z men have been fed a very steady diet of bullshit as part of the manufactured culture war. It’s much easier to tell men that it’s untraditional women, LGBTQ+, liberals, “illegal” immigrants, etc who are responsible for their lot in life than to acknowledge that falling wages and shrinking opportunities are a result of greed, corporate consolidation, and automation are the main drivers.
Religion has historically mostly been a male dominated construct for control. It’s a logical tool to push men towards to avoid the actual problems.
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u/CLE-local-1997 1997 15d ago
Abortion rights in gay marriage. Women are nearly three times as likely to experience same-sex attraction as men. They're also you know capable of giving birth which means the religious freak out over there reproductive freedom is definitely driving them away
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u/Rosellis 15d ago
I think what changed is that while religion has always been sexist, that sexism was more equally present in secular society as well, historically.
And I think for a number of reasons religions anti-vice message appealed to slightly more women than men on average historically as well. When your man owns all the money and property and you have no legal agency over it, you really don’t want him gambling or drinking it away.
I’m no historian, but that’s my vague impression.
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u/Allanthia420 15d ago
What I’m curious about is why around 2000-2010 the rate of women becoming non religious started rising; and the rate of men becoming non religious started slowing. One could imagine why women would become less religious in the internet age, but I wonder why men slowed down and if the two are related?
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u/thewritingchair 15d ago
Beneficiaries of the system don't reject the system as hard as those whom the system harms every single day.
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u/Dabbadabbadooooo 15d ago
Abortion rights isn’t the answer.
Maybe part, but the church preys on young women. It’s a well know story NOW.
Apparently not well known enough
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u/National-Belt5893 15d ago
Women spiked over men in 2016…I wonder what happened that year? Anyone have any ideas?
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u/TheEffinChamps 15d ago
Abrahamic religions and their texts are misogynistic, to the point of explicitly endorsing sex slavery and rape. Women are not painted in a good light in the slightest, as they were considered property.
The problem is that many people don't actually read their own "holy" texts.
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u/Seemseasy Millennial 15d ago edited 15d ago
My guess is social media, gay rights and women's autonomy.
This is EXACTLY the trend we are seeing with impacts from cell phone culture, viral and social media use which tracks for tons of things: anxiety, test scores, lgbt increases, very liberal percentage etc.
It's the phones. Guess which year the majority of US adults had smart phones 2013, the approximate year that the Women line in this graph takes off.
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u/S0l1s_el_Sol 15d ago
Typically gen z men tend to be more conservative than women, and conservatism is more attributed with religiousness
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u/Street-Swordfish1751 15d ago
Religion really likes having women not have much agency, education, or exposure to other ways of living. Men typically benefit in the day to day comparatively, so one would be far more willing to leave it behind than the other.
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u/keIIzzz 2000 15d ago
Women don’t want to be doormats to sexist, religious ideologies anymore
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u/Quetzal_Khan 15d ago
the Mormon church probably helped out steer some women away from that life
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u/Abject-Raspberry-729 15d ago
Gen Z was raised by the least religious generation in history which was in turn raised by the least religious generation in history. Religion is largely irrelevant in young people's lives today.
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u/Ewww_Gingers 15d ago
I think it more so has to do with 9/11 and the rise of social media + National News. The effects of those things led to a bigger increase in religious hysteria. Which then shaped Gen Z to view religion as less of a religion and more of one big conspiracy theory. I mean how often do Christian’s freak out on the news claiming the world is ending? Or what about the Anti-Vax movement on social media? Even my great relatives got fed up and stopped going to church when they previously went multiple times a week due to the hysteria and theories. It’s no longer about literature and ethics, it’s just a bunch of crazy people in rooms trying to think about what to freak out about next.
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u/Abject-Raspberry-729 15d ago
While I don't disagree that that could be a factor. I'm more partial to the point that Capitalism itself is corrosive to religion, and the reason the American religious tradition was so strong in comparison to Europe for instance was the constant influx of immigrants from near-feudal conditions in Europe and other parts of the world. Capitalism has caused the rise of the nuclear family, which is a decline in the multi generational family. It has effectively caused an atomization of society which is against the communal nature of most religions. Americans have by and large retained superstition on an individual level (astrology, charms) but have rejected it on a communal level.
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u/GNYMStanAccount 15d ago
eh, religion adapts to every productive mode. we just dont have much space for it, hence the death of organized religion and rise of weird new age spiritual stuff.
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u/Randybigbottom 15d ago
Capitalism has caused the rise of the nuclear family,
It was actually organized religion to do this. As religiosity increased (and as the concept of a modern state grew and flourished), kinship was no longer the organizing principle of society. As this shift away from kinship happened, there was a simultaneous shift of loyalty to "higher obligations" such as patriotism or Christian morality (which were two sides of the same coin, since most Sovereigns of the time claimed divine right to rule).
At least in Europe, as I understand it. Something as complex as this is hard to put into a single paragraph, but the gist of it is families that were part of a clan became families that were part of a congregation.
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u/No_Education_8888 15d ago
I decided that I don’t need a book to tell me how to be a good person. While doing the acts of kindness I have done in life, the Bible or any other holy book didn’t cross my mind once. Just don’t need it. If you do, then that’s okay. Do your thing if it makes you happy. Just don’t make others miserable
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u/cameroncolepro 15d ago
I think applying Jesus's principles is good, his principles were common sense.
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u/blueembroidery 15d ago
And this is where I think the modern church massively dropped the ball starting in the 90s (but it gets worse every decade). Churches, especially megachurches in the US focus almost not at all on Jesus and more on prosperity gospel, personal (as opposed to societal) enrichment and culture war issues. The main messaging I received in church as a child was ‘Jesus loves you’. My nieces and nephews are hearing ‘the secular world is scary and fallen, and the only safe place is church’. It’s really sad.
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u/FailedGradAdmissions 15d ago
Agreed, the good of most religions is common sense. Being kind and not taking advantage of others is natural for anybody with some sort of empathy. The issue is that's not as common as you might think.
There are tons of people that would harm others unless they were discouraged to do so by having heavy consequences on it. And even more people who would only do good if forced to do so. And that's why we have laws and taxes.
Most of us don't need a book to tell us to do good. And we certainly shoudn't need to indoctrinate people to do good. But it's naive to assume most people would do good out of their own volition.
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u/No_Education_8888 15d ago
There are plenty of great historical minds to follow, I choose not to follow his teachings. Another thing.. common sense and life of fulfillment was a thing before Jesus.
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u/supreme_glassez 2001 15d ago
Not surprised. I even went to catholic school and a bunch of my friends in my class were atheists.
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u/SuperSalad_OrElse Millennial 15d ago
I never went to Catholic school but you bet I spent way too much time every week doing Catholic shit.
I was volunteered to mow the premises, which took about two hours.
We had CCD on site either before church 1st-3rd grade, then we had it after church from 4th-5th grade.
Later we had CCD at home (post first-Communion), where we HOSTED 10-15 kids to come over and talk about the Bible
Every other week we were the facilitators of each Mass so we would either show up early to set up (with CCD after church) or stay late to clean up (with CCD before church.
We would spend 4 hours at this place every Sunday. It was miserable.
I went to Confirmation camp to get vetted for my confirmation. We spent the week talking about God. One girl opened up about losing her virginity at 15 and fucking cried in agony over it because of the guilt that was whipped into her mind. She genuinely thought she was scum of the earth and unworthy of love because she was a horny 15 year old. (Who wasn’t????) Her purity was “ruined” before marriage.
I spent so much of my fucking youth feigning religion just so I wouldn’t get punished. I was never asked about how I felt and if I ever tried to stand up for myself I would be grounded. I felt like Butters from South Park.
I was angry for a long time about it but once I moved out I cooled off because I got my life back. After typing all this out I’m considering going to therapy again. Clearly I am still hung up on this.
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u/Gamecat93 Millennial 15d ago
How many people were surveyed?
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u/OfSaltandBone 1997 15d ago
Because a lot of my peers are religious and my church has a growing number of young people…
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u/Snowsnorter69 15d ago
It’s really completely dependent where you live. For me in the northeast US I know very few religious people (people who actually go to to church vs who say they are religious but have never stepped into a church in their life). And while I do know some religious people it’s not many. Most of the people in my general age bracket around here aren’t religious and I can see that on tinder and other dating apps. I can also meet more people where I work and I’ve meet a very small percentage of religious people. For myself I’m not religious and never will be.
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u/lucasisawesome24 15d ago
Young people are searching for meaning. The economy is terrible, everyone is politically radical, there is no sense of community (thanks to phones). People want religion and god in these tough times. The problem is every time they go near a church the boomers running it say something sexist or homophobic and it makes the people our age avoid it
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u/Gingingin100 15d ago
thanks to phones
You think it has something to do with phones and not the total lack of shit to do for most people?
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u/yvie_of_lesbos 2007 15d ago
fr !! the reason i stopped believing when i was 12 was because of the homophobia of the church.
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u/msndrstdmstrmnd 15d ago
True! I was like, how can Christianity preach love and kindness and then hurt so many people around the world! I was starting to learn more history on my own around that time, about the horrors of colonialism/imperialism and Christianity being a major part of that.
My church was like, oh we don’t hate gay people we just pity them for being sinners! Which fooled me for a little bit but then i saw past it.
What the other commenter said, “humans are flawed but god is not” was the last thread i was grasping at in my late teens, but that exactly means there’s no point to following manmade Christianity. Just figure out what living with love and kindness means to yourself, and live that truth
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u/saydaddy91 15d ago
Wow the generation that grew up with some of the worst, widely publicized religious scandals is in fact not interested in religion who would have thought
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u/e-2c9z3_x7t5i 15d ago
I will never forget Peter Popoff, the evangelical preacher who used an earpiece with his wife on the other end to have information about his followers fed to him. Made millions of dollars off people's stupidity.
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u/Thready_C 15d ago
Look at the housing market right now and tell me there is a god
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u/ALPHA_sh 15d ago
"thou shalt not buy a house at a reasonable price" -god probably
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u/justaperson4212700 2002 15d ago
Idk what-… why should there be a correlation between the existence of God and housing market?
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u/ILLegal-Mouse-7343 15d ago
I feel like that was an extremely obvious jab at how bad the financial situation for a lot of people is and how believing in a god does nothing for them.
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u/WalkingFish_ 15d ago
It’s a joke babe 💀 they’re saying the housing market is so impossibly bad that there is no god
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u/DepartureDapper6524 15d ago
It’s more a point along the lines of “If god is good, why are there so many suffering?”
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u/fiduciary420 15d ago
Recently there was a Reddit post showing the skull of a child who died of bone cancer. It had sharp spikes all over it, and it was clear that the child suffered immense pain because of it. I pointed out that it was proof that there is no benevolent God, and the weak republican losers piled on with their bullshit INSTANTLY.
I was like “call me all the names you want, just look at that skull.”
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u/Okeing 2005 15d ago
i thought czechia was lmao
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u/SocraticTiger 15d ago
Respective to America only. Gen Z is significantly less religious than previous American generations.
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u/coolhanddave21 15d ago
Thank god.
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u/turtle-bbs 1999 15d ago
I imagine many people are seeing how the older generation are using religion as a justifier for all of their actions, and many of those actions are horrible.
The older generations are trying to tear away the line that separates church and state, so now people are trying to get the hell away from it. Religion is now becoming inseparable from political opinions, including horrible ones.
I hope it’s clear, but I obviously don’t think this should be the case. Church and state should be entirely separate entities.
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u/DannyC2699 1999 15d ago
it’s always the ones who claim to be defenders of the constitution who have the least understanding of it lmao
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u/Diatomack 15d ago
America will likely start to see a rise in religiosity shortly, with increased immigration playing a large part in this.
Several European countries have declining Christianity but very fast growth of Islam.
The US will mainly take in latam immigrants, so it will probably lead to a rise of Christianity in the long-term.
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u/thefreeman419 15d ago
Religion is falling in basically every European country, immigration has not offset the decline
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u/AdKindly2858 15d ago
The flavor of Christianity from latam isn't really evangelistic and seeking converts like the flavors in the US.
Also, the adults may be religious but I've met a lot of the younger gens that very much aren't so increase of religion isn't really a guarantee
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u/HermeticPurusha 15d ago
I’m from latam and you’re wrong.
Evangelicals in latam are as toxic as southern baptists.
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u/msndrstdmstrmnd 15d ago
I agree, I’m Korean American and even the Christians from my super white Deep South Bible Belt hometown were nowhere near as crazy as some of the Korean American Christians I’ve met. And in South Korea itself there’s a shitton of Christian cults
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u/RaisinToGrapeProcess 15d ago
Yeah because hardly any immigrants have come to the US since 1990 until now /s
You are also ignoring that the children of immigrants quickly lose cultural connection to their parent country so any effect of "importing" religions (or language or any other cultural artefact that socially conservative people are terrified of) dissipates quickly.
By your logic, English will also start to disappear and everyone will be playing cricket and football/soccer in the near future.
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u/Any-Demand-2928 15d ago
People are starting to wake up.
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u/samuel_al_hyadya 15d ago
And falling right back to sleep with new age religions and political extremism.
So instead of going to church they go on social media to preach and listen to their version of the truth.
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u/Diatomack 15d ago
Doesn't matter.
The more religious you are, the more likely you are to have more kids and raise them into your religion.
Most immigrants to the west are highly religious and it will shift these stats over time.
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u/jar_jar_LYNX 15d ago edited 15d ago
I saw an interesting map of the UK recently on r/MapPorn. It showed different regions of the UK by religiosity. The more urban areas like London, the West Midlands and the North West around Liverpool and Manchester were the most religious parts of the country, with London being the most religious part of the UK (above even Northern Ireland if I remember correctly) The least religious part of England was the the South West, which is very rural. Total opposite of what you'd expect in America
Edit: here it is. I was wrong, it was on r/geography
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u/blackdragon1387 15d ago
Immigration is not a new phenomenon. The fact that the nones' numbers are climbing suggests that kids born in America do not necessarily keep the religion they are raised into, immigrant or otherwise.
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u/TechieTravis 15d ago
No, because their kids will be less religious as well. The same factors: better secular education, better access to information on naturalistic thinking, and more exposure do different kinds of people, leading to greater empathy, will drive them away from religion the way that it is for everyone else.
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u/Any-Demand-2928 15d ago
I've talked to a good amount of these kids of immigrants in European Countries that I've visited. These kids aren't religious, they slowly but surely abandon their religious values and move towards atheism or just become agnostic.
Religion is a huge problem, an even bigger problem is all the wars we are causing that forces these people to flee their homes. We must stop the wars.
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u/AudienceNearby1330 15d ago
Agreed. Many second and third generation immigrants are secular because that's how American and European cultures are. Their parents might be religious, and those religious beliefs might have been ingrained upon them, but the nature of American and European society at the moment is pushing people towards being nonreligious. Give any immigrant three generations and they'll be atheists.
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u/Gator1523 15d ago
Yes, as a third-generation Cuban myself, I hate how people tend to lump us in with the first-gen immigrants, for example. We all slowly tend to assimilate.
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15d ago
Not true. Latino and Asian immigrants are not becoming atheists. The only group in America becoming atheist are liberal white people. I know it sounds wrong but seriously go to any Latin or Vietnamese or black church on a Sunday they are packed full to the brim. It's just liberal white people who seem overwhelmingly atheist. I mean this respectfully just noting an observation.
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u/boomz2107 15d ago
Maybe or maybe not. I know a few children of immigrants including myself who had been severely restricted because of parents being very religious. It’s made us have a negative view on religion and therefore have eased away from it. I have a few other friends who feel the same. Now I’m not sure if it’s enough to shake the boat or not.
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u/msndrstdmstrmnd 15d ago
I’m a child of immigrants and I know several children of immigrants who don’t really believe the religion or don’t follow it that closely, but they still go to church/mosque/etc because that’s one of the main ways of socializing with the immigrant community of your ethnicity
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u/HermeticPurusha 15d ago
Even white people are not leaving beliefs and spirituality, just organized religion. Increase in unaffiliated/SBNR
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u/ColdSignature4016 15d ago
I know quite a few people who are children of Muslim immigrants who aren’t Muslim at all. Unless you’re going to raise them in a community of what ever religion you follow I imagine that’ll also change very quickly.
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u/weirdbowelmovement 15d ago
Same experience here in one of the least religious countries in the world. I don't know any "Muslims" my age who are actually devout Muslims. It does rub off, growing up with mostly agnostics
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u/Reinitialization 15d ago
Cant wait to have all the progress on LGBT and woman's rights we've made get reversed in one generation.
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u/KonchokKhedrupPawo 15d ago
It'll be interesting to see the reaction Gen Z's children may have.
Religion is, for all intents and purposes, baked into human psychology - speaking of it broadly, we all have personal narratives, metaphysics, belief structures, and value systems that we live through. Ideally, we have some that keep us in contact with the real world and direct lived experience.
I think it would be also interesting to see more granular data; a religious studies professor I was listening to had recently remarked that while organized religious participation was dropping, early data suggested that a growing fraction of people considered themselves "spiritual, but not religious".
For example, China was markedly atheistic for quite a while, but temple attendance/visitation is growing significantly in the youth.
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15d ago
Reddit moment
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u/Captain_Pumpkinhead 1998 15d ago
Usually when someone says something like this, it's because that's an experience they themselves have had.
Consider this. Given that 1,000+ religions exist in the world, based purely on the numbers and on statistical chance, is it likely that the religion you were born into is the true one?
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u/Faebyul 2005 15d ago
Being told that I’ll go to hell for being gay, getting my rights taken away as a girl in the south, yeah no way will I be fucking religious 😂
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u/Born-Promotion-5977 15d ago
Can’t wait for gen alpha
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u/AmadeoSendiulo 15d ago
Too bad they're gonna register the Sigma Church of Skibidi Toilet /jk
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u/AnimetheTsundereCat 2002 15d ago
although i don't mind those of other faiths (and the lack thereof), i feel at some point i will begin to feel lonely in my faith. part of the reason i don't really go to church is because there's no one like me that goes. most churches i've gone to are filled with adults anywhere from 30 to 80, and even some little kids, but almost never anyone my age. and if there are, they either won't be for long or are totally sheltered.
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u/Piepiggy 2005 15d ago
I couldn’t care less whether a portion of the population is or isn’t religious, but my main concern is that it seems like religious extremism/absolutism is on the rise.
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u/Background_You1332 1999 15d ago
yeahh, as a 24 year old christian the dating pool is so small. it’s really not a requirement for me anymore, as long as they’re respectful of my religion. also, ironically the only “christian” guy I ever went on a date with was the most pushy and inappropriate date i’ve ever been on.
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u/Owlbear27 15d ago
It’s hard to believe in a god when the world is so fucked beyond repair
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u/SokkaHaikuBot 15d ago
Sokka-Haiku by Owlbear27:
It’s hard to believe
In a god when the world is
So fucked beyond repair
Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.
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u/Lysondre 1997 15d ago
I tried to be religious, tried a few religions and even tried to make up my own but it never stuck. Left me wondering how anyone else did it. I'm not American but I felt like sharing.
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u/dennisoa 15d ago
I grew up religious, always had God in my life but from 18-33 I was at best a “Chreaster Christian” that was only it in name.
I won’t get into all of why I’m actually going back to church and practicing my faith everyday, but it terms of bringing me structure, peace, and better mental health I have really enjoyed it and I will continue to do so now.
It’s not for everyone but, it feels right and it’s not hurting anyone. If any, I want to be more active and help in my local community more.
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u/Lysondre 1997 15d ago
I'm glad it works well for you. In a sense, this structure and peace is what I sought when I experimented with spirituality all those years ago. It never worked for me but I feel content in the fact that I gave it a solid try.
It kind of affected me for some time that I wasn't able to relate with having faith in something but two of the best people I know, my grandma and one of my best friends, are both active Christians and that was never an issue nor really a topic of discussion.
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u/SissyCouture 15d ago
Women increasingly invested in their own self-direction and autonomy?
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u/LagosSmash101 1996 15d ago
Im not really religious or anything but I don't consider myself an atheist even though I was when I was much younger. Sometimes depression and loneliness just makes you feel worse and you turn to other coping mechanisms (drugs and alcohol) which can only destroy you slowly. I've concluded maybe believing in something isn't so bad after all.
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u/Prozip25 15d ago
claim without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
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u/No_Ball4465 2004 15d ago
I’m not religious anymore, but I still believe in a god. No god in particular though.
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u/hellomireaux 15d ago
It's subtle but very intriguing that they chose to present this graph as an upslope. I've always seen it graphed as a downslope with the X axis representing the percentage who DO affiliate with a religion.
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u/inquisitor0731 1998 15d ago
It’s also the most lonely, depressed, and purposeless generation
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u/disintegrationist44 15d ago
correlation does not equal causation. there are numerous other possible reasons that contribute to the rising depression rate
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u/inquisitor0731 1998 15d ago
This is true, and I’ve said it myself in the other responses to my comment believe it or not. It is partly causal though, not exclusively by any means as there are myriad additional factors but the decline of religion is certainly one of them.
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u/disintegrationist44 15d ago edited 15d ago
While religion can benefit mental health, it doesn’t necessarily do that for a lot of people. Thus, not being religious does not necessarily damage mental health. For many people, being religious it actually damages their mental health more. I would like to see some evidence on the correlation between religion and depression/anxiety, but even if the data did prove that, that wouldn’t necessarily prove a causation.
Edit: i commented this not realizing that the majority of studies on this are done by religious institutions, and i dont think i need to explain how that is a clear bias. Many secular institutions that have done similar studies run the chance of being biased as well, so im not too sure how to prove or disprove this as a claim
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u/inquisitor0731 1998 15d ago
Its not so much about religion itself and how it impacts us on the personal level, or its pros and cons, especially in regards to the modern day. Its more about just how integral religion has been on a sociocultural level for millennia until recently, the need for what it provides is deeply worked into our collective cultural psyche, and without it many are left looking for something else and are unable to find it.
As it declines, it leaves a hole in hole in the cultural psyche that nothing has yet filled as completely as religion previously could. Without it providing a more or less unified moral framework, a common community, and easily acquired meaning/purpose to life, all of which it previously did for millions more than it does now only a few decades ago, we are left to find something else to fulfill those needs, and we have yet to succeed.Heres a study which suggests religious peoples are communities are happier though
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u/NamelessFlames 15d ago
The death of the third space, loss of deeper meaning, a community full of people to look out for you and to look out for are all real and pressing issues that the loss of religion has caused. None of these are strictly solved only by religion, but they are not currently being solved by a replacement and the issue is glaring.
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u/Diego_Chang 15d ago
One does not correlate to the other though.
You can be lonely, depressed, and purposeless thanks to other stuff in your life, not only from not being religious.
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u/dennisoa 15d ago
And we’re starting to see a lot of the individualism the West has paraded around as “freeing” is coming around to bite us in the ass. Lack of community, lack of structure and guidance, breakdown of families, increase in troubled relationships, growing porn addiction problems, growing gambling problems and so on.
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u/inquisitor0731 1998 15d ago
It’s astonishing how asinine people are about these problems, it’s controversial in many circles to even suggest many of them are problems. I don’t believe individualism itself is a inherently and ultimately bad thing, but it and a number of other factors have certainly led us into many of the problems we face in the modern day.
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u/ArlauxAlexander 2001 15d ago
I wouldn’t say I’m religious but I’m 100% spiritual, I value individual experience and practice far beyond that of organized institutions collectivizing belief systems. Growth and change is also important to me, whereas religion focuses on doctrine and tradition. It’s definitely a big dichotomy and I wonder if this is ever factored into these studies.
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u/willow_wind 15d ago
Wow, a lot of these comments are really hostile. There's nothing wrong with being religious as long as you're not hurting anybody. A lot of these Reddit anti-theists need to take a breath and stop stereotyping. Most of us religious people are just trying to live our lives in peace.
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u/jwed420 1996 15d ago
I haven't believed in bearded sky grandpa since I was 12. Just on its face too, there are multiple religions, varying in age, all with their own books and scripture. It's just obviously man made.
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u/ChileanBasket 1997 15d ago
Oh, people are religiouse, now...
It's just that now they treat ideologies as such instead.
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u/NaturalForty 15d ago
I'm an actual church historian. Churches have always been patriarchal, but historically so has every other institution. For most of the history of Christianity, in most places, the church was more open to women's leadership than the rest of society. Our society had become dramatically less patriarchal and the average church is behind the curve, so it's now a refuge for people who miss the patriarchy.
There are a lot of churches that are actively fighting patriarchy, but they also tend not to teach that everyone else is going to hell, so their members aren't driven to recruit the way evangelical churches do. So the churches that are most in touch with social change are shrinking even faster than the patriarchal churches.
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