Religion Losing Ground

I see that the famous best selling author Anne Rice, for years well known for her membership of the Catholic Church, has quit that organization because she says she has seen so much hypocrisy.

The bosses ' mass media recognizes the importance of organized institutionalized religion, in keeping their system going. So they give a lot of coverage to the born again movement and to the established churches. But what is the reality?  Rice is just one of millions of Americans who have opted out of Christianity in recent years. The "unaffiliated" is the fastest growing "religion" in the US according to a 2008 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public life. The study found that one in six Americans are not affiliated to any faith and for 18 to 29 year olds the figure was less, one in four.

Pollsters say they can find little difference between the moral behavior of churchgoers and the rest of American society. The pollster Barna, himself an evangelical Christian, finds that born again Christians are more likely to divorce than atheists and agnostics and are more likely to be racists. And while evangelical adolescents overwhelmingly say they believe in abstaining from sex they are more likely to be sexually active at an earlier age than their peers who are Protestants, Mormons or Jews.

Christian activist Ronald J. Sider in his recent book writes: "By their daily activity, most Christians regularly commit treason. With their mouths they claim that Jesus is their lord, but with their actions they demonstrate their allegiance to money, sex and personal self fulfillment."