Atheism is on the rise, right? God is dead, right? Well no.
A new book called “God is Alive and Well” was reviewed in The Weekly Standard. They referenced some data points that quite frankly surprised me a bit. Check it out::
The data presented by Newport, who is Gallup’s editor in chief, start off showing that the percentage of Americans who say they believe in God is on par with the percentage who said they were believers back in 1944. When Gallup asked Americans in 2011 whether they believed in God, more than 90 percent said yes. Over those 67 years, the percentage of Americans who say they do not believe in God has bounced around between only 6 and 8 percent. In other words, there has been no real change.
Newport also presents data showing that the percentage of Americans saying they attend church is about the same as in 1940. About 40 percent report attending religious services at least once a week or almost weekly. About 15 percent say they never attend church. “Overall, this is fairly indicative of a religious nation,” writes Newport, who was raised a Southern Baptist and is a Baylor graduate. He also highlights how the percentage of Americans who say that religion is very important to them remains at 55 percent. That number is not lower than it was 30 years ago: “There is no indication that there has been a continuous drop in the personal aspect of religion in recent years,” he concludes.
But things are changing. Big time. It seems to me -and this is me, not The Weekly Standard talking now. It seems to me that many people might still believe in God but they don’t truck with religion so much. In other words, we believe in God but we think God either doesn’t care what we do or He just happens to agree with us on everything.
But believing in a God that has no power to call us out of ourselves or to make us want to better ourselves is akin to believing that you are God.
So it turns out that God is not dying, He’s not even sick. We are.
