It would be interesting to see the statistics for Islam around the world, too. Muslim communities are surely more close-knit than Catholic ones with more pressure to stay at least nominally within the faith.
In which case, it would be interesting to know the numbers of those who LEAVE such states for countries where more religious freedom is afforded them. There is a study all by itself.
The Catholic Church and I went our separate ways over half a century ago, and I never regretted that decision. I did not, however, simply trade old nonsense for new and left religion all together. Maybe if the church could bring back burning heretics and witches alive after having tortured confessions out of them they could turn this around. I have contended for a long time the staggering number of Christian tribes should be a far bigger problem for believers than it is. It speaks to a divine being who supposedly willed the universe into existence, but when it came to the most important message imaginable, . . . couldn’t make himself understood. It also speaks to the complete lack of objective evidence to support the church’s claims.
As a life-long non-believer who had 4 grandparents who didn't believe, I just never felt the need for any of it. My Mom - from a family of apostate and occult Jews - went out as a teen and joined a Methodist church and made us go to church until our teens - needed the church. Churches peddle surety about the unknown and attach it to a social structure. We are a few generations away from people in this Country being able to give up the myths.
I think it's very hard for some people who are raised Christian, specifically with a heavy emphasis on the Bible, they have an overwhelming need to believe in the Bible being the word of God, or that God is real. It is almost hard coded as part of their identity. Even if they haven't read the Bible, they sincerely treat it as truth or almost like a historical document. Plus even in a lot of western countries, being seen as religious makes people feel or seem as more moral than others. There are a lot of levels to it imo.
I left catholic church because i don’t believe in religion. However, in Latin America, where i have many friends, religion is so alive. But the real switch (to evangelicalism) is the result of 40 years of US evangelicals sponsoring south of the border “re-christianizing” across the region. The mega church movement took the deaf-tone catholic church in the 80s and now, in urban areas, you cannot miss it. The is a straight relationship between the US evangelical world and latin America surge. As in the US, these “new” churches are invading politics and modern societies are becoming regressive. Now, in my working suburban city, in the US, 10 years ago, we had a presbyterian and catholic churches. Today, same downtown has at least 25 different types of evangelic “churches”. All targeting immigrants and lower income people. You don’t see this phenomenon in the wealthy, whiter suburb next door. John Oliver did a piece about 10 years ago of the predator behavior of these alternative religions from Christianism. There is no coincidence between the decrease of catholics in Latam and the increase of evangelicals both in the US and south of the border.
All of this, yes. It’s absolutely predatory behavior. It’s also gives people what they think is access to some “special class” of powerful people. White Evangelicals want to BE or replace the government completely.
Once again, I would have to WORK to be surprised at this. The Catholic Church has become notorious for its sotto-voce sanction of child sexual abuse, never mind its dogma and doctrine, a great portion of which cannot be found in the bible, and the general tight-ass attitude it tends to project. Slowly but surely, people are waking up to that, and in so doing, they cease to be SHEEP, or at least sheep that have lost their affinity for Catholicism.
They may not be atheists ... YET. That just MIGHT come later!
It has been with painful, glacial slowness, but humankind is slowly but surely growing out of its infancy and (I sincerely hope) its adolescence. Honestly, I think if Homo sapiens is to survive, we HAVE to, and a major part of that process is disposing of religion as the specious crutch that it is.
For some of us, that process is one-step, cut and done. For others, yours truly included, there can be multiple steps. The choice to leave Roman Catholicism, with all its strictures and bullshit, even if it is to go from that to some form of Protestantism or another belief outside of the Abrahamic religions, still strikes me as a positive one. It tells me that such people are actually bothering to LOOK at the belief system they are involved in, that they are willing to evaluate it and consider it critically.
I suspect most of us know the phrase about a journey of 1,000 miles starting with a single step. Choosing to leave the RCC, regardless of the destination, strikes me as being a pretty significant one.
I'm encouraged both by the numbers leaving religion and those switching. As many of us know from our own experience in deconverting from religion, the first step is often leaving the religion you were raised in - along with its cultural pull. That's the big step. After that, you soon realize that the same doubts you had about your natal religion also apply to your new one. Which leads to the final step of realizing the problem isn't the brand of religion, it's religion itself.
So, I say, "bravo, seekers!" You've taken the hard first step into the light.
One final note: We need to take these self-reported numbers of conversions with a giant grain of salt. Let's see how they hold up over time....
In the mideast, Apostasy from Islam gets the death penalty. And while I don't think dominionists have the weight to pull that off in western countries with Christianity, I have no doubt they'd love to if they had the numbers.
“Or maybe JD Vance’s relatively recent conversion scared them away.”
No, it was JD Vance murdering the Pope that scared them. If he can kill the Pope, imagine what he can do to the regular folks. He’s like the Chupacabra of Christianity.
I was lucky: I knew the bible and imaginary fiends contained therein were bullshit by the time I was 8 or 9 and I openly rejected religion by 10. I was kicked out of protestant "Sunday school" for questioning the nonsense they were trying to indoctrinate us with. My parents were both churchgoers but decided that there was no point in making me go.
For many years my mom would ask me to go to church for xmas and Oster and I would say no. Then she would say: "but I raised you to be a christian" to which I would reply: "you also raised me to be straight, how did that work out?"
One thing she knew early, that I had the same stubborn streak she did. It's why we often clashed but I was always the one that got the phone call in the middle of the night if there was a crisis as my parents aged.
The fear and brainwashing in the various sects of the xtian cult are deeply ingrained in its victims. I wonder again how accurate any polling of cult members is?
People in the xtian cult are deeply dishonest, this is part of the indoctrination: protect the cult, its profits and sex predators at all costs.
My Catholicism...my entire belief in gods and supernatural realms...died in early childhood.
And when I finally started to see the horrors inflicted by Holy Mother Church on people over the nearly-2000 years of its existence, I am forever grateful that I escaped its clutches. May many many more Catholic children today come to the same realization I did even as I was serving Mass as an altar boy.
I wonder what portion of the rise in Protestantism is from those quitting Catholicism. Many people who leave religion do so in stages, going to "lite" versions of their original faith rather than straight to non-religion. Protestantism, after all, was started by people (men) disgusted with the corruption and some of the cult-like beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. It makes sense that a disillusioned Catholic might go to Protestantism as a first (or final) step in deconversion.
In some of these countries the switching is likely to an extreme form of non-Catholic Christianity think certain versions of pentecostalism or fundamentalism.
Do these numbers have to do with baptisms? Do Protestants convert at a higher rate because they push conversion harder throughout one’s life rather than rely on big families (baptism as a baby) like Catholics? I wasn’t raised with any religion, but my mom was raised Catholic and my dad Baptist. My mom actually had to get baptized again in order to marry my dad. I imagine the Evangelical cult pushes the hardest for conversions by hanging around in prisons and such. I only see a difference in strategy.
It would be interesting to see the statistics for Islam around the world, too. Muslim communities are surely more close-knit than Catholic ones with more pressure to stay at least nominally within the faith.
When you live in a state where apostasy is a capital offence, you better keep quiet about leaving Islam.
In which case, it would be interesting to know the numbers of those who LEAVE such states for countries where more religious freedom is afforded them. There is a study all by itself.
I would love to see this for Islam and Judaism as well!
The Catholic Church and I went our separate ways over half a century ago, and I never regretted that decision. I did not, however, simply trade old nonsense for new and left religion all together. Maybe if the church could bring back burning heretics and witches alive after having tortured confessions out of them they could turn this around. I have contended for a long time the staggering number of Christian tribes should be a far bigger problem for believers than it is. It speaks to a divine being who supposedly willed the universe into existence, but when it came to the most important message imaginable, . . . couldn’t make himself understood. It also speaks to the complete lack of objective evidence to support the church’s claims.
As a life-long non-believer who had 4 grandparents who didn't believe, I just never felt the need for any of it. My Mom - from a family of apostate and occult Jews - went out as a teen and joined a Methodist church and made us go to church until our teens - needed the church. Churches peddle surety about the unknown and attach it to a social structure. We are a few generations away from people in this Country being able to give up the myths.
The herd instinct runs deep in the human species. It's one of the things that keeps organized religion in business.
Primates are social animals. With the exception of us hermits, most people need to belong to a group of similar individuals.
I think it's very hard for some people who are raised Christian, specifically with a heavy emphasis on the Bible, they have an overwhelming need to believe in the Bible being the word of God, or that God is real. It is almost hard coded as part of their identity. Even if they haven't read the Bible, they sincerely treat it as truth or almost like a historical document. Plus even in a lot of western countries, being seen as religious makes people feel or seem as more moral than others. There are a lot of levels to it imo.
I left catholic church because i don’t believe in religion. However, in Latin America, where i have many friends, religion is so alive. But the real switch (to evangelicalism) is the result of 40 years of US evangelicals sponsoring south of the border “re-christianizing” across the region. The mega church movement took the deaf-tone catholic church in the 80s and now, in urban areas, you cannot miss it. The is a straight relationship between the US evangelical world and latin America surge. As in the US, these “new” churches are invading politics and modern societies are becoming regressive. Now, in my working suburban city, in the US, 10 years ago, we had a presbyterian and catholic churches. Today, same downtown has at least 25 different types of evangelic “churches”. All targeting immigrants and lower income people. You don’t see this phenomenon in the wealthy, whiter suburb next door. John Oliver did a piece about 10 years ago of the predator behavior of these alternative religions from Christianism. There is no coincidence between the decrease of catholics in Latam and the increase of evangelicals both in the US and south of the border.
All of this, yes. It’s absolutely predatory behavior. It’s also gives people what they think is access to some “special class” of powerful people. White Evangelicals want to BE or replace the government completely.
Once again, I would have to WORK to be surprised at this. The Catholic Church has become notorious for its sotto-voce sanction of child sexual abuse, never mind its dogma and doctrine, a great portion of which cannot be found in the bible, and the general tight-ass attitude it tends to project. Slowly but surely, people are waking up to that, and in so doing, they cease to be SHEEP, or at least sheep that have lost their affinity for Catholicism.
They may not be atheists ... YET. That just MIGHT come later!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a7cb96c31b16da3170154acfecc7c7e9d7101b9b562fed4079d9a7c839e50fb1.jpg
Further Thought:
𝐼𝑓 𝑤𝑒’𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑤 𝑢𝑝 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑠, 𝑤𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑦𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑢𝑠.
-- TheraminTrees
It has been with painful, glacial slowness, but humankind is slowly but surely growing out of its infancy and (I sincerely hope) its adolescence. Honestly, I think if Homo sapiens is to survive, we HAVE to, and a major part of that process is disposing of religion as the specious crutch that it is.
For some of us, that process is one-step, cut and done. For others, yours truly included, there can be multiple steps. The choice to leave Roman Catholicism, with all its strictures and bullshit, even if it is to go from that to some form of Protestantism or another belief outside of the Abrahamic religions, still strikes me as a positive one. It tells me that such people are actually bothering to LOOK at the belief system they are involved in, that they are willing to evaluate it and consider it critically.
I suspect most of us know the phrase about a journey of 1,000 miles starting with a single step. Choosing to leave the RCC, regardless of the destination, strikes me as being a pretty significant one.
I'm encouraged both by the numbers leaving religion and those switching. As many of us know from our own experience in deconverting from religion, the first step is often leaving the religion you were raised in - along with its cultural pull. That's the big step. After that, you soon realize that the same doubts you had about your natal religion also apply to your new one. Which leads to the final step of realizing the problem isn't the brand of religion, it's religion itself.
So, I say, "bravo, seekers!" You've taken the hard first step into the light.
One final note: We need to take these self-reported numbers of conversions with a giant grain of salt. Let's see how they hold up over time....
I think it was Mark Twain that said the best thing about modern life is not going to church on Sunday.
𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜𝑛’𝑡 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑛𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑛...
For now. In the west.
In the mideast, Apostasy from Islam gets the death penalty. And while I don't think dominionists have the weight to pull that off in western countries with Christianity, I have no doubt they'd love to if they had the numbers.
“Or maybe JD Vance’s relatively recent conversion scared them away.”
No, it was JD Vance murdering the Pope that scared them. If he can kill the Pope, imagine what he can do to the regular folks. He’s like the Chupacabra of Christianity.
And his unholy relationships with furniture.
I was lucky: I knew the bible and imaginary fiends contained therein were bullshit by the time I was 8 or 9 and I openly rejected religion by 10. I was kicked out of protestant "Sunday school" for questioning the nonsense they were trying to indoctrinate us with. My parents were both churchgoers but decided that there was no point in making me go.
For many years my mom would ask me to go to church for xmas and Oster and I would say no. Then she would say: "but I raised you to be a christian" to which I would reply: "you also raised me to be straight, how did that work out?"
"you also raised me to be straight, how did that work out?"
Oh, WOOF! Bet THAT was a fun conversation!
One thing she knew early, that I had the same stubborn streak she did. It's why we often clashed but I was always the one that got the phone call in the middle of the night if there was a crisis as my parents aged.
The fear and brainwashing in the various sects of the xtian cult are deeply ingrained in its victims. I wonder again how accurate any polling of cult members is?
People in the xtian cult are deeply dishonest, this is part of the indoctrination: protect the cult, its profits and sex predators at all costs.
My Catholicism...my entire belief in gods and supernatural realms...died in early childhood.
And when I finally started to see the horrors inflicted by Holy Mother Church on people over the nearly-2000 years of its existence, I am forever grateful that I escaped its clutches. May many many more Catholic children today come to the same realization I did even as I was serving Mass as an altar boy.
I wonder what portion of the rise in Protestantism is from those quitting Catholicism. Many people who leave religion do so in stages, going to "lite" versions of their original faith rather than straight to non-religion. Protestantism, after all, was started by people (men) disgusted with the corruption and some of the cult-like beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. It makes sense that a disillusioned Catholic might go to Protestantism as a first (or final) step in deconversion.
In some of these countries the switching is likely to an extreme form of non-Catholic Christianity think certain versions of pentecostalism or fundamentalism.
Do these numbers have to do with baptisms? Do Protestants convert at a higher rate because they push conversion harder throughout one’s life rather than rely on big families (baptism as a baby) like Catholics? I wasn’t raised with any religion, but my mom was raised Catholic and my dad Baptist. My mom actually had to get baptized again in order to marry my dad. I imagine the Evangelical cult pushes the hardest for conversions by hanging around in prisons and such. I only see a difference in strategy.
These are surveys of adults, so not baptisms per se.
I think what we're seeing in combination is RCCs becoming Protestant. Plus probably some increase in nones.
I’m most interested in the why convert from Catholic to Protestant.
Maybe it's those torture porn crucifixes:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%2Fid%2FOIP.sVc9QLPJwBYwYDU4VXD7agAAAA%3Fpid%3DApi&f=1&ipt=6633192af5e667e6d1270cedce668acdb2504480d63974b980826065adbb54c2&ipo=images
It's the new "Medical Cadaver Jesus" from the Jesuits, only $99 plus a 20% tithe.
“Their god is dead!”