World News Korner

The number of secular people in America may be much larger than previously believed.

Courtesy of Religion News:

If you’re dismayed that one in five Americans (20 percent) are “nones” — people who claim no particular religious identity — brace yourself.

How does 38 percent sound?

That’s what religion researcher David Kinnaman calculates when he adds “the unchurched, the never-churched and the skeptics” to the nones.

He calls his new category “churchless,” the same title Kinnaman has given his new book. By his count, roughly four in 10 people living in the continental United States are actually “post-Christian” and “essentially secular in belief and practice.”

If asked, the “churchless” would likely check the “Christian” box on a survey, even though they may not have darkened the door of a church in years.

Kinnaman, president of the California-based Barna Group, slides them into this new category based on 15 measures of identity, belief and practice in more than 23,000 interviews in 20 surveys.

The research looked at church worship attendance and participation, views about the Bible, God and Jesus, and more to see whether folks were actually tied to Christian life in a meaningful way or tied more by habit or personal history.

Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, once called nominals — people attached by name only — “survey Christians.” They don’t want to cut ties with their parents or go all the way to atheism, Stetzer said, “so they just say ‘Christian’ since it is the default category from their heritage.”

I think these findings probably reflect what most of us see in our own lives.

I have met numerous self described Christians who have not attended church services for years, or who only show up for holiday celebrations like Christmas or Easter.

Many of those people also have a perfunctory understanding of the Bible, and embrace few, if any, of the doctrines of Christianity.

I personally believe that a number of these people are actually agnostic of atheist but lack the courage to come out of the closet if you will and risk attracting the wrath or disappointed of family and friends.

That is why it is so important in my opinion to remove the stigma attached to atheism so that people will feel more comfortable in allowing people to accept them for who they truly are.

Heathen scum who hate Jesus. (Sorry couldn't resist.)

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