If you read the breathless coverage earlier this week from the mainstream press over the Pew Research Center’s newest Religious Landscape Study, you might believe that religion in America is in deep trouble – specifically Christianity, from which we’re told millennials are fleeing en masse: “Millennials leaving the church in droves, study finds,” CNN splashed Read more
The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic Read more
We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn’t exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, Read more
Religion, as certain members of the media never fail to remind us at this time of year, seems to be on the decline, and for disgruntled secularists, the end cannot come quickly enough. But the death of God, at least in the hearts of most human beings, is a Western illusion. New demographic projections suggest Read more
The Cross is the great paradox of Christianity. More than a few people have asked me over the years why the Catholic Church focuses so prominently and persistently on the Crucifix. One inquirer even suggested that the Crucifix hanging above the Altar is too intense a reminder of the sorrow in the world and that Read more
In their attempt to argue that effective and binding codes can be developed without a deity, atheists often mistake inferior codes – “common decency” – for absolute moral systems. The Golden Rule, or doing as you would be done by, is such a code. But the fact that men can arrive at the Golden Rule Read more
Bad religion. There’s a lot of it around still, though I am convinced there’s less of it (at least of the Christian variety) than there has been in the past. Even so, desperately bad religion dominates the daily paper, from Islamic fundamentalists filming grizzly decapitations, to the Catholic powers that be still trying to cover Read more
In Western Europe, politics and the media are still dominated by the liberal mentality that prevailed among European intellectual elites for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and gave rise to various versions of the “theory of secularisation.” Some of those theories assumed, in the light of the changing role of the major Christian Read more
How many times in conversation do we hear ‘judge not lest you be judged’? Frequently this quotation from Christ is misapplied. When applied to gossiping or to a statement that is purely used to denigrate another it is most certainly correct. It should not however be seen as Christ saying we should not judge something Read more
Now is not a good time to be a Christian – especially, if you are a Catholic. Read The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, listen to the ABC or read Irfan Yusuf’s recent piece and it’s obvious that the critics are on a roll. Wendy Squire’s op-ed in The Age provides a good illustration of Read more