free12thinker

I have to ask this question, especially after reading one too many articles from the Agape Press. In case anyone doesn't know, this is the Christian News Monitor that seeks out news affecting the Christian community.

Anyway; over the last copuple days, I have enjoyed reading two articles that seem to define Americas attitude in recent years. One of them was discussing the dismissal of Christian propaganda or Christian influence in today's corporations. It highlighted a corporations reluctance to have Christian ideas or sayings (God Bless America) on their products, or their reluctance to do business with Christian organizations. When asked why they discontinued business relationships with such companies as kingdombuy.com or why they recalled items that contained Christian propaganda, all of their responses were fairly similar, and went something like "We promote tolerance and Christian ideas do not". I am somewhat computer illiterate and was unable to post the link here, but if you want to read the article, go to yahoo and type in AGAPE "NO ROOM FOR GOD", and it will pop up.

Another article highlighted the importance of religion in times of crisis and concentrated on a survey in which 88% of Americans claimed religion was important, but only for the benefit of helping people get through tough times. This did not surprise me since most people I know, and have seen, who claim they are Christian, do not take part in prayer, or the spreading of gods word, or attend church, or own a bible or hold the moral torch. In fact, they do most of the things they are not supposed to, according to the bible, and find Separation of Church and State to be very important. Not only that, but they are tolerant to homosexuality, pro-choice and such. In this, even as Christianity seems to be the overwhelming religion or belief of choice, it's obviously not in the moral or religious context that it has in the past.

Everyday there are at least three articles written by the Agape Press that put America in peril, thanks to our "declining values".

But why? What's the story? I would like to know your thoughts, especially theists, surrounding America's change of values and overall train of thought regarding religion.

Religion and God are not the foundations of this country anymore, and I think it's great. Not from a ha-ha approach, but from a free thinking approach. People are finally giving up the moral code and the idea of prayer and gender discrimination and sexual discrimination and all that jazz. What do you think is the reason.

Here's my opinion:
After WWII, we began making more money, working less, and thus were able to have more time to explore that which we always wanted to explore; ourselves.
Women got more rights. Minorities got more rights. As a result, we began to push the envelope and question authority.
Suddenly, women weren't damned to the homebase.
Suddenly, we were able to question authority and we had rights to protect us.
This was all good and essential in becoming the people that we are today.

99Percent

Very interesting but this topic is better served at Miscellaneous Religion Discussions.

luvluv

First of all I think it would be a mistake to limit Christianity pre-WW2 to strict conservatism. There have always been liberal Christians, and throughout history it would be hard to pin Christianity down to any particular political bent. I am a Christian and very liberal, guys like Cornell West are Christians and Marxist, then there are Christians who are Free Marketeers, etc.

Even in this country, folks like the Quakers and and most prominently the Jewish culture and the black church have been consistently leaning to the political left since this country was formed.

I'm reading a great book called The Great Disruption about the decline of values all over the world. It's actually very non-moralistic (written by Francis Fukuyama who, if not an atheist, is definitely non-religious as far as I can gather) and is more sociological and research oriented in it's approach. I think it might be a good read on the subject.