https://pjmedia.com/columns/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/28/a-post-christian-america-is-bad-news-for-everyone-n1442817
A Post-Christian America Is Bad News for Everyone
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a group of prominent atheist scholars dubbed “The New Atheists” set about demonizing religion, and Christianity in particular. Books like The God Delusion, The End of Faith, and God Is Not Great argued that “religion poisons everything,” inspiring hatred, intolerance, war, you name it. Yet as America has become more secular in the last two decades, partisan rancor has increased, not decreased.
U.S. church membership held roughly steady at 70 percent or higher from 1937 through 1976, according to Gallup. The average dropped slightly — to 68 percent — from the 1970s through the 1990s. Yet in the past 20 years, church membership has dropped precipitously. While 77 percent of Americans identify themselves with an organized religion, only 50 percent say they are a member of a church or synagogue.
Fewer Americans identify as Protestant (43 percent) or Catholic (20 percent) than in previous decades. Meanwhile, the “nones” — atheists, agnostics, and those claiming no religious affiliation — have grown rapidly, hitting 22 percent.
The New Atheists may have partly achieved their goal, but declining church attendance and religious affiliation haven’t exactly translated into more peace and rational discourse. A rising “woke” orthodoxy among secularists has even targeted “New Atheist” Richard Dawkins himself for excommunication — over one tweet.
Related: Atheist Group Excommunicates Richard Dawkins for Transgender Heresy
In the past few decades, America has gotten more polarized, as conservatives and liberals increasingly talk past one another. It seems as if we inhabit two different worlds, believing in worldviews at loggerheads with one another.
As Shadi Hamid recently noted in The Atlantic, “American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like.”
Both conservatives and liberals claim the American label, and accuse the other side of being “un-American,” heretics to the American ideal. The problem isn’t just that the other side is wrong, it’s that it appropriates the language of America’s lofty ideals while twisting them out of recognition.
We conservatives — rightly, in my humble opinion — see the Left as hostile to America’s very foundations. Leftists claim that modern American society is “institutionally racist,” sexist, homophobic, transphobic, you name it. They want to remake the Constitution in their image in order to achieve their supposedly righteous agenda.
Meanwhile, leftists see conservatives as the American heretics. If Republicans don’t want to add new states, add seats to the Supreme Court, abolish the Senate or its rules, or reject the Electoral College, it’s because they oppose the Will of the People. Even Republican demands for basic election integrity measures like voter ID are considered “voter suppression” or “Jim Crow on steroids.”
The Left and the Right both view America as a noble ideal that their ideological opponents have betrayed. Sadly, we increasingly can no longer agree on the basic terms of debate. I would argue that the best science contradicts climate alarmism, transgender identity, and the idea that abortion does not involve the killing of a human individual. I’d also claim that some medical concerns arguably weigh against extreme precautions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet Democrats see all these claims as not just a disagreement on matters of policy but an opposition to science and life. Leftists claim that if you disagree with transgender identity, you are responsible for contributing to the suicide of people who suffer from gender dysphoria. Leftists claim that abortion is empowering, even life-saving. Leftists also claim that — despite the repeated decades of climate predictions failing — the upcoming fallout of the “climate crisis” is as certain as the sun rising in the East.
Meanwhile, conservatives like me want to defend the innocent lives of the unborn. We warn that kowtowing to transgender identity will open the floodgates of social dysfunction: from biological males in women’s restrooms and in women’s sports leagues to children and adolescents mutilating their own bodies in pursuit of a gender identity that will always conflict with their biological sex. We warn that climate regulations will hurt the economy and damage the prospects of the less fortunate — those who most need cheap energy to survive and find a leg up in the job market.