In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace
A great sorrow I think. Not for Christianity per se but all that comes with it.<p>What is most essentially &quot;home&quot; in the world is the set of rituals you make for yourself and others, things that allow you to dwell more poetically in place. Traditional rituals, like those found in religions, enhance our sense of belonging in the world, or if the world is a rough and scary place, at least within a society. I think we do not have the words for all the good parts of religion and ritual, and because they are not easily articulated, they are easily dismissed as irrational or nonexistent.<p>People instead will attack any religion, or any set of rituals that are not easily explained with a dollar value, <i>gleefully</i> as things that need to die, in service of a more rational world, by which they only mean a world more easily explainable to them. Since they cannot easily explain what&#x27;s lost, they assume it must be nothing. I think this is a mistake due to a lack of attention.<p>People do not think about this, for that matter I fear people hardly think of our sense of dwelling and belonging at all. Culturally, the idea of &quot;belonging&quot; anywhere has been entirely subsumed by &quot;wandering&quot;[note]. This makes for a more consumer-friendly world, but a much less nice one to live in day to day. I fear that until we have the easy words to properly describe what it is we have lost, people will simply continue to cheer its loss, perhaps pausing once in a while to wonder aloud why they feel somewhat lost.<p>[note] ask people about their aspirational hobbies, they are amost always quick to point to &quot;travel&quot;, and &quot;experiences&quot;. Weirdly a lot of the &quot;experiences&quot; wording people use comes from a study commissioned by LivingSocial (&quot;millennials prefer experiences over things&quot;, as if that&#x27;s the dichotomy) to hawk the selling of experiences. The pseudostudy seems to be outliving the failed company.