By Selwyn Duke

According to a recent study, religion is dying in America. And it’s a
trend that has grave implications for our politics, culture, and the
fate of our civilization. Ben Fearnow of CBS News reports on the story, writing:

The number of Americans who do not
identify with any religion continues to grow at a fast pace. One-fifth
of the U.S. public — and a third of adults under 30 — are religiously
unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center
polling.

In the last five years alone, the
unaffiliated have increased from just over 15 percent to just under 20
percent of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million
self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6 percent of the U.S.
public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no
particular religious affiliation (14 percent).

The study also found that the “lower the age group, the less likely people are to be affiliated.”

The study also posits some theories for this burgeoning
irreligiosity, which, writes Fearnow, “run the gamut from a backlash
against the entanglement of religion and politics to a global
relationship between economic development and secularization.” Now, I
don’t know if that “gamut” includes the obvious, but these two theories
miss the mark.

Read the rest here.