New Study Finds the United States Has Become “Notably Less Christian”

(From the magical Office of Like We Needed a Study for This…)

We do not appear to be “one nation under God” anymore.

According to a new study that surveyed some 35,071 U.S. adults last summer, for the first time in the nation’s history, the total number of adult Christians has declined.

Via LA Times:

The U.S. has become significantly less Christian in the last eight years as the share of American adults who espouse no systematic religious belief increased sharply, a major new study found.

For what is likely the first time in U.S. history – certainly the first since the early days of the country – the actual number of American Christians has declined. Christianity, however, remains by far the nation’s dominant religious tradition, according to the new report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

The New York Times has declared its “The Rise of Young Americans Who Don’t Believe in God”.

Back in 2007, one in six Americans self-described as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”. That number has now increased to nearly one in four.

Just last month, the Washington Post reported that the military under Obama is a “hostile” work environment, and that, “Soon there may only be atheists in the foxholes”:

Christians are leaving the U.S. military or are discouraged from joining in the first place because of a “hostile work environment” that doesn’t let them express their beliefs openly, religious freedom advocates say.

Michael Berry, senior counsel at the Liberty Institute, a Texas-based legal organization dedicated to defending religious liberty in America, said recent high-profile cases of military chaplains facing punishment for private counseling sessions that reflected the teachings of their religion could cause devout Americans who are qualified for military service to think twice about joining the military…

Douglas Lee, president of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, whose job it is to find people who want to be chaplains and make sure they’re also qualified to serve in the military, said growing religious hostility within the military is making it harder for him to find potential recruits and for the armed forces to maintain the chaplains it does have.

That’s in addition to the fact that all over the country, evangelical Christians are being labeled “extremists” and their organizations labeled as “hate groups”.

Oh, and it just so happens that every country our military-industrial complex “liberates” these days, you know, to spread “democracy” ends up not a more free and peaceful place for all but, as Michael Snyder reported, “it has resulted in the persecution of Christians in that country becoming much worse”:

In areas where we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and where thousands of precious American lives were sacrificed, churches are regularly being bombed, Christians are being brutally beheaded, and laws have been passed to make it illegal for a Muslim to convert to Christianity.  If we were not even able to provide the most basic of liberties and freedoms to the people living in those nations, what in the world did we actually accomplish by “liberating” them?

Hmm.

Meanwhile, our nation’s schools have also been reprimanding students for reading Bibles or even mentioning God in school at all.

In Florida, a student recently got in trouble for saying, “God bless America, keep us safe” during the school announcements after two offended atheist students contacted the American Humanist Association which in turn sent a threatening letter to the school.

A Louisiana middle school dropped the phrase “In God We Trust” from the campus billboard at the behest of the ACLU which also asked the district to “remove all religious references” from any school websites. Kids at the school rallied to have the phrase put back on the sign, and after a legal review, the school did put it back up.

A judge also recently ruled that the pledge of allegiance does not violate the rights of atheist students in schools either. The case was brought by a student, again with the aid of the American Humanist Association, who claimed that using the phase “under God” fosters a climate of “classroom discrimination”.

A Missouri middle schooler was told he was not allowed to read his Bible during free time in school, while a Florida teacher took it a step further and humiliated a middle school student in front of the entire class for doing so. Here’s the message that teacher left the kid’s parents:

A California high schooler brought a lawsuit against his school after he was suspended for even bringing a Bible to campus, while a six-year-old was reprimanded in front of her class and told she was not allowed to even talk about the Bible in school.

Perhaps even more bizarre, a Florida University professor punished one of his students for refusing to participate in a class exercise where the class was made to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” written on it.

One of the basic tenets we are taught in school is that this country was supposedly founded on religious freedom. Apparently these days it has been flipped to “freedom from religion.”

But isn’t it still supposed to be to each his own?

Let’s see what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It certainly would seem the free exercise thereof is being prohibited everywhere these days…

The point that needs to be made here is that this is about people’s freedoms being trampled in this country.

The use of the term “In God We Trust,” still printed on our money, has actually been ruled Constitutional by the way.

Then again, even though our fiat Federal Reserve notes might still say that, has anyone ever bothered to ask which God the people who put it there even mean exactly?