People say they're leaving religion due to anti-LGBTQ teachings and sexual abuse

People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That’s similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research.

cosmicrookie,
@cosmicrookie@lemmy.world avatar

“News”

Veraxus,

Jesus: Share everything you have, especially with those in need. Be kind and loving toward everyone. Worry about your own shortcomings and not those of others. Pay your taxes.

Members of the religion named after him: Nah. We just want to hoard wealth and watch people suffer. Also, let’s add a bunch of pagan stuff to our dogma that isn’t remotely scriptural.

Patches,

When did Jesus say pay your taxes?

kittyjynx,
@kittyjynx@lemmy.world avatar

Matthew 17:24-27

24 After Jesus and his disciples arrived in Capernaum, the collectors of the two-drachma temple tax came to Peter and asked, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

25 “Yes, he does,” he replied.

When Peter came into the house, Jesus was the first to speak. “What do you think, Simon?” he asked. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes—from their own children or from others?”

26 “From others,” Peter answered.

“Then the children are exempt,” Jesus said to him.

27 “But so that we may not cause offense, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”

That is the closest I found.

AngryCommieKender,

Mark 12: 14-17

Give unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser’s, give unto God that which is God’s

OneWomanCreamTeam,

Mark 12:14-17

14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax[a] to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

afraid_of_zombies,

Was talking about this to a religious Christian friend of mine last week. Do you really want your religion to be associated with anger and being mean to minorities or do you want people to associate it with charity programs?

It is too much for me to ask that religion be good, I just wonder why they don’t care about even being seen as good. Why don’t they even have the basic level of shame we should expect from any common criminal?

MataVatnik,
@MataVatnik@lemmy.world avatar

Why don’t they even have the basic level of shame we should expect from any common criminal?

Well put

jkrtn,

Or any shame at all. Even common crooks are appalled by pedophiles. Christians will not only shield their priests from justice, they help transition them to other churches to find new victims.

UsernameIsTooLon,

They don’t have shame because “God” is a crutch for all sins when you can just beg for forgiveness from the supposedly all merciful.

Furthermore, they can’t comprehend their worldview without the existence of the Christian God.

Pair that with indoctrinations and now you got a cult!

Source: am former Catholic student studying psychology

randon31415,

There is also another way of looking at it: If pastors focus on ministering to teens, those teens become more faithful but then leave to the coasts for work when they reach adulthood and churches on the coasts receive more money due to the work of the home church. Meanwhile, if the pastors focus on the old people, those old people die and leave money to the home churches. So there is a financial incentive to ignore things that matter to the youth and focus on what matters to the elderly, at least in the short run.

Noodle07,

Church is a business and baby jesus is crying

frezik,

Remember that most of these identify as “nothing in particular”. Self identification of atheist/agnostic groupings are still quite small. What the Nones believe is highly varied. They may believe in some kind of god, but don’t like organized religion in general.

Religion itself tends to become more entrenched during hard times. If you believe that the US is going down a path of economic stagnation, devastation from global warming, and increased war around the world in general, then we might expect that religion will grow again. It might not be traditional Christian denominations, though. I suspect we’ll see a revival in paganism derived from pre-Christianized Europe (though far from identical to what they were historically).

EldritchFeminity,

I wonder where groups like the Satanic Temple are placed in studies like this (or if they’re even counted at all) since they’re an activist group that’s legally classified as a religion.

nifty,
@nifty@lemmy.world avatar

Tbh I find them annoying because they’re keeping stupid myths alive because of their existence (because their name is a foil), and acting as a fuel for motivating the religiously minded. Organized religion as a whole needs to die in a civilized society context, and that cannot happen if we keep ideas like “Satan” alive in any context.

TheRealKuni,

Organized religion as a whole needs to die in a civilized society context

Oh boy. Who decided you get to be the arbiter of what people do with their lives? Shouldn’t a civilized society let people believe what they want provided they are tolerant toward others?

nifty,
@nifty@lemmy.world avatar

This isn’t my perspective, but something many share. Tbh, I am okay with keeping religion as a private affair. But the problem is that such ideology can often instill self-righteous attitudes, which can become dangerous on a societal level. See all of history, for example!

nifty,
@nifty@lemmy.world avatar

we’ll see a revival in paganism derived from pre-Christianized Europe

I hope not? Those types of ideologies were even more backwards than the Abrahamic faith ones, and the good parts were all rolled up into Judaism or Christianity. I am not sure if I misremember, so let me know otherwise. I remember movies like Midsommar as a good example of this type of ideology at an extreme/cult level.

Anything where you’re believing in some woo woo as an organization, or even as a small group, is just a bad idea for societal development. I just want people to move away from mythology based origin stories, or explanation for known or unknown phenomena 😭

Zirconium,

Wow maybe if they’d stop hiring sexual abusers after realizing they can’t force people to stay at the same church their own life they’d get more business. But I believe the entire structure is sexual abusers by this point because all the “good” people realized how fucked it was and left.

_haha_oh_wow_,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

You don’t say…

Potatos_are_not_friends,

These groups always need a enemy.

So when a follower actually meets the person the group calls a enemy, and realized that it’s a lie… What do they expect?

smokingManhole,

The major relevant drive is the fact that people finally realized they are a useless time waste and most importantly, made up - rather than having something to do with minorities.

sadreality,

One is shit doctrine, the other is criminal offense....

tygerprints,

It makes me feel good to see that people are at last waking up from the Dark Ages and starting to realize that religious ideology is harmful, backwards-leaning and misogynistic to the extreme. And that all of it is wrong.

Here in Mormon country USA, many people are leaving the church in droves because of its continued support of Donald Trump and Anti-LGBTQ behaviors. I can only hope this trend becomes so widespread that we'll someday be so near daylight was can say, "why did we ever think religion was going to help us at all? Thank GOD we left that behind for good!"

TequilaMockingbird,
TequilaMockingbird avatar

I'm not very religious (I was raised Catholic), but I have certainly seen faith be a remarkable help to people during tough times. It has the potential to be beneficial in the sense that it can give people resilience, a sense of community, perspective of the "bigger picture", and hope that the future will be better. I wouldn't write all religion off as "harmful".

But ... they get at least as much wrong as much as they get right, and it's definitely not the ONLY way to get those benefits (therapy, other social groups/healthy relationships have shown similar benefits). It just shows me that it's not all bad and like anything else that's run by humans, it's only as good as the people in charge. I think the increased acceptance and normalization of therapy, and emphasis on taking care of our mental health could replace most of the benefits of religion - if only we could erase some of the stigmas associated. One day!

Uranium3006,
Uranium3006 avatar

Why try and serve those needs though something with so much baggage?

TequilaMockingbird,
TequilaMockingbird avatar

It's all some people know, so it's better than nothing for them. Others, it's a nostalgic thing since they were raised that way. Or, it may be all they can afford - some people don't have coverage for mental health care and church is free. But, like I said, for many it is still the stigma - "only wimps need counseling, but a real man goes to church" kinda thing. We've got to keep breaking down the negative associations, but until then, this is what some people/regions have.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

Here in Mormon country USA, many people are leaving the church in droves because of its continued support of Donald Trump and Anti-LGBTQ behaviors.

The Church does not support Donald Trump or any political candidate or politician. Many of the sermons given by top leaders in the Church since at least 2020 are implicitly against the positions of Trump and Trumpism.

There are myriad news articles documenting this, by the way. A brief search found the following:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/13/trump-biden-mormons-church-412234
https://www.deseret.com/2023/9/7/23859918/trump-have-a-latter-day-saint-voter-problem/
https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/the-church-that-turned-from-trump-20210105-p56rwj
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/05/18/latest-mormon-land-what-if-church/
https://theconversation.com/mormon-leaders-whose-church-is-often-associated-with-the-gop-push-back-against-one-party-politics-209296
https://apnews.com/ap-exclusive-most-mormons-back-gop-but-fewer-support-trump-dfa9f5a8c265432c998ebaddf2603102
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/donald-trump-gop-mormon-vote-utah/474819/
https://www.newsweek.com/why-mormons-reject-donald-trump-517106

tygerprints,

The mormon church kisses trump's ass right left and sideways. Our horrible governor is a mentally ill trump sycophant. And our utah legilators are braying packs of uneducated sick-ass hyenas. That's the true horror we live with in utah.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

Most members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not live in Utah, or even the US for that matter. And the political leanings of Utah's governor have little to do with the Church.

It isn't even really possible for the Church to "kiss Trump's ass", and the notion is ridiculous anyways, considering that it's well-known that some of its senior leadership have made donations to the Democratic party in the past.

Regardless, feel free to ignore the eight links to articles demonstrating how Trump is not favored by most members of the Church. You're entitled to your delusions.

tygerprints,

Latter Day Saint's my asshole. People, human beings, are not meant to be "saints" I can't even think of a more vile concept than people being that conceited about themselves.

My great great grandfather, Parley P. Pratt, has a canyon named after him and yet I disavow him as nothing but a quack and a cultist. We gave his personal diaries to the University of Utah back in 1991 just to spite BYU.

The mormon church is a slavish trump-loving cult and nothing more, and it deserves to perish in infamy from the earth like all the dimwits who are members of its sick belief system.

BaldProphet,
BaldProphet avatar

Your bigotry is sad, but not surprising. I believe I recall commenting on it once before, last year sometime. Feel free to ignore my comments, because your replies offer nothing of value.

tygerprints,

Yes my bigotry is well founded, I appreciate your understanding, and just a word of advice, you might try pulling your thumb out of your butthole once in awhile so your brain, tiny as it is, can get some air.

Happy Easter, scumbag!

maniel, (edited )

Yeah, religion is the deadliest ideology, basically “that’s a made-up reason we’re better than you and that’s why you need to die” basically an extension of conservatism

tygerprints,

You'd think religion would be the foundation for acceptance and love of others, but it's actually a weapon to hurt, abuse, and choose to kill others. There is no human religion that actually does good things in real life to real people.

JoMiran,
@JoMiran@lemmy.ml avatar

Priest spews transphobia on the pulpit fifteen minutes after being balls deep in his tween altar boy.

Pastor rants about the loss of family values weeks before its found out that he’s impregnated a fourteen year old girl that he got hooked on meth or something.

Both scenarios are made up but the fact that they are VERY plausible should make it clear why people aren’t feeling keen on organized religion.

aniki,

VERY plausible

TehWorld,

For me, it moreso came down to the fact that the church was essentially becoming just a wing of the Republican political party.

sethw,

The audacity, if god all mighty says child rape and bigotry are righteous and correct who are they to overrule his will. Seems obvious to me the first step is to realize there is no god, and then they shouldve bailed anyway before even getting to the hate

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • news@lemmy.world
  • kavyap
  • ngwrru68w68
  • osvaldo12
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • khanakhh
  • everett
  • slotface
  • tacticalgear
  • rosin
  • normalnudes
  • megavids
  • Leos
  • GTA5RPClips
  • ethstaker
  • InstantRegret
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • Durango
  • provamag3
  • cisconetworking
  • tester
  • anitta
  • JUstTest
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •