Hot off of the presses, Newsweek's cover story is Jon Meacham's "The Decline and Fall of Christian America."
According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percent since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. Meacham writes that these figures show that America has not only become less Christian, but moved into a "post-Christian" phase. "This is not to say that the Christian God is dead," he writes, "but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory."
Many conservative Christians believe they have lost the battles over issues such as abortion, school prayer and even same-sex marriage, and that the country has now entered a post-Christian phase. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theology Seminary tells Newsweek. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." What was once the cradle of American civilization may be the cradle of "America's secular future."
Threatens? Threatens the very heart of our culture? Of course, the author is one of those born-again Baptist fundamentalists who would like America to be under Mosaic Law. He doesn't understand the concept of 'democracy' and the freedom from religion, upon which this nation was founded. He, like his Muslim fundamentalist counterparts, believes those ancient rules contained in the dusty writings of those nomadic tribes. He is not wise enough nor is he objective enough to understand that a democracy cannot be encumbered with religious dogma.
