Could the shameful Evangelical support of Donald Trump be the cause of the thousands of people falling away from religion?
Remember during the political fight to allow marriage equality when the Evangelicals' motto was "Marriage is between one man and one woman. Period?"
Now the Evangelicals support a man whose "marriage" has been between three wives, porn stars and several mistresses. Think about the outrage from the religious right during Monicagate but the deafening silence from those same folks on Trump's sordid and salacious sexcapades during his three marriages?
That could be one reason that thinking people turn away from religion. Hypocrisy. Hypocrisy in all religious sects -- the Catholic hierachy that knew about the sexual abuse of children and kept quiet; Islam, the religion that forces women into second-class citizenship, even punishing women with death for being raped; and the Evangelicals who continue to support a serial adulterer, liar, and business cheat.
The Number of Americans with No Religious Affiliation Is Rising
The rise of the atheists
By Michael Shermer |
Scientific American April 2018 Issue
"The Number of Americans with No Religious Affiliation Is Rising
The rise of the atheists
By Michael Shermer | Scientific American April 2018 Issue
The Number of Americans with No Religious Affiliation Is Rising
Credit: Izhar Cohen
In recent years much has been written about the rise of the “nones”—people who check the box for “none” on surveys of religious affiliation. A 2013 Harris Poll of 2,250 American adults, for example, found that 23 percent of all Americans have forsaken religion altogether. A 2015 Pew Research Center poll reported that 34 to 36 percent of millennials (those born after 1980) are nones and corroborated the 23 percent figure, adding that this was a dramatic increase from 2007, when only 16 percent of Americans said they were affiliated with no religion. In raw numbers, this translates to an increase from 36.6 million to 55.8 million nones. Though lagging far behind the 71 percent of Americans who identified as Christian in the Pew poll, they are still a significant voting block, far larger than Jews (4.7 million), Muslims (2.2 million) and Buddhists (1.7 million) combined (8.6 million) and comparable to politically powerful Christian sects such as Evangelical (25.4 percent) and Catholic (20.8 percent).
This shift away from the dominance of any one religion is good for a secular society whose government is structured to discourage catch basins of power from building up and spilling over into people's private lives. But it is important to note that these nones are not necessarily atheists. Many have moved from mainstream religions into New Age spiritual movements, as evidenced in a 2017 Pew poll that found an increase from 19 percent in 2012 to 27 percent in 2017 of those who reported being “spiritual but not religious.” Among this cohort, only 37 percent described their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or 'nothing in particular. ' ”
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If the number of non-affiliated Americans is rising, the Evangelicals can look to themselves for betraying their moral values and thus turning millions of Americans off of a kind of religion that picks and chooses who is morally fit to lead a country, depending only on his or her political affiliation.
Shulkin
...another one bites the dust. 
