Why are so many young Americans irreligious? By Dennis Prager for WND
Dennis Prager deconstructs the ‘secular brainwash’
Fewer young Americans affiliate with any organized religion than ever before in American history.
This means, therefore, that the children – and certainly the grandchildren – of millions of faithful Christians have abandoned Christianity. The same holds true for Jews, but that decline began somewhat earlier. Until the 20th century, nearly all Jews were religious (which nearly always meant Orthodox).
Today about 15% of Jews are Orthodox, while most Conservative and Reform Jews have the same values as the secular Left, and very few of their children attend synagogue.
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Why have so many Jews and Christians abandoned religious commitment and even a religious identity (many Jews retained an ethnic identity, an option not available to those who abandoned Christianity, as there is no Christian ethnic identity, Christianity being a religion, not an ethnicity as well as a religion)?
Two reasons predominate: the dominant secular culture and the failure of religious Jews and Christians to explain their respective religions.
Contemporary Western countries (and countries such as Japan whose identities are not Western, but which are culturally part of the West) are the most secular societies in recorded history.
In America, every public institution has been rendered God-free, that is, devoid of God. From the age of 5, and sometimes before that, children attend schools that make no reference to God or the Bible. Indeed, schools generally hold God and the Bible in intellectual and moral contempt.
American children are told at school that neither God, nor the Bible, nor religion is necessary – in fact, these are held to be impediments to moral progress. For example, virtually every student is taught the secular mantra that “more people have been killed by religion – or ‘in the name of God’ – than by anything else.” The implied reference is, of course, to Christians alone. (Examples of historic Islamic violence are ignored, and mention of them is deemed bigotry, and the same holds true of Native American and non-Western violence.)
