The number of Americans who identify as Christian is 76 percent, down from 86% since 1990.  Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious ceremony and more than one in four Americans will not be buried in a religious ceremony when they die.

These are the findings of the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by researchers at Trinity College of Hartford, Connecticut.  These findings comport with a similar study conducted in 2007 by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.  Partly the reason people do not identify with religion anymore is because of the hypocrisy of the evangelical movement over the decade.  As the United States tortured people held in our custody; detained prisoners with no access to a trial to discover their guilt or innocence; rejected any role as “custodian of the Earth” in regards to climate change; created a situation where Wall Street looted the American economy; and rejected scientific research and findings in favor of previously-held conclusions; it’s no wonder people feel less religious.   All of the policies of the last eight years were upheld by the evangelicals, who raised nary a whimper as everything that people believe it means to be an American was put through a shredder. 

Americans are waking up to many falsehoods:  that those who espouse religious values often do not follow them (e.g. Ted Haggard, et al.); that the market does not always do what is best; that our leaders will ditch our values if it helps them attain power (Dick Cheney, George Bush, Tom DeLay, et al.). 

So it’s interesting that Pope Benedict XVI, on a recent trip to Cameroon, once more provided an example of how Big Religion holds back human progress: in an area hit hardest by the AIDS crisis, the Pope told them that condoms actually exacerbate the problems of AIDS (emphasis added):

The pontiff, speaking to journalists on his flight, said the condition was “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”. [....]

“It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality,” he added.

More than two-thirds – 67% – of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Three-quarters of all Aids deaths in 2007 happened there.

One has to wonder why anyone listens to the religious institutions anymore, when they clearly have an agenda that works against humanity.   That is one reason why people feel less religious.  Leonard Pitts, Jr. at the Seattle Times has his own theory:

What is the cumulative effect upon outside observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker living like lords on the largesse of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart’s pornography addiction, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the name of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, multiplied by the church that kicked out some members because they voted Democrat, divided by people caterwauling on courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied by the square root of Catholic priests preying on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those “traditional values” coalitions and “family values” councils that try to bully public schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then subtract selflessness, service, sacrifice, holiness and hope.

Do the math, and I bet you’ll draw the same conclusion the researchers did.