Christianity is on its way out. This is the first year that less people identified as Christian than the previous year. I'm glad for that, because it seems like it'll be the birth of a larger variety of religions.
<Snipped quote by Rogue Colm>
Given that Christians are on the decline, I'm going to state what is becoming an unpopular opinion, in the spirit of this thread:
Beliefs like yours are a cancer upon humanity, and are going to lead to the collapse of civilization.
<Snipped quote by Jotunn Draugr>
Probably end up more like "Meet the new Jesus, same as the old Jesus." Put the Wiccans in power and eventually even they'd become rigid and bureaucratic too. You might even get the traditional "God and Goddess" Wiccans purging the "I bought a spellbook at Barnes and Noble" Wiccans and the "I really like Magic: The Gathering" Wiccans. And really, is there any other religion you see regularly? I think I've seen Krishna's a total of once, Muslims are around but largely stay to themselves, and most Buddhists tend to just be pacifists with no other interest in the religion. But Wiccans? Shit, they are all over the place. I would even venture to say I know about as many Wiccans as I do practicing Catholics.
<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>
Haha I think it must really depend on what part of the world you're in. There are no Wiccans in my area. The only Wiccans I've ever met were in America. Canada is full of Hindu's, Hare Krishna's, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Muslims. There's a giant gated Muslim compound in the middle of the city here, where they "educate" them from childhood, through high school, until adulthood.
That said, so long as this diversity-phile mental cancer, that has taken over the West, doesn't spread to the rest of the world, Christianity will continue to flourish. China, for example, is having a huge explosion of Christianity, completely unrecognized by government statistics.
<Snipped quote by Jotunn Draugr>
I suspect the interest in religious diversity is more a symptom of how Christianity in the west has gone rather rigid. It's not a new phenomena, ancient pagan states went through a similar process. Hell, the rigidity of the Roman religion was part of the reason Christianity came about. I think you can even put the out of place political moralism aside (though homophobia and creationism has done them no favors), the big thing is that most churches come off as social clubs for retirees. Though, I will say, I don't think this rigidity is completely true everywhere. You don't see it in Mormonism, or in black churches. Those seem very much alive.
Christianity in Asia isn't rigid. I've met a few who came from it (the Korean batch at least. My parents are Methodists and the Methodists are heavy into Korea). It's very revivalistic, but it's also picked up quite a bit of Asianness too. Essentially the thing is still alive there, moving with the current of the population rather than despite it like in the west. I think, personally, we could see a revivalist movement in the west sometime this century that revitalizes Christianity, but like all revivalist movements, the Christianity that comes from it reborn will be different then what came before.
But so long as so many churches remain places where old people tell other old people the story of Noah the two-thousand-umpteenth time right before having an egg casserole potluck, Christianity will lose ground in most of the western world. And let them. You only deserve as much attention as you earn.
...I do confess I am a diversity-phile myself, but I think I come by it honestly. It's not so much a liberal open-mindedness thing for me as it is a natural attraction to novelty. I like weird shit. I'm the type of dude that tries the alligator on a stick. So the idea of religious diversity sounds fun for no other reason but it might buy me a few weird conversations (You actually worship the Egyptian gods? Holy fuck, what's that like?)
<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>
Yah it's just the older sects of Christianity that tend to be really dry. I come from a Pentecostal community, so Sunday morning is basically a free rock concert, with a power-sermon after. The crowds are actually very young, and youth ministries are flourishing among evangelicals. I'm not a fan of Catholics at all. They come from a time where they used to be unified with the government, and it shows. People go there out of obligation, more than anything.
As Christianity needs to reinvent itself, it does. Look at Joel Olsteen. His new motivation brand of Christianity has exploded so much, that he's now a mainstream figure. And then there's the Ann Coulter Christians, where faith and politics go hand-in-hand, and really help keep it from getting stale.
And don't get me wrong. I've been to China and France, and love both countries deeply. I love different cultures (especially East Asian ones), in all their aspects, but an individual civilization only functions when its citizenry shares certain principles and unifying factors, and this trend of cultural self-hatred on the Progressive Left is extremely destructive. There's a reason Black Lives Matter is burning cities and shutting down airports (even in the UK, where blacks are actually treated BETTER than whites, by the police), while Muslim gangs kill gays and Jews in the streets of London, while Chinese nationalists kill Falun Gong followers and assault Japanese immigrants, while rogue USSR restorationists have taken over entire cities in the Ukraine, while there are entire communities in Canada where they don't speak a word of English, while the Turks and Syrians continue their genocide of Kurds in their own countries, and so on. Multiculturalism, without forced cultural integration, just leads to conflict, and stokes the fires of racism. The Left's refusal to promote their own culture, in their own country, is only going to lead to more destruction, more poverty, more racism, and more death.
On that note: unpopular opinion: Time for some nationalistic profiling!!!:
Cultures who, from what I know of them, successfully integrated into the English-speaking world, and have benefitted the civilization as a result:
-Italians
-Irish
-Jews
-Scots
-Germans
-Dutch
-Danes
-Finns
-Norwegians
-Swedes
-Russians/Slavs
-Egyptians
-European Spanish
-French
-Japanese
-South Africans
-Cubans
-Koreans
-Greeks
-Some Pols
-Turks
Cultures who generally haven't:
-Mandarin Chinese
-Some Cantonese Chinese
-Mexicans
-Indians
-Arabs
-Sub-Saharan Africans, excluding South Africa
-North Africans, excluding Egypt
-Some Pols
-Native Americans
-Jamaicans
-Hutterites
Since America is part of the English speaking world you really can't exclude parts of Africa since American culture is like 80% African culture.
Native Americans had to teach early European immigrants how to farm the land in order to survive (your welcome land stealers)
Lets see how many people this triggers.
In the argument of Freedom vs Order, Order always wins. You don't build civilization on freedom, you do it on order. Freedom is overrated in that regard, you could easily get rid of a few and no one would notice a difference in that regard minus the inital out burst.
@Chrononaut
And history is written by the victor which is why conquered is used instead of stolen. It's a pneumonic device to sound less harmful. They stole and lied and killed and slaughtered all over the globe to "conquer" aka steal people's homes for their gold and jewels and natural resources in a name of a crown.
<Snipped quote by Jotunn Draugr>
I think a lot of this is misinterpreted for political reasons. The amount of leftists who actually hate their own culture is, I'd suspect, negligible at best. My interpretation of the movement you are catching onto isn't that of self-hatred as it is typically misrepresented to be, but rather a deep distrust of traditional conservatism.
Not a distrust born simply out of politics either. I think most liberals are, deep down, simply moderates who are petrified, completely scared, that if they let the conservative elements in their country off their leash, the conservatives will go full fledged pogrom. Hence all the corny integrationalist stuff. It's not a hatred of their culture, it is a fear of an overzealous corner of their culture that has committed mass-murder in the name of the culture in the past, and that they assume is just itching to do so in the future. I have never personally met a leftist of any stripe who doesn't hate ISIS or Muslim terror, but they don't jump up and down about it because they are deathly afraid the conservative elements of their culture would use the opportunity to go full on Rwanda. Kill them all, burn their mosques, rape their dogs, the full monty. That's the thing. In the mind of a full-fledged liberal, every conservative is a secret SS Nazi just burning for the opportunity to get the ol' killing squad back together. And this also explains why liberals rarely ever push for meaningful reform, and by and large keep losing the working class to the right; they don't want to change things that much, they just want to keep back a murderous element they perceive on the right.
<Snipped quote by Jotunn Draugr>
I just have to say, this is a bizarre list. The Turks and Russians have integrated into the Anglo-Saxon world, but the Mexicans and Native Americans haven't? Wat? I feel like you rolled dice to put this one together.
@Jotunn Draugr
Since America is part of the English speaking world you really can't exclude parts of Africa since American culture is like 80% African culture. Gospel dirived from hymns slaves sang. We created blues, jazz, tap, hiphop, flat irons. (And a lot more that I can't remember at the moment)
Mexico reached far up into America so when it was stolen from them their culture seaped, once again, into an English speaking culture.
Native Americans had to teach early European immigrants how to farm the land in order to survive (your welcome land stealers)
