A country increasingly polarized by religion

Washington Post: By At the Normandy American Cemetery on the cliff above Omaha Beach, there are rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David. Certainly, many buried there were not religious. But the overwhelming majority of Americans in the mid-20th century identified themselves culturally as Protestants, Catholics or Jews, no matter their personal beliefs.

This cultural expectation has begun fading in American life. The fastest-growing religious affiliation today is the lack of religious affiliation — the rise of the “nones,” as in “none of the above,” who now constitute nearly 20 percent of the population.

For some, this is an indication that America is finally on the path of secularization taken by much of Europe, where non-religious funerals have become common and half of Europeans have never attended a religious service. Much of modern sociology has been premised on the notion that modernization and secularization go together.

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Categories: Americas, ATHEISM

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