Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age
FADING FAITH chronicles the decline of faith world-wide as well as in America and predicts that America is traveling the same path to secularism that has been traveled by all the other developed nations of the world. A historic transition is occurring, barely noticed. Slowly, imperceptibly, religion is shriveling. Pope Benedict XVI laments that ''Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner unknown before now to humanity, excludes God from the public conscience.'' In Denmark and Sweden, fewer than 5% of adults are in church on a typical Sunday. Although over half of British children attended Sunday school in 1900, by 2000 the rate was down to 4%. In America, despite the superficial success of the noisier religious groups, surveys since 1990 have shown that the godless fraction of Americans had doubled from 1/10th to 1/5th of the adult population. Around 45 million Americans live apart from churchgoing. --Editor, Gustav Broukal Press