Young people abandon Evangelical churches in droves.

Courtesy of Laura Stepp for CNN:

Republican conservatives should be worried. Evangelical churches that frequently support conservative candidates are finally admitting something the rest of us have known for some time: Their young adult members are abandoning church in significant numbers and taking their voting power with them. 

David Kinnaman, the 38-year-old president of the Barna Group, an evangelical research firm, is the latest to sound the alarm. In his new book, "You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church and Rethinking Faith," he says that 18- to 29-year-olds have fallen down a "black hole" of church attendance. There is a 43% drop in Christian church attendance between the teen and early adult years, he says. 

I'm not surprised. These young dropouts value the sense of community their churches provide but are tired of being told how they should live their lives. They don't appreciate being condemned for living with a partner, straight or gay, outside of marriage or opting for abortion to terminate an unplanned pregnancy. 

Consider the following facts about millennials in general: 

• Seven in 10 millennials say sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable (PDF). (According to Kinnaman, young Christians are as sexually active as non-Christians.) 
• Most women in their early 20s who give birth are unmarried. 
• More than six in 10 millennials (including 49% of Republican millennials) support same-sex marriages. 
• Six in 10 millennials say abortion should be legal (PDF), a higher proportion than found in the general population. A higher percentage say abortion services should be available in local communities. 

Millennials also part ways with conservative orthodoxy on wealth distribution and caring for the environment. According to a report in The Christian Science Monitor, three out of four say that wealthy corporations and financiers have too much power and that taxes should be raised on the very wealthy, and two out of three say financial institutions should be regulated more closely. In addition, most say that creationists' view on evolution is outdated. 

Sounds a lot like Democratic ideology to me.

As we all know, the Evangelical vote is the very foundation of GOP support.

With fewer young people willing to put their intellect in neutral in order to be directed as to how to think, and of course how to vote, the smaller the impact the Fundamentalists will have on the elections in this country. 

Adding this information to what we now know about the rapidly aging demographic of Fox News viewers, and the even older listeners of Right Wing radio, I think that we can now predict, with much confidence, that this country is DEFINITELY heading in a much more progressive direction.

Now we have actual data to use that disproves the Right Wing's irrational claim that America is growing more conservative. In fact it seems to be picking up speed as it rushes to embrace ideals that have long been the foundation of the Democratic party.

Have I mentioned lately how proud I am of this younger generation?

Perhaps THIS is why the Republicans keep trying to disenfranchise more and more young voters, and working to find ways to steal elections. 

Because they know that their time is coming to a close, and that someday the Republican party might well go the way of the Whig Party, and end up on the scrap heap of history. And what a great day in America THAT will be!

By the way I finally found a scientific illustration of how the fundamentalist religions work.

Yeah, that is kind of how I always pictured it.