Ep.57 The Decline of Christianity, the Rise of the “Nones” and Philosophies of the Person that Shape Unbelief

This episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast is a talk I gave at AmPhil’s Center for Civil Society conference in November, 2023 on the “Rise of the Nones.”   According to Pew Research, those who declare no religious affiliation - None -  are now the largest religious category in the United States. In this talk I address several overarching reasons for the decline of Christianity and address how five dominant visions of the human person including person as a cog or scourge, transhumanism & transgenderism, plastic anthropology, and the person as a commodity — also play a key role not only in despair and anxiety, but contribute both to the decline of Christian belief and the rise of secularism and pantheism/new paganism. This talk is a thematic overview and distillation of two longer lectures I give on five false anthropologies and 10 reasons for unbelief and the decline of Christianity. Some of the topics I address include Breakdown of the Family - specifically decrease in fatherhood participation, and its impact on religious practice Sexual Revolution  - disorients the person and relationships between men and women Feminism & Smashing the Patriarchy — “Flight from Woman” Egalitarianism and Pantheism - Tocqueville’s prediction of the rise of pantheism in democratic societies Technology + Technological Society: Practical: use of technology and propaganda Theoretical: Empiricist rationality is incoherent and severs relationship between affectivity and reason Scientism: vision of a technical solution to evil, sin, suffering Humanitarianism and what I call “Almost Christianity” Failures of the Church: scandal, corruption, assimilation, and failure to teach and catechize Loss of non-linguistic catechesis When people are leaving Christianity today, do they know what they are leaving?  Confusion about the nature and destiny of the human person and what it means to be an embodied person   <ul class="p-rich_text_list p-rich_text_list__bullet" data-stringify-ty