Conservatives are sure to love these stats, especially because America is obviously home to many Christians. But the number of people that are religiously unaffiliated is increasing, especially amongst younger generations.
It seems that 36-percent of younger millennials (born 1991-1996), and 34-percent of older millennials (born 1981-1989), are religiously unaffiliated. In contrast, only 11-percent of people in the “silent generation” (born 1928-1945) are religiously unaffiliated.
With this increase in non-religious people, the Bible is being challenged more than it ever has been before. It has even landed in the top 10 list of challenged books in 2015 by the American Library Association (ALA). The holy book is number six on the list and is mainly challenged because of its religious viewpoints — naturally.
The ALA defines “challenge” as:
“…a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness.”
The Bible became one of the most challenged books because people objected to the illicit sexual content and the incitement to violence. Many people believe that the presence of a Bible in a library violates the separation of church and state.
Conservatives have jumped on this, citing it as a reason why Christians are being “persecuted” in America. Right-wingers have been making these kinds of headlines for years. Despite the separation of church and state, Christians have been pushing their beliefs on us for years.
We have “In God We Trust” on our money as well as prayers at PUBLIC government meetings. In my state, we had an elected official trying to put up a HUGE stone monument of the Ten Commandments (I don’t know how he is still in office, really).
But, they are being “persecuted.” How dare we take away their rights to infringe on other people’s rights.
We are NOT a Christian nation! We are a secular nation! Frankly, the Bible needs to be discussed, challenged, and analyzed. We should also be able to do that with any religious text.
Featured image via flickr, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
