One of the channels we watch a lot is Styxhexenhammer666. It is often a little cringe but I find him entertaining and amusing, and often informative as well. He posted a video last week that was probably one of his best and it deals with an issue I have been engaged in for many years.
I know it can be hard to take him seriously when he dresses like that but at least now that he is married his wife doesn’t let him do the “shirtless under the leather jacket” thing. His point is nevertheless very important.
As we live in an ostensibly culturally Christian nation, it is generally assumed you are either a Christian of some sort or you are an atheist. There isn’t a third option except for the small religious minorities like Jews, Muslims and Mormons. However that leaves a lot of people who are not Christians lumped in with atheists because most people conflate organized religious public observations with being spiritual or having faith. This is going to be the topic of a series of posts I am working on but the truth in America is that the proportion of the population that is “Christian”, even in the most generous use of the term, is shrinking rapidly but that doesn’t mean that atheism is ascendant. Unfortunately the lack of an intellectual movement that seriously addresses people in the growing group of “spiritual but not religious” means most of these people are meandering around and getting suckered in by healing crystals and stuff like that.
Watch for a new series starting soon. All across the faith spectrum we need to have dialogue about people who are deeply devout but reject organized religion for whatever reason.