A common refrain by many in the United States nowadays is that “things are worse now than ever before.” Evidence such as a rampant communal rise in narcissism and entitlement, mental health problems, the opioid epidemic in the U.S., and record-breaking violent crime rates support such a hypothesis. All the while, this downfall coincides with the orthodoxy of left-wing efforts to remove our country’s founding Judeo-Christian values from society. Given these struggles, it can be legitimately argued that a viable solution to our societal ills is to make America religious again.
“U.S. church membership dipped below a majority for the first time on record,” Kara McKinney, host of Tipping Point with Kara McKinney on One America News Network, told me in an interview. She referenced recent Gallup polls to reinforce her claim.
“In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999,” McKinney said. Moreover, she pointed out that the Pew Research Center revealed that the number of people without a religion has also increased in recent years.
“They found that about 29% of Americans now identify as having no religion, which is up 3 percentage points from 2019,” McKinney said.
McKinney believes this lack of religion has had devastating consequences in our country’s society.
“We see this reflected in various societal indicators such as the rising numbers of divorce, depression, and drug abuse,” McKinney said. “The mass killings and sadistic tortures of the 20th century, in which some estimates place the butcher’s bill at as high as 150 million victims, shows what happens when godless regimes are on the march.”
Given the surge in homicides, carjackings, and other criminal acts, this claim does have some validity. As believers in a deity decreased, crime and other acts of immorality rose. While some may argue this is an oversimplification, recent studies echo McKinney’s assertions, showing a definitive correlation between the influence of religion in society and immoral and criminal behavior.
According to a study from Montclair State University, being involved with a religion “may encourage the development of social networks that decrease antisocial behaviors such as crime.” Additionally, the study revealed that adherence to religious principles limits substance abuse, delinquency, and crime. Religious involvement helps “encourage social bonds and controls which prevent crime through bonds with social institutions like the family and education.” Furthermore, religion helps deter “individual level crime by using the threat of supernatural punishment and promotes normative behavior through the promise of a supernatural reward.”
Additionally, studies have shown that adherence to religion can curb or prevent recreational drug use — something plaguing the U.S. One way this is accomplished is “by the process of socialization and social selection.” This is particularly prevalent when youths mature and enter the stages of adulthood. Religion, according to the studies, acts as deterrence through methods of socialization and peer influence. This fosters an environment of accountability within the respective religious community through one’s commitment to (their) God. Moreover, peer presence and influence in the community act as another form of deterrence which has led to religious people being “less likely to engage in substance use and abuse.”
A 2001 study revealed that in numerous instances that “explore the relationship between religiosity and crime,” those who engaged in “public religious engagement and personal religious beliefs have a stable inverse deterrent effect on criminal behavior.” Moreover, this deterrent effect was even more prevalent when evaluating the relationship between religion and non-violent crimes. Still, another study showed that over 90% of subjects analyzed reported that religiosity was “a protective factor against antisocial behaviors, like crime.” Other studies found that “religious engagement may be part of the institutional relationships that are the key in the process of desistance from crime.”
Simply stated, being religious is typically a sign of good, moral people. Perhaps these studies are indicative of why people who claim to be not religious still tend to believe in some supernatural phenomenon. People yearn to believe in something, but they have been indoctrinated into making sure that belief is not a religious one.
“Even those who profess not to believe in God are usually spiritual in other ways as they seek to fill the God-shaped hole in their heart which nags at them,” McKinney said. “If Gen Z, the most likely to have no official religious affiliation, trends are anything to go by, many are now finding comfort in astrology, crystals, witchcraft, and pagan mythologies. While they may not actually believe in the particulars of any of those pursuits, many still imbibe Satan’s seductive siren call that undergirds them.”
McKinney raises an excellent point. Humans do have this innate belief in a greater spiritualism to predicate our existence. Yet, the Left has done such an excellent job removing all elements of the Judeo-Christian principles on which our country was founded. Rather than belief in God or religion, people search for other spiritual answers, such as those McKinney listed. In place of religion and helping the greater good, contemporary thought focuses on individuality and such mantras as “living your best life.”
“Everywhere we look, we are told to think of ourselves as the best, the greatest, the fount of our own joy and wholeness. As a 25-year-old woman, if I launched a YouTube channel full of videos of myself in skimpy outfits talking about how beautiful, sexy, and confident I am, I would be lauded as a feminist icon instead of the raging narcissist that I would be in that situation,” McKinney said. “But that message is on the cover of every book of the self-help guru aisle at Barnes and Nobles and even in CIA recruitment commercials and in every media medium in between.”
“We saw what that type of thinking caused in the 20th century. Those evil regimes, from the Nazis to the Soviets, believed that religions like Christianity and Judaism were to either be co-opted (i.e., snuffed out sneakily by leaving up a facade for the public) or to be ruthlessly crushed beneath a jackboot and exterminated,” McKinney said. “Those ideologies rejected the limits of physical reality and instead set out to make a ‘new man’ in man’s own desired image, not in God’s. They also rejected that the present Earth and humanity are in a fallen state. They instead believed that a utopia was possible on Earth, if only those people (various groups scapegoated as oppressors) were dead, expelled, or locked away so that progress can march on over their corpses.”
She is right. A shift away from religion has produced little in terms of improving humanity. Selfishness has replaced selflessness, instant gratification has replaced a puritan work ethic, and, all the while, standards keep getting lower to accommodate the collective regression that has transpired as a result. As more and more people die from drug overdoses and violent crimes, a return to religion could provide a remedy to many of the problems plaguing the country.
“I shiver to think what future horrors await us as more people come to believe those underlying tenants,” McKinney said.
