The Catholic Church issues another statement about gay marriage

[Kingpoleon]

The subsample size is 1604 which is decent enough, and a 6 point rise in the context of a 8 point decline in the population as a whole probably does signify something but yeah I'd be wary of hanging too much on one poll, especially one which has to navigate both identifying religiosity and sexuality.

A better approach is probably to think about this from first principles, to ask whether it makes sense that a greater or the same (which is functionally an increase given the secular decline in belief) proportion of people who are identifying as gay are also identifying as christian compared to 10 or 20 years ago. And when you phrase it in that way it becomes not just plausible but overwhelmingly likely. If you came out in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s you were doing so in a culture which treated you terrible mostly for religious reasons (you could maybe argue that a lot of this was a theological excuse for an instinctive hatred, but what the real motivation of the bigot is doesn't actually matter- in the public sphere you are judged on the words that you say) and only a few tiny sects dissented from this consensus. In that context it is hardly surprising that few openly gay people identified with christianity, any more than its surprising that so many Jewish brits turned their back on Labour during Corbyn's leadership. If you treat a group of people with contempt they will respond in kind.

But of course there is nothing inherent about being gay that means you are more or less likely to believe in God, or that can not be reconciled with Christianity, which just as a matter of sociological fact is almost infinitely malleable. In a society without homophobia you would expect the proportion of gay theists to be similar to the proportion of gay atheists. Of course we don't live in that society, the news story that this thread is about testifies to that, but it is undeniable that we are light years away from the situation in 1984, 1994 or even 2004. Christian Churches as a whole are not close to being there yet, but the direction of travel is unmistakable, there are now many affirming denominations and most that aren't are in retreat, largely restricting their comments to whinging about religious freedom.

Because of this, because homophobia in the public sphere is year by year becoming uncoupled from christianity qua christianity, its easier for people to hold onto and explore their own faith when they come out rather than have to jettison it because its so hostile to them, and so it makes sense to see a gradual increase in religious identification of LGB people to meet the levels we see dropping in the population as a whole.

This is, broadly, the view I would say is most based on the facts. But it is important to note something else as well - this is not merely a six percent increase in Christianity, but a six percent increase inside of two years!

[afleitch]

I think you are perhaps hanging too much on one poll from 2015. There's plenty of reporting on LGBT affiliation being consistently lower.

2020: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-religiosity-us/

Here you have 47% saying they were religious with 37% being Christian (Gallup) compared to 68% Christian in the rest of the population (Gallup 2020) which is a 23% fall to a 4% fall amongst the general population.

[afleitch]

There are lots of cultural Catholics, and this has been going on long before the issue of gay rights was being debated.

Yes - the majority of Catholics worldwide are cultural Catholics. It is becoming a semi ethnic religion, like Judaism, which has more cultural implications than religious ones.

Define "cultural Catholic".

West Central Scotland.

When the same percentage still call themselves Catholic in the census but chapels are closing, and are quarter full on high holidays with an aging congregation pushing over 80, never mind over 65, priests recruited from Poland and almost no youth activity.

That's cultural Catholicism. It's identity without performance or performance without place.

Catholicism in Scotland? And in the Lowlands? I was under the impression that the Reformation had done its work there and there were practically no Catholics left (except maybe some Highland clans), just Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

The Glasgow area is/was pretty infamous for its sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics (largely descended from the huge wave of Irish immigrants).

Yes.

Irish immigration in two waves; Irish Catholic after the famine then Ulster Protestant (but originally plantation Scottish) around WW1.

[If my soul was made of stone]

A small but steadily increasing amount of the new queer religious bloc is being driven by heathens like me, at least in the more hippie faiths rather than the Varg Vikernes-type folk, even when said faiths arguably rest more on heteronormative essentialism and mystifying fertility and family than a lot of forms of Christianity. Whether or not this is a good thing for broader queer visibility and liberation is debatable, but it's helped me a lot personally.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

A small but steadily increasing amount of the new queer religious bloc is being driven by heathens like me, at least in the more hippie faiths rather than the Varg Vikernes-type folk, even when said faiths arguably rest more on heteronormative essentialism and mystifying fertility and family than a lot of forms of Christianity. Whether or not this is a good thing for broader queer visibility and liberation is debatable, but it's helped me a lot personally.

I know someone, a lesbian who's been engaged to her girlfriend/fiancee for about seven years for whatever reason, who worships Jesus as one god among others in an Eclectic Wiccan context.

[If my soul was made of stone]

A small but steadily increasing amount of the new queer religious bloc is being driven by heathens like me, at least in the more hippie faiths rather than the Varg Vikernes-type folk, even when said faiths arguably rest more on heteronormative essentialism and mystifying fertility and family than a lot of forms of Christianity. Whether or not this is a good thing for broader queer visibility and liberation is debatable, but it's helped me a lot personally.

I know someone, a lesbian who's been engaged to her girlfriend/fiancee for about seven years for whatever reason, who worships Jesus as one god among others in an Eclectic Wiccan context.

I feel a distinct inadequacy over my degree of syncretism now.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

A small but steadily increasing amount of the new queer religious bloc is being driven by heathens like me, at least in the more hippie faiths rather than the Varg Vikernes-type folk, even when said faiths arguably rest more on heteronormative essentialism and mystifying fertility and family than a lot of forms of Christianity. Whether or not this is a good thing for broader queer visibility and liberation is debatable, but it's helped me a lot personally.

I know someone, a lesbian who's been engaged to her girlfriend/fiancee for about seven years for whatever reason, who worships Jesus as one god among others in an Eclectic Wiccan context.

I feel a distinct inadequacy over my degree of syncretism now.

As I told you the other week, Cybele-Isis-Gaia-Astarte-Parvati-Marianism is there waiting for you.

[bore]

I think you are perhaps hanging too much on one poll from 2015. There's plenty of reporting on LGBT affiliation being consistently lower.

2020: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-religiosity-us/

Here you have 47% saying they were religious with 37% being Christian (Gallup) compared to 68% Christian in the rest of the population (Gallup 2020) which is a 23% fall to a 4% fall amongst the general population.

I'm not sure if this is addressed to me or Kingpoleon or where the numbers in this post come from (Apart from the 47 and 37% which comes from the Williams institute study, but this doesn't seem to have a temporal component, its just an aggregation of 2015-2017 Gallup surveys), but I agree that the polling data seems pretty equivocal and not worth putting too much stock into. For my part I wouldn't expect an absolute increase in LGBT religiosity - because people rarely convert as adults  any convergence would be the result of the religiosity gap between LGBT and straight people growing up now beginning to close- which would have an effect on the populational level only over the course of decades and only on the rate of change, not its direction.

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

There are lots of cultural Catholics, and this has been going on long before the issue of gay rights was being debated.

Yes - the majority of Catholics worldwide are cultural Catholics. It is becoming a semi ethnic religion, like Judaism, which has more cultural implications than religious ones.

The issue is whether or not the children of cultural Catholics will still identify as Catholic in 50, or even 30 years.

There are lots of cultural Catholics, and this has been going on long before the issue of gay rights was being debated.

Yes - the majority of Catholics worldwide are cultural Catholics. It is becoming a semi ethnic religion, like Judaism, which has more cultural implications than religious ones.

Define "cultural Catholic".

A cultural Catholic would be someone who identifies as Catholic but doesn't actually take Catholicism very seriously. 

[Associate Justice PiT]

There are lots of cultural Catholics, and this has been going on long before the issue of gay rights was being debated.

Yes - the majority of Catholics worldwide are cultural Catholics. It is becoming a semi ethnic religion, like Judaism, which has more cultural implications than religious ones.

The issue is whether or not the children of cultural Catholics will still identify as Catholic in 50, or even 30 years.

     It is unlikely that they will, regardless of what the Catholic Church does. I grew up surrounded by cultural Catholic parents with atheist children, and the consistent theme in their children's unbelief was a reaction to the hypocrisy of the parents. If parents do not fulfill their duty to raise their children in the faith that they claim to be a part of, then there is little that the ministers of that faith can really do to counteract that failure.

[7,052,770]

There are lots of cultural Catholics, and this has been going on long before the issue of gay rights was being debated.

Yes - the majority of Catholics worldwide are cultural Catholics. It is becoming a semi ethnic religion, like Judaism, which has more cultural implications than religious ones.

The issue is whether or not the children of cultural Catholics will still identify as Catholic in 50, or even 30 years.

     It is unlikely that they will, regardless of what the Catholic Church does. I grew up surrounded by cultural Catholic parents with atheist children, and the consistent theme in their children's unbelief was a reaction to the hypocrisy of the parents. If parents do not fulfill their duty to raise their children in the faith that they claim to be a part of, then there is little that the ministers of that faith can really do to counteract that failure.

That's the polar opposite from my experience. The kids whose parents were super devout tended to be so disgusted by the teachings on issues like LGBT equality and most especially birth control that they left Christianity altogether for basic decency reasons, while the kids whose parents told them it was ok to just ignore the "official" policy on those issues generally still identify as Catholic.

Obviously, neither of those observations are 100%, but every atheist I know was raised in a hardline religious (either Catholic or Evangelical) household, not a casual one.

[Kingpoleon]

I think you are perhaps hanging too much on one poll from 2015. There's plenty of reporting on LGBT affiliation being consistently lower.

2020: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/lgbt-religiosity-us/

Here you have 47% saying they were religious with 37% being Christian (Gallup) compared to 68% Christian in the rest of the population (Gallup 2020) which is a 23% fall to a 4% fall amongst the general population.

Bore and I are not disputing a consistent difference with negative correlation compared to the general populace. We are instead noting something which is fairly surprising: that polls generally indicate a standard increase, ESPECIALLY relative to general population. Bore explained the two likely demographic patterns here, and I would suggest that it will either A) stabilize right at or nearly at that of the general populace; or B) it will surpass the general populace by some degree and eventually stabilize.

You shouldn’t cross compare polls from different sources like that - they will word questions differently, sample differently, etc., so regardless of how accurate actual numbers are, actual change from two different polling sources is fallacious and ill advised.

[Associate Justice PiT]

There are lots of cultural Catholics, and this has been going on long before the issue of gay rights was being debated.

Yes - the majority of Catholics worldwide are cultural Catholics. It is becoming a semi ethnic religion, like Judaism, which has more cultural implications than religious ones.

The issue is whether or not the children of cultural Catholics will still identify as Catholic in 50, or even 30 years.

     It is unlikely that they will, regardless of what the Catholic Church does. I grew up surrounded by cultural Catholic parents with atheist children, and the consistent theme in their children's unbelief was a reaction to the hypocrisy of the parents. If parents do not fulfill their duty to raise their children in the faith that they claim to be a part of, then there is little that the ministers of that faith can really do to counteract that failure.

That's the polar opposite from my experience. The kids whose parents were super devout tended to be so disgusted by the teachings on issues like LGBT equality and most especially birth control that they left Christianity altogether for basic decency reasons, while the kids whose parents told them it was ok to just ignore the "official" policy on those issues generally still identify as Catholic.

Obviously, neither of those observations are 100%, but every atheist I know was raised in a hardline religious (either Catholic or Evangelical) household, not a casual one.

     Do they merely speak their views or do they live them too? Southern Evangelicals have historically had a major problem with antinomian soteriology, leading many to live in worldly fashions and still fancy themselves as being saved. Fortunately though in more recent years they also have had better teachers emerge who preach and emphasize the importance of walking in the ways of God and being at enmity with sin. Paul Washer in a sermon called the Southern United States the most spiritually dangerous place in the world. It's an exaggeration, but also the wake-up call that people need.

     If one lacks a good Christian witness of a life lived for Christ then one must be regarded as a cultural Christian, regardless of what one might say about theology. Faith is not something that can exist only as an opinion in one's head, but must also be realized in a fundamental movement of the spirit in response to the Holy Spirit.

[Kingpoleon]

https://www.ncronline.org/news/vatican/austrias-cardinal-sch-nborn-god-will-not-deny-same-sex-couples-blessing

Interesting to see a Cardinal publicly disagree like this. Isn’t the German Church in general a bit more liberal than the rest of the Church at large?