Market-driven Christianity has boomed in the US but now it is beginning to bustIs Christianity ceasing to matter in the US? The question might seem absurd in the light of statistics that show a country which still publicly respects religion to an extent difficult for a European to suppose. Fewer than a third of all Americans admit that they seldom or never go to church. There is only one member of Congress who claims to have no religion,and every single congressional Republican identifies as a Christian except for two Orthodox Jews. But there are genuine reasons to suppose that these figures are misleading, and the role of Christianity as share of the social and political convulsions of the country nowadays is changing and diminishing in important ways.
Traditional American Christianity was shaped by British experience in the 17th and 18th centuries: it was Protestant, and patriotic,and providential, but not much concerned with doctrine. The rejection of any devout establishment opened the way for competition between individual churches and then produced the extraordinary organisational and theological creativity that distinguished the US from all previous Christian societies. America seemed to some observers to supply the unquestioned future of religion in a globalised world. There was, and is,a church for every possible niche, from Unitarian Universalists to the Westboro Baptists.
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Source: theguardian.com