# Ep.57 The Decline of Christianity, the Rise of the “Nones” and Philosophies of the Person that Shape Unbelief

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-moral-imagination-1176352/ep-57-the-decline-of-christianity-the-rise-of-the-nones-and-philosophies-of-the-person-that-shape-unbelief.md
Podcast: [The Moral Imagination](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-moral-imagination-1176352)
Published: 2024-02-26T09:57:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.themoralimagination.com/p/ep57-the-decline-of-christianity-0a8
Audio file: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/142169478/dca49efbcebae12b8a8b2a65425fb591.mp3
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Duration seconds: 2562

## Resource

This episode of the Moral Imagination Podcast is a talk I gave at AmPhil’s Center for Civil Society conference in November, 2023 on the “Rise of the Nones.” According to Pew Research, those who declare no religious affiliation - None - are now the largest religious category in the United States. In this talk I address several overarching reasons for the decline of Christianity and address how five dominant visions of the human person including person as a cog or scourge, transhumanism & transgenderism, plastic anthropology, and the person as a commodity — also play a key role not only in despair and anxiety, but contribute both to the decline of Christian belief and the rise of secularism and pantheism/new paganism. This talk is a thematic overview and distillation of two longer lectures I give on five false anthropologies and 10 reasons for unbelief and the decline of Christianity. Some of the topics I address include Breakdown of the Family - specifically decrease in fatherhood participation, and its impact on religious practice Sexual Revolution - disorients the person and relationships between men and women Feminism & Smashing the Patriarchy — “Flight from Woman” Egalitarianism and Pantheism - Tocqueville’s prediction of the rise of pantheism in democratic societies Technology + Technological Society: Practical: use of technology and propaganda Theoretical: Empiricist rationality is incoherent and severs relationship between affectivity and reason Scientism: vision of a technical solution to evil, sin, suffering Humanitarianism and what I call “Almost Christianity” Failures of the Church : scandal, corruption, assimilation, and failure to teach and catechize Loss of non-linguistic catechesis When people are leaving Christianity today, do they know what they are lea…

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## Transcript

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