NEWSWEEK'S COVER: "THE DECLINE AND FALL OF CHRISTIAN AMERICA"

Justin Taylor links to Dr. Albert Mohler's response to Jon Meacham's cover story.

Update 4/15/09:  Maggie Gallagher offers major corrections to the impression Meacham's article leaves.  The big jump of those who declare "no religion" took place from 1990-2001:

In that last seven years the number of Americans who say they have no religion barely inched up from 14.2 percent to 15 percent.

She says further,

Far more significant (by far) in recent years than any shift away from Christianity have been the shifts within Christianity. . .  Overall Christianity has been holding its own in recent years. But since 2001, the liberal mainline Protestants have lost a third of their adherents. 

"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism -- mainline versus evangelical -- is collapsing," said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States."

Further:

The most amusing thing, if it weren't so sad, is to watch the pundits prophesy that abortion and gay marriage and evangelical boogeymen in general are turning off people from religion. When the reality is that the only Christian denominations declining in recent years are those which have surrendered core Christian teaching on sex, marriage and the dignity of every human life.

What we have all learned over the last two decades is this: A religion that caves in to pressure from sexual liberalism is a dead end. Surrender Christian teachings to appease the secular princes and Christianity dies. If faith leaders had any doubts about that strategy, we now know where it leads.