Organized Religion

The Decline of Organized Religion in Today’s Society
-Organized Religion in the West/ Iraq
In recent years organized religion in the western civilizations have begun a rather interesting trend, one of decline. This occurrence is not only isolated to a certain region/country but branched out, and setting this trend is the “Millennials” or Generation Y. Many factors come into play towards the decline of organized religion in modern day society. A country such as Canada with its huge immigration population has seen a drop in Christianity just because immigrants bring an influx of different beliefs (Ross Douthat, July 14, 2012), or the constant use of religion as a recruitment tool for war in Bagdad Iraq has created a young generation of Iraqi
Though it can be argued the situation in Iraq was due to the stress caused by war religion has often and effectively been used as a call to arms. Many blame organized religion for being too rigid in its beliefs (specifically towards gay marriage recently) and that religion no longer provided social relevance to people’s lives. It is easy to forget sometimes that religion is what helped form our modern day world, faith binding people and countries together, and even our laws reflect it as such (thou shall not kill is an example) but just as society has evolved and changed our views on the world so must religion.
Christianity in certain areas of the world is a strong example of an organized religion in decline, in America many young people have begun viewing organized religion as a source of intolerance and rigidity with doctrinaire political views. In fact even though organized religion is waning spiritualism isn’t; the majority of people who decided to leave the church still believed that god existed but had trouble with how the
Young men became so disillusioned (a stark contrast to the rising religiousness in the rest of young men in the Middle East) with the constant violence and sometimes senseless or underhanded recruitment techniques and have started to blame the clergy for the violence and restrictions that have enwrapped their lives, even to the point of ridiculing religious figures they see in public or on TV. A report came in from Iraq from the 900 detained youths in American custody 10 percent of the detained said they were fighting for a holy war, compared to the 1/3 of adults that claimed it was for the Jihad. (Sabrina Tavernise, March 3 2008) In an odd twist of events Iraqi parents worry more about their sons then they used to for their daughters coming into adolescence, all their energy is now focused on keeping them out of terrorism. The riots in the Middle East was partially due to the religious restrictions imposed on a people who were no longer willing to accept it. Institutional religion can lead to many things that turn people away from organized religion, empty ritualism, hypocrisy, clericalism, corruption, abuse of power, superstition, and many other deformations familiar from the history of religions and from which no religion is totally free I believe this can treated as an instance