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Article: Forecasting the future of religion: the next 50 years.
- Article from:
- The Humanist
- Article date:
- May 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 American Humanist Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Toward the end of his life, Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to John Adams, wrote his prediction for the future of religion in the new American nation. Jefferson predicted that Unitarianism would soon become the religion of a majority of Americans because of its rational and democratic nature.
This prediction shows how very wise men can be very wrong when they try to predict the future of religion based upon what is happening in the society of their day.
Let's look back at the religious scene in American society in 1955, when I was a teenager. The major Protestant denominations were experiencing a tidal wave of growth, as hundreds of thousands of people ...