Atheists in the Lowcountry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From a story published today in the NYT: "It\u2019s not about carrying banners or protesting,\u201d said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2009\/04\/atheists-in-the-lowcountry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Atheists in the Lowcountry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From a story published today in the NYT: "It\u2019s not about carrying banners or protesting,\u201d said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2009\/04\/atheists-in-the-lowcountry\/\" \/>\n<meta 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{"id":1565,"date":"2009-04-28T21:38:09","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T21:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/owenstrachan.com\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2009-04-28T21:38:09","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T21:38:09","slug":"atheists-in-the-lowcountry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/thoughtlife\/2009\/04\/atheists-in-the-lowcountry\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheists in the Lowcountry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

From a story published today in the NYT<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about carrying banners or protesting,\u201d said Herb Silverman, a math professor at the College of Charleston who founded the Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry, which has about 150 members on the coast of the Carolinas. \u201cThe most important thing is coming out of the closet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Purportedly, the\u00a0number\u00a0of atheists is\u00a0rising:<\/p>\n

\u201cPolls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey<\/span><\/a>, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed \u201cno religion\u201d were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years.<\/p>\n

Nationally, the \u201cnones\u201d in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990. In South Carolina, they more than tripled, to 10 percent from 3 percent. Not all the \u201cnones\u201d are necessarily committed atheists or agnostics, but they make up a pool of potential supporters.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a challenge here for the Christian church.\u00a0 Weneed to equip ourselves to meet the challenges of atheists in coming days more than we used to.\u00a0 Atheism is not a boutique worldview.\u00a0 It\u2019s increasingly growing in cultural prominence, and our churches need to equip their members to meet the objections of atheists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not to say that we don\u2019t still work to understand what Catholics, Jews, and Muslims believe.\u00a0 We should.\u00a0 But there is a definite trend toward atheism in our day, and it calls us to be prepared.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"