Focus on Religious Right Hides Dwindling Number of US Churchgoers

This image released by 20th Century Fox shows Diogo
Morgado in a scene from 'Son of God'

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: As research suggests just 25 per cent of Americans now attend church weekly, Republicans must cater for increasingly secular mainstream without alienating evangelical base

This week millions of the religious faithful in America are to be shepherded into the nation's cinemas in order to watch 'Son of God', a conventional Hollywood biopic of Jesus Christ that premieres on Thursday.

Coming after last year's HBO mini-series 'The Bible', which garnered 95 million viewers, it would seem a fair bet that this film is pretty much guaranteed to be another hit.

One Texas congregation alone has bought 9,000 tickets. But such displays of mega-church muscle only serve to conceal how far and how fast the ground has shifted under America's Religious Right over the last decade or so.

It's not that America has suddenly abandoned its faith, but more that a large chunk of previously nominal Christians - the Christmas and wedding-only types - have become much happier to declare themselves in the religious camp marked 'don't really care'. » | Peter Foster in Washington | Saturday, February 22, 2014

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