Religious education is in the same shape as Detroit automakers.

Gone are the days when it was a cultural norm that every child would go to confirmation and every adult would dutifully attend Sunday School before church. According to the Barna Group, a pollster of American religious trends, Church attendance has remained fairly steady in the last decade, but Sunday School participation is slowly going the way of the buffalo. Churches have tried all sorts of gimmicks to reverse this trend—bagels, coffee, dancing bears—without much success. Meanwhile, the Barna Group also says only nineteen percent of self-identifying Christians profess belief in historical Christian doctrines, which is at an all-time low.

Forget about atheists. We’re quite capable of sabotaging our own faith, thank you.

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