The influence of old-guard religions that once dominated throughout the West - Roman Catholicism, the Church of England, and establishment Protestant denominations like Episcopalianism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism - have certainly waned in influence in Europe and North America over time, particularly since the 1960s.

However, in the US - which is where Fain's article focuses on - there has been a dramatic rise in the popularity, reach and power of very conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant religions at the same time, particularly in the south.

What's more, during the same time period that old guard Christian religions like Catholicism have waned amongst Americans whose families have been in the country for generations, the US has had a vast increase in legal and illegal immigration from Latin America, Haiti and a number of African and Asian countries where traditional Catholicism as well as evangelical Catholicism are practiced (Nigeria, Korea, the Philippines, for example). First and next generation immigrants from those religious backgrounds bring their religious beliefs and traditions with them - and they tend to be very devout, conservative and old fashioned when it comes to matters like homosexuality, sexism and sex stereotypes.

When you combine the two trends, I think the picture that emerges is that the US is just as religious as in the 1950s, only in a different and more conservative way. The kinds of liberalizing reforms the RCC began instituting in the 1960s with Vatican II make the American Catholicism that I grew up with back then seem almost tolerant and progressive compared to what I gather is preached in many/most of today's evangelical Protestant megachurches in the US. I occasionally watch televangelists on TV, and most of them strike me as far less urbane and liberal-minded than mosts RC priests from the 1960s. Many seem totally crackers as well as ultra-conservative.

For all the terrible things that Roman Catholicism did to us parochial and convent school kids back in the day when Catholic schools were prominent and common in the US, one positive thing Catholic schools did was to give the smarter and more academically-inclined kids who attended them a good grounding in topics like world history, geography, current events, literature, philosophy, theology, comparative religions, biology (including evolution), chemistry, math, debating and so on. In the process, they instilled intellectual discipline and critical thinking skills in the kids who were suited to academics. (The kids who weren't suited to academics were pretty much fucked in/by US Catholic schools - in all respects, too.)

In fact, along with subjecting kids to plenty of sex abuse, sexism and physical abuse, a certain kind of Catholic school education equipped many kids raised Catholic in the US in the 50s and 60s with precisely the skills needed to realize pretty early on that what we were being taught in catechism class was a lot of BS, as was much of the abuse we and/or our schoolmates were subjected to. And that put us in the position to become disbelievers in droves as well as to argue effectively against the tenets and teachings of the faith to the nuns, priests and our parents too. I do not know this for a fact, coz I have not explored this in depth, but my impression is that a lot of people raised in evangelical fundamentalist Christian denominations in the US have not been equipped with a similar knowledge base (many have been taught creationism, not evolution, for example, and many seem not to be taught comparative religions, either) or critical thinking and debating skills. Which leaves young people who've grown up in those religious milieus really at the mercy of their elders and all the regressive ideologies they preach.