Will the Internet kill Christianity?

I read an article earlier this week and didn't think about sharing it till just now. It's essentially a discussion of why the amount of Americans claiming Christianity as a faith has rapidly declined in the last three decades while the amount of atheists climbs higher every year. The arguable answer?

The internet.

"Christianity does poorly when it doesn't control the entire message and allows people a free exchange of thought? What a freaking shock.”

“My prediction: look for theists to start withdrawing into Internet-free communes.”

Can the explosive growth of irreligion—that amorphous term comprising deism, agnosticism and atheism as well as relative neologisms like antitheism and ignosticism—really be linked to the Internet? Some atheists on the web seem to think so. A question in the forums for The Friendly Atheist, a popular blog among non-theists, asked whether ex-theists would have shed their religion if the Internet didn’t exist. Many felt they wouldn’t. A post on Unreasonable Faith (ostensibly a counter to Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig’s book and online community dubbed Reasonable Faith) surmised that the Internet was crucial to the success of the “New Atheists.”

.....

The fact is, a relationship between irreligion and the Internet was bound to happen. Religion has long enjoyed a culturally accepted free space in which to share rhetoric—the Church. Atheism has suffered the exact opposite. America’s wariness of (or its outright antagonism toward, in its greatest excesses) irreligion has forced atheism to the fringes of its society. What the Internet has provided is a free space for atheists in this nation to connect with those across the globe whose cultural milieus are more inviting of all brands of irreligion; indeed, some in which secularism is a majority viewpoint.  

It is no wonder, therefore, that atheism is gaining steam in the U.S. Compared with the Internet, not to mention the secular nations of those with whom that space is shared, America is downright stifling. The political sway of the religious right seems somehow more maddening. The “we don’t belong!” rhetoric of American atheists becomes stronger, and it’s a message that today’s Christians buy into.

That’s because the free space in which they share rhetoric was never the Church to begin with. The Church belonged to their parents—the Internet belongs to them. The Internet may be helping to facilitate deconversion among evangelical youth, but it is not because of an “abundance of information” that challenges their faith. Rather, it is because the place where they spend much of their lives is where non-theists often control the discourse. It’s safe to say the majority of voices they encounter in web forums, news blogs and Facebook timelines will not echo those heard in their church foyer."

So really, the idea is that the internet is not beating out Christianity because it spreads information, but rather because of the tone. In the last generations' days, the church was a primary focal point for life. The only people they knew were people from similar backgrounds, from the same area with similar upbringings. But now, because the internet belongs primarily to the young, the tone is set by the 'outsiders' of religion. More and more people are picking up atheist ideas and connecting with people they never would have known otherwise.

Of course Christianity will probably continue to thrive within religious communities and families. The real drain on faith comes from areas with haphazard or lukewarm religious influence, in which kids are left to their own devices and allowed to find their own beliefs. There are plenty to pick from out here on the WWW.