> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me.
People need to acknowledge how much the downside of this kind of closeness was conformism, enforced by shunning (or worse) the noncompliant. A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom, it's not really surprising that young people and women are going to run in the opposite direction as soon as they get a chance - often facilitated by the Internet. While simultaneously responding to actual abuse with coverups and complicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...
The sexual revolution is intrinsically linked to the lack of community. The sexual revolution is not actually about free sex. People have been having weird sex for centuries; with or without their partners knowing.
What is novel about the sexual revolution is that it dismissed any needs for norms. Over the past two decades we've seen non-religious attempts to reinstate those norms (consent, kink, safe words, etc). However, what's unpalatable to religious people is not the sex per se, but the lack of norms.
And we need norms to function as a community with a common culture. Throwing those out does not actually help.
You mention the sexual abuse by the Catholic church, but that was caused by the sexual revolution. At the time, the psychological community encouraged moving pedophiles around. The church was -- at the time -- attempting to modernize, and part of the modernization was listening to 'science', including psychologists. Psychologists at the time insisted these things could be cured and criminalization would not help.
The church is not the only organization to have been affected by this, but it is one of the few prominent examples of institutions being held accountable for it. The same ideology caused the German foster care scandals [1] [2].
The Catholic sex abuse scandal was never about the actual abuse, which is presumed constant between religions. It was always about the coverup. Only the Catholic Church has the preexisting organization to pull off such a scandal; the others simply had controversial youth pastors who stopped showing up one day.
> A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom
IMO, at least for Catholics, it is the Church's insistence that condoms and birth control are sinful that led to the mass defections from belief in the legitimacy of Church teaching. Yes, even more so than anti-homosexual rhetoric or the sex abuse coverups.
It's an attitude of "these delusional celibate people care too much about abstract deductive logic, not empirical observations."
> The mad rush to as quickly abolish religious practices in mainstream U.S. culture without any form of societal replacement is puzzling to me.
People need to acknowledge how much the downside of this kind of closeness was conformism, enforced by shunning (or worse) the noncompliant. A lot of religious communities have coped incredibly badly with the sexual revolution of the 20th century; if the only foray of your church into politics is against abortion or LGBT freedom, it's not really surprising that young people and women are going to run in the opposite direction as soon as they get a chance - often facilitated by the Internet. While simultaneously responding to actual abuse with coverups and complicity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...