Challenge: Majority non-religious US by 2010.

[AYoungContrarian]

Your challenge is to make the United States a secularized country in the fashion of Canada or the UK by the year 2010. No ASB scenarios or PODs before 1900.

Can you make it happen? Perhaps make the boomers become less religious or have a faction of Generation X become hostile to religion similar to OTL Millenial Generation?

[JoeMulk]

Avoid Reagen's election by having a Republican president in the late 70s, preferably someone like Rocky who basically shows the religious right the door. So this could fit into a world where Ford is assasinated. Then a liberal Democrat, either Kennedy or Mondale gets elected in 80 and AIDS is somehow butterflied out of existence. In 84 a conservative Republican loses in a landslide and after that the GOP is forced to permanently run to the center.

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Avoid the 60s as it turned out.

[AYoungContrarian]

Originally Posted by Ringo Starr

Avoid the 60s as it turned out.

How so? Elaborate. Avoid the rise of drugs/hippies?

[Plumber]

Originally Posted by SVeach94

How so? Elaborate. Avoid the rise of drugs/hippies?

Avoid "silent majority" backlash

Butterfly away Vietnam, and the assassinations of X and MLK

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Originally Posted by SVeach94

How so? Elaborate. Avoid the rise of drugs/hippies?

Avoid the escalation of direct US military involvement in Vietnam and by extension, South-east Asia. It was best had the fighting been left to the South Vietnamese with funding and advisers provided by the US. And seriously avoid MLK and Malcolm X's assassinations as well as RFK's or at least have them survive. Most of the unrest in the late 60s would had been averted or lessened.

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

It would probably require a US with an official state religion a la most European nations, which requires a PoD long before 1900.

America had too much religious diversity (at least in intra-Christian terms) for there to be a scenario where one large church to which most of the faithful belonged became discredited. The only way I can really see that being possible is if all pilgrims/settlers/colonists/migrants all came from either one European nation or several European nations with the same religion, and none or very few of them represented religious dissidents/refugees.

Under either scenario, America as we know it is likely butterflied away utterly.

[Wendell]

Originally Posted by JoeMulk

Avoid Reagen's election by having a Republican president in the late 70s, preferably someone like Rocky who basically shows the religious right the door. So this could fit into a world where Ford is assasinated. Then a liberal Democrat, either Kennedy or Mondale gets elected in 80 and AIDS is somehow butterflied out of existence. In 84 a conservative Republican loses in a landslide and after that the GOP is forced to permanently run to the center.

The OP said no ASBs

[Philadelphus]

Originally Posted by SVeach94

Your challenge is to make the United States a secularized country in the fashion of Canada or the UK by the year 2010. No ASB scenarios or PODs before 1900.

Can you make it happen? Perhaps make the boomers become less religious or have a faction of Generation X become hostile to religion similar to OTL Millenial Generation?

Is Canada really that secularized?