Challenge: Majority non-religious US by 2010.

POD: Lyman Stewart dies in 1900, and so does not publish The Fundamentals or provide philanthropic support for the nascent fundamentalist movement. This movement is thus weaker and more disorganized throughout the century, and more marginalized. The more liberal wing of the various denominations is relatively more influential. The more secularized churches have less interest in proselytizing the unchurched, and the nonreligious portion of the population grows in relative numbers to become a majority of the population by the end of the century.

That makes sense. Presidential elections don't really matter in this context--this is a cultural WI, not a political one.
 
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?
 
Sam,

Look at what the nations that have any kind of a thriving or growing Christian presence today have in common--be they the United States, China (with its huge house-church movement that far eclipses the official state line on religion), South Korea, some of the sub-Saharan African nations, etc. All are nations that never had a powerful state church that homogenized religious life.

Now look at all of the post-Christian nations today--England, Germany, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, etc. What do they all have in common?

Youre seriously equating the role religion plays in developing countries with the role it plays in the West? That makes no sense, and makes me question the utility of debating with you.
 
It's news to me that Russia is "developed" in the same way that the West is, Sam. Also, I think South Korea would take offense at your implication that it isn't developed.
 
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