It's Christianity by a wide margin (about 2/3rds of the population). I'm not sure where you get the idea there are more masonic lodges than churches. Just a quick check for my state, Massachusetts, shows about 300 masonic lodges and about 4000 churches.
Pew polls show about 5% or slightly less identify as atheists. About 30% (including atheists) are non-religious. About 60% identify as Christian. Then a few other groups that are 1-2%: Jewish, Mormon, Buddhist, Muslim.
Your statement of "mostly" is an extreme (10x) overstatement.
I take umbrage at another aspect of your statement: "culturally Christian atheists". I've heard this pointed specifically at me by people saying things like, "You are Christian, you just don't know it." That say that because I tend to be sensitive/kind/helpful/low ego. Yes, good Christians should be those things, but that doesn't mean that Christianity owns those traits or that those traits didn't exist and weren't valued before Christianity came along.
Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, and mainline Protestants make up 60% of the US population. Atheism isn't that common, maybe 5-10% of the population depending on definition.
One Masonic Lodge vs 18 churches. Repeat that experiment with a bunch of random cities and you'll find that outside of the very high population cities (NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.) there are rarely more than one or two lodges, if they even have one at all.
> I noticed that there you have more masonic temples than churches in every city.
... Eh?
The US probably has more churches, as in physical buildings, per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Freemasonry isn't a religion, though it has vague religious trappings, but in any case it's fairly absurd to suggest that there are more masonic buildings than churches in the US.
technothrasher|11 months ago
jes5199|11 months ago
tasty_freeze|11 months ago
Your statement of "mostly" is an extreme (10x) overstatement.
The text above was from memory. I just looked it up and I was pretty accurate: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/
I take umbrage at another aspect of your statement: "culturally Christian atheists". I've heard this pointed specifically at me by people saying things like, "You are Christian, you just don't know it." That say that because I tend to be sensitive/kind/helpful/low ego. Yes, good Christians should be those things, but that doesn't mean that Christianity owns those traits or that those traits didn't exist and weren't valued before Christianity came along.
djur|11 months ago
gabruoy|11 months ago
There is a much higher likelihood of a child being within walking distance of a church than they are to be within walking distance of a school.
Jtsummers|11 months ago
This is nonsense. I doubt you've even been to the US if you're making claims like this.
https://www.google.com/maps/search/churches+in+Boone/@36.206...
https://www.google.com/maps/search/masons+in+Boone/@36.20686...
One Masonic Lodge vs 18 churches. Repeat that experiment with a bunch of random cities and you'll find that outside of the very high population cities (NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, etc.) there are rarely more than one or two lodges, if they even have one at all.
rsynnott|11 months ago
... Eh?
The US probably has more churches, as in physical buildings, per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Freemasonry isn't a religion, though it has vague religious trappings, but in any case it's fairly absurd to suggest that there are more masonic buildings than churches in the US.