Is Christianity Reducing Itself Toward Fanaticism

As the number of Americans self identifying as Christian continues to decline we wonder if a concentration effect is beginning to push the declining Christian demographic in the direction of religious fanaticism?

When a chef wants to concentrate the flavors in his sauce he will let it simmer for a while so that water will evaporate, leaving a higher concentration of flavor behind in the dish.

Imagine that the water being evaporated is instead former Christians who have had their eyes opened by vituperous abuse in public, well advertised campaigns against minority civil rights, as well as stunningly sexist suggestions for preposterous new laws that would subject every uterus to government regulation.

The more prominent Christian leaders slander gay people and insult women, the greater the total number of moderate people they have turned off. There are a lot of moderate people with no axe to grind and an inclination to be decent, pleasant people.

If you take a very large group of people, perhaps 225~275 million American Christians, and you start driving out every member of the group whose bio includes the term 'moderate' what is the effect on the demographic of those remaining in the group?

If 20 million people walk away from Christianity because it has reached x level of intolerance and nastiness, then the higher concentration of Jesus-brand intolerance can be expected to drive away a few more.

It seems likely this effect would soon diminish to insignificance but as the level of hatred, bigotry, and, with the tea party option package, racism still rising it might settle down to a slower rate of flow from religiosity to reason, but still the effect goes on.

While religion is unlikely to go away, specific religions certainly can and do fade into oblivion over time. Christianity though is more likely yo go out like a black hole, imploding because of the sheer mass of their ferociously fractionalizing fictional faith.