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It’s always been funny to me when people don’t see it in reverse now. And personally I hold the opinion that most of the religious fervor or lack thereof comes down to culture. People in general don’t read the texts, unless they’re going into ministry of some sort. They don’t really think about theology or anything else. If you’re raised in a culture that is absolutely convinced that the Eucharist is literal actually the Body and Blood, you will believe it.
A big part, to me, of the difference has been public education with its officially unofficial agnosticism. When the culture tells you that god/s don’t matter, and when public officials are reluctant to sound too religious, it’s basically creating a culture of atheism. People will almost always follow the party line of those aspirational figures in public life on most issues. And our political and social elites are at best deist in a vary vague sense, or educational institutions are atheist or agnostic (they aren’t officially going to mock you for being religious, but they’re certainly not going to acknowledge religion in a positive way), and most social heroes are atheists. Without a positive example of the elite being religious, the end result is the decline of the religion.
I didn't. I was raised in a culture that was monolithically christian (at least nominally) and I always took it as a metaphor until I was explained that it was actually meant to be taken literally (transubstantiation) and it seemed... idiotic? That was the first crack for me.
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