After the second World War, during this relatively peaceful (especially historically speaking) era that has lasted for over half a century, most of the western world (especially the rich countries) have become more and more secular, and less and less religious, by the decade. Most of Europe has been in the forefront of this spread of secularism, with many European countries relatively quickly (by the 1980's or so) becoming some of the most secular countries in the world, with the number of self-proclaimed religious people (most usually Christians) becoming unprecedentedly low, like 20% or even less of the population.
It may well be that in times of peace and prosperity people tend to become less and less religious on each new generation, possibly precisely because of the peace time, as people do not have to live in fear nor feel the need to seek help and comfort in some superior being.
The United States has been lagging behind by quite many decades, but there, too, has secularism become more and more common by the year. In fact, the 90's and especially the early 2000's saw the raise of big and popular secular atheistic skeptical philosophers, thinkers and speakers, who especially during those two decades have had a great influence in society.
However, as we are all painfully aware, a new ideology, a new form of morality, of much "stronger" morality, has been spreading like a wildfire, quickly catching up, surpassing and outright supplanting the previous secular philosophical movement: The "intersectional" feminist "social justice" ideology and movement.
While the social justice ideology is also extremely secular and areligious, even anti-religious, it has an enormous difference to the previous atheist-skeptic-secular movement: While the latter is strongly rooted in the ideals of classical and social liberalism, and consitutionalism, emphasizing the importance of individuality and freedom, the former is strongly illiberal and fascistic, being the almost complete opposite in sociopolitical terms. The social justice ideology has supplanted the skeptic movement so strongly that it has either completely appropriated it, or silenced its proponents.
Many atheists, who were previously devout Christians and then deconverted, often quickly adopt the social justice ideology with very religious fervor. Other ex-Christian atheists have commented how, when they deconverted, they felt alone and sought for a community of likeminded atheists, only to find a quasi-religious social justice movement that felt like the same religious fundamentalism as they had just escaped from. It's a very common form of criticism that ex-Christian social justice warriors have merely replaced one religion with another.
But why?
Some sociopolitical commentators have posited that while the skeptic-atheist-secular movement that was prevalent in the 90's and early 2000's was not necessarily wrong, it failed and was supplanted because of one reason: It failed to give people a set of strong rules of morality.
That does not mean that the skeptics did not have a moral framework. Of course they had. As mentioned, it's largely founded on the ideals of classical and social liberalism, as well as constitutionalism.
The problem, however, is that this set of morals is not strong enough, and was thus supplanted by a different ideology with much stronger moral rules. "Stronger", rather obviously, does not mean "better". Simply that they are much more... fascistic.
Perhaps the reason why a secular-liberal set of moral rules fails to catch on for the wider population is that its moral rules do not really allow its followers to feel a sense of superiority and having the moral high ground. After all, when you profess that everybody should be as free as possible to, for example, express any opinions they want, this means that you will not, and cannot, impose your own opinions on anybody else. It means that your opinion will just be one among thousands. You cannot force anybody to listen to your opinions nor do as you want.
Both religious as well as social justice morality, however, gives its followers a sense of having a moral high ground, of being justified in forcing this morality onto others, to despise and look down one's nose to people who do not follow the same moral rules.
Religious and social justice morality also reinforces a sense of kinship and camaraderie among people who follow those moral rules, while a deeply individualistic liberal morality does not (because, after all, a liberal morality considers everybody an independent individual, so there's less feeling of kinship among people who agree with you, as you merely consider them their own individuals, not as part of your own particular group).
This does not mean, of course, that religious or social justice morality is more correct. It simply means that it's easier for the average person to adopt it and believe in it, and start preaching it to others.
Perhaps there's something inherent in the human psyche that craves for these types of strong moral codes, moral rules, that make oneself feel superior to others and gives a sense of having a moral high ground and a justification for imposing those morals on others.
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