Church attendance is, at most, stable in America (if you don't pull out Catholics, it is down quite a bit).
Technological advancement and the progress of knowledge is on an asymptotically ascending path, and has been for hundreds of years. Science is gradually killing religion, and this will undoubtedly continue. The average "Da Meathead" you pull off the street knows infinitely more about the way things work than Benjamin Franklin did.
Congress has always been filled with idiots. The notion that this has recently changed is an intellectual fallacy that you have fallen prey to. Ditto, Presidential candidates. Many of the men you cite were demonized in their own time, and it is not clear that they were the paragons you believe them to be, or simply myths created by historians in the intervening years.
Stop being such a whiny little Chicken Little.