from The Great Debate:
The religion of an increasingly godless America
By Amanda Marcotte The views expressed are her own.
Listening to the national discourse, one could be forgiven for imagining that America is becoming an ever more religious place. The amount of God talk in the public square has dramatically increased in a generation. Prior to the 70s, the concept of “the religious right” had barely existed, but now it’s a powerful lobbying force with multiple groups from Focus on the Family to Concerned Women for America, all sitting on more money than most liberal special interest groups could ever hope to accumulate. Republicans, especially, claw over each other to demonstrate fealty to a very narrow, fundamentalist view of Christianity that forbids gay rights, reproductive rights, and requires you to believe that evolution never happened. A generation ago, most people outside of evangelical Christian circles had never heard of things like “megachurches” or “the Rapture”, but now even people living in the most secularist urban enclaves are familiar with these concepts, if still less than approving. Americans seem not just more religious, but more drawn to reactionary religion than ever before.
That is, until you start to dig into the actual facts. If you poll actual Americans, you’ll find that the trend is not towards more religiosity, but towards less. Much less, in fact. Recent research from the Pew Research Center on politics and generational differences shows that interest in religion is actually declining from one generation to the next, and not only that, but interest in mixing religion and politics is on the decline. When asked which factors are the key to America’s success, fewer than half of Millennials say they believe that religious faith and values are important. They are the first generation to respond in such a way, as a majority of all older generations cite religion as an important factor. Even the generation known for cynicism, Generation X, has 64% of respondents citing religion as an important factor in our nation’s success, a full 18 points over the Millennial generation. Despite myths that people become more religious or more conservative as they age, previous Pew research shows that Xers and Boomers held roughly the same opinions on religion in their youth as they do now.
The research also found that more than one in four Millennials have no religious affiliation at all, the largest of any generation, though only by a small margin, as one in five Gen Xers is also irreligious. The percentage of unaffiliated Americans has grown gradually over the generations, but with the Millennials, we’re seeing a new trend emerge. There is now a large group of Americans who have a faith, but separate it from public life, keeping it in the private sphere.
So how to square away declining rates of belief with the perception that America is a land where the Bible is thumped regularly in the public square? What we’re seeing with the heightened emphasis on religion in politics is the death throes of the old order. After all, in the past, where it was assumed that a vast majority of Americans were not only religious, but Christian, those who wanted Christianity to dominate didn’t feel they had anything to prove. It’s only when they started to feel their power threatened did they become defensive, and in doing so, became much louder.
Right wing Christians would be the first to tell you that they feel that the dominance of traditional Christian values is under threat in this country. If you have any doubt about this, look at the long list of people they consider the enemies, internal and external, to their view of how America should be: atheists, Muslims, feminists, liberals, uncloseted gays and evolutionary biologists, amongst others. They aren’t wrong to believe these groups are growing both in numbers and in influence, as the polling data suggests that they are. The increasing volume and militancy from the religious right is to be expected in light of these changes. Sarah Posner, a senior editor at Religion Dispatches magazine, says the religious right has grown specifically in response to massive social changes. Opposing these changes was “exactly their point,” she told me, and conservative Christians believe that when they see these more secularist worldviews on the rise, they have a duty “to redouble one’s efforts”. She added that, in the eyes of evangelical leaders, “evangelicals had insulated themselves too much from secular society, and that they had a God-given duty to have an impact on the culture, on politics, on the media, and so forth.”
Most importantly, the religious right sees the Millennials as a special threat requiring most of their attention. Abstinence-only education, the attempted defunding of Planned Parenthood, creationism in the schools, and the growth of the home-schooling movement are all aimed at the youth of America. In some cases, as with TLC’s Duggar family, the religious right is going so far as to step up baby-making, hoping to create enough religious youth to curtail the power of the growing cohort of secular youth.
Evangelical Christians from Global South see expanding influence
A survey of evangelical Christian leaders found a Global North-South split on how they see their prospects.
The 2010 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life revealed optimism among 58 percent of evangelical leaders in the Global South – sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East/North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia. But 66 percent of leader in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand tended to be pessimistic about evangelicals’ influence on society.
The Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders polled 2,196 leaders, finding splits on such issues as whether belief in God was required to be a moral person. There was near-universality on the Bible being the word of God.
The story on the survey, Evangelicals split on faith’s influence-survey, also revealed a more conservative bent in the South.
This is getting bad.Wake up america,get back to your bible and gods word.Time is short.This is all wrong!Jesus didn’t say to do this.
Does FRC index underline weak link between faith and family?
The conservative Christian, Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC) has just released its first “Annual Index of Family Belonging and Rejection.” You can click here to see its full details.
The “Index of Belonging” is 45 percent and that of “Rejection” is 55 percent. The report’s author, Patrick Fagan, who heads FRC’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute, says the following:
“Only 45 percent of U.S. teenagers have spent their childhood with an intact family, with both their birth mother and their biological father legally married to one another since before or around the time of the teenager’s birth … 55 percent of teenagers live in families where their biological parents have rejected each other. The families with a history of rejection include single-parent families, stepfamilies, and children who no longer live with either birth parent but with adoptive or foster parents.”
An intact family is one defined as one in which “a child’s birth mother and biological father (were) legally married to one another since before or around the time of the child’s birth.”
One thing that really strikes me about the index, which draws on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, is that while it gives charts and breakdowns in a detailed appendix based on ethnicity, state, region, by region and ethnic group, by the country’s 26 largest cities, and other geographical criteria, there is no chart that gives a breakdown on faith lines.
This is interesting, not least because of FRC’s overtly conservative, evangelical outlook on the world. Indeed, the report says that the task of repairing the country’s families — which it says lies in the “restoration of the husband-wife relationship” — must be “led primarily by the institution of religion (church, synagogue, mosque and temple) and aided by the institution of education (schools, universities and media). These three—family, church and school—are the prime shapers of relationships.”
The FRC report does not show a weak link between faith and family, it shows a weak link between evangelicalism and faith. Asians, probably in part because of the South Asian Muslims (as the author notes) have high “belonging” percentages as do Mormons. That fact of the matter is that the findings are a critical commentary on the lack of conservatism in the evangelical world. They are very worldly people who are quite immersed in the secular culture and accept many of its values with a Christian veneer. I could say the same for many of my fellow religionists in America (Eastern Orthodox). The more socially conservative (not “evangelical” or “Catholic”) a group is, the greater the index of belonging. The trouble is that most Christian denominations do not use cultural pressure, including excommunication, in order to enforce standards. The utter hypocrisy will continue until they decide to do so.
from UK News:
A nightmare week for the Archbishop of Canterbury
.jpg)
Many members of the Church of England will be wondering "where do we go from here", the morning after the church's parliament voted down a compromise amendment put forward by its two most senior clerics.
The liberal wing of the church will probably feel the road is clear ahead for the ordination of women as bishops after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York were foiled, though there is still a long way to go.
But some among the traditionalist Anglo-Catholics and conservative evangelicals will be wondering where their spiritual home now lies. Some traditionalists may be more persuaded to take up Pope Benedict's offer made last October to convert to Roman Catholicism, in the knowledge that they would be able to retain some of their traditions and liturgy.
They were so dismayed by the amendment's defeat in York, northern England, that some asked the archbishop for an urgent meeting before synod resumes its debate on Monday morning, the Thinking Anglicans website said.
It has not been a good week for Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church.
Not only did he lose the vote, but his attempt to keep the church together by offering traditionalists concessions, drew criticism from people both within and outside the church.
They said it would appear misogynist and out of date, if passed.
from UK News:
Rejection of gay clergyman as bishop sends CoE into spin
The Church of England has blocked the appointment of a gay clergyman to the role of Bishop of Southwark after a bitter behind-the-scenes battle which has left the conservatives and liberals at loggerheads and possibly weakened the standing of Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, media reports said.
Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, was rejected after it was leaked that he was on the Crown Nominations Commission shortlist for the post in south London, one of the most liberal of all the church's dioceses, the Daily Telegraph said.
It is a second humiliation for the openly gay but celibate John, who seven years ago was forced to stand down from becoming the Bishop of Reading after opposition from evangelicals.
The Archbishop of Canterbury had asked his friend to forgo the Reading post in an attempt to keep the church together, and will be seen as having been central in this week's decision.
Williams, angry that details from the confidential CNC meeting were leaked for political purposes, said he would not allow himself to be pressurised into backing any one candidate, the Times reported.
Potential schisms within the CoE and the broader Anglican Communion have been frequently mentioned in recent years, but tensions are running particularly high at the moment.
U.S. Christian leaders slam Uganda’s anti-homosexuality act
A diverse group of U.S. Christian leaders — who don’t always see eye to eye on same-sex lifestyle issues — have spoken out against a law under consideration in Uganda that could make homosexual behavior punishable by death. You can see the full statement and list of signatories here.
“Our Christian faith recognizes violence, harassment and unjust treatment of any human being as a betrayal of Jesus’ commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. As followers of the teachings of Christ, we must express profound dismay at a bill currently before the Parliament in Uganda. The ‘Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009′ would enforce lifetime prison sentences and in some cases the death penalty for homosexual behavior, as well as punish citizens for not reporting their gay and lesbian neighbors to the authorities,” it says in part.
“Regardless of the diverse theological views of our religious traditions regarding the morality of homosexuality, in our churches, communities and families, we seek to embrace our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters as God’s children worthy of respect and love,” it added.
The signatories included leading centrist evangelical activists such as David Gushee of Mercer University and those from a range of other faith traditions such as Adam Tice, the Associate Pastor of Hyattsville Mennonite Church. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, whose members tend to take a conservative line on social issues, also signed up, as did Jim Wallis, President of the lefty evangelical group Sojourners.
Uganda is likely to pass the bill criminalising homosexuality in the east African nation and deal a blow to rights activists, but the act will have some changes to appease donors who fund about a third of the budget.
Donor influence is seen waning as the country moves join to the league of oil producers, and Western nations — which have largely criticised the anti-gay bill — may be unwilling to fight the act ahead of a 2011 poll. Click here for some of our coverage on the issue.
The issue is of interest on a range of fronts. In the eyes of some, it would be taken as an indirect example of oil’s poisonous affect on the African body politic – witness the obscene corruption and brutal regime in Equatorial Guinea.
from Tales from the Trail:
Has abortion role been overblown in U.S. healthcare debate?
A new poll by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that concern about federal funding for abortion is very low on the list of factors driving opposition to President Barack Obama's effort to overhaul America's healthcare system.
The results of the poll, released on Thursday, show that just 3 percent of healthcare opponents cited abortion funding as their main reason for opposing congressional healthcare proposals.
The biggest reasons, cited by 27 percent of respondents to an open-ended question about their opposition, were that the overhaul would be too expensive and lead to higher deficits and taxes. Another 27 percent said they did not want government involvement in healthcare.
The nationwide poll of more than 1,000 Americans was conducted from Nov. 12 to 15.
The poll's publication comes as the U.S. Senate prepares to begin debate on its version of a healthcare bill that does not include language approved earlier this month by the House that would strengthen the existing prohibition on using federal funds for abortion.
Many analysts say the abortion issue -- which has been fanned by conservative evangelicals associated with the Republican Party and Catholic clergy whose flock lean to the Democratic Party -- threatens to unravel Obama's top domestic priority.
U.S. conservative Christians sound “cap and trade” alarms
America’s social and religious conservatives are turning up the heat as they galvanize heartland opposition against the latest example of President Barack Obama-inspired “socialism” — a climate change bill that aims to reduce fossil fuel emissions, which most scientists have linked to climate change.
The Democratic Party-led House of Representatives passed the bill on Friday. It would require large companies, including utilities and manufacturers, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases associated with global warming by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050, from 2005 levels. It must still go through the U.S. Senate, where its ultimate fate remains uncertain despite the Democratic majority there.
Conservative Christians, a key base – if not THE base — for the out-of-power Republican Party, are among the biggest skeptics of human-induced global warming. In the eyes of many environmentalists, they were part of an “unholy alliance” with the energy industry that enjoyed its zenith under former president George W. Bush, who pulled America out of the Kyoto Protocol aimed at cutting emissions in the developed world. The Bush administration was widely seen as hostile to any attempt to cap emissions as well as the science behind it.
Conservative Christians are sounding the alarm bells about the climate bill, which represents Obama’s first major legislative victory and which Republicans see as a major opportunity to gain political ground ahead of the 2010 congressional elections. You can see our coverage of this issue here.
Republicans are calling it a “job killer” while the Cornwall Alliance – a conservative Christian coalition – has described its cap and trade provisions, which allow companies that pollute less than their limit to sell some of their permits to others struggling to meet such green requirements, ”as the largest tax hike in history.” Analysts have said such arguments may appeal to voters especially against the backdrop of the current recession.
The Cap and Trade bill shows the US as being weak. Other nations will benefit from our mistake. The passage of this bill will drive much needed US jobs overseas thus resulting in higher unemployment. During this time of economic instability, the passage of this bill will result in turmoil for generations to come. Businesses will migrate to other countries where there are no cap and trade restrictions and where their products can be manufactured at a lower cost. This energy bill is no more than a disguise for an energy tax. American citizens will bear the tremendous burden of this bill. Let your Senators know how you truly feel at http://tinyurl.com/ .
Southern Baptists (and Republicans): old, white and in decline?
The evangelical Protestant revival has been one of the most dynamic religious and social movements in the United States in the last three decades. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, one in four U.S. adults now count themselves as followers of this faith tradition.
So it may come as a surprise to some non-American readers of this blog that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) – with 16 million members, America’s largest evangelical denomination and the country’s second largest after the Catholic Church — is ringing the alarm bells of decline.
Its research arm LifeWay Research released the following projections this week at the convention’s annual meeting in Kentucky: it said its numbers would fall nearly 50 percent by 2050 “unless the aging and predominantly white denomination reverses a 50-year trend and does more to strengthen evangelism, reach immigrants, and develop a broader ethnic base.”
“Using U.S. Census projected population figures, SBC membership could fall from a peak of 6 percent of the American population in the late 1980s to 2 percent in 2050,” said LifeWay director Ed Stetzer.
The SBC in 1951 enjoyed robust annual growth of four percent and still had two percent in the early 1970s but in recent years it has been falling about 0.6 percent per year.
The number of baptisms — which is how the SBC counts converts and is key to a group that sees bringing souls to Christ as its raison d’être — have also been in decline.
Your article fails to mention that while total membership declined last year, the total number of churches and the number of people regularly attending worship services grew between 2007-2008 within the SBC. I believe this reflects a trend in a growing number of church plants (which traditionally start small but grow rapidly) and less prioritization toward membership while still actively attending services regularly. Don’t count the SBC out too quickly!
What Darwin and evangelicals had in common: hatred of slavery
Back in January we reported on a new book which argued that a hatred of slavery did much to form Charles Darwin’s views on natural selection as he sought to prove that blacks and whites had a common ancestor and were not separate species or products of “separate creations” as many of the 19th century defenders of white supremacy maintained.
I did a blog at the time to draw attention to my colleague Mike Collett-White’s story on “Darwin’s Sacred Cause” by Adrian Desmond and James Moore and said that it had piqued my curiosity enough that I might be tempted to read it. I have done just that and think it raises a couple of issues that will be of interest to readers of this blog.
For starters, much of the credit for the anti-slavery movement has been taken by evangelicals and other Christians such as the Quakers, who were indeed often the driving force behind it. There was much excitement in U.S. evangelical circles two years ago about the release of the movie “Amazing Grace” about British anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce who was an ardent evangelical. Much ink has been spilled on this topic, notably in 2005 by Adam Hochschild in his superb book “Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery.”
But no one would mistake the father of modern biological science for an evangelical. Most of his biographers agree (based on overwhelming evidence) that Darwin gradually lost his own faith. Another leading abolitionist in Darwin’s day was his cigar-smoking dining companion Harriet Martineau, who was also a self-proclaimed atheist. Darwin’s own family — which had its share of religious sceptics, notably his father, as well as devout believers– was also heavily involved in the anti-slavery movement.
So it seems that the secular humanist crowd also has an old and some would say noble tradition of anti-slavery agitation which it can draw on — and it was an issue that united it with evangelicals. Similar bridges are being built today between secular and evangelical leaders on issues like climate change, torture and even the modern slave trade.
It is also worth noting of course that Darwin and his intellectual offspring are often a favored target of conservative evangelicals, especially in the United States. This goes beyond the trouble that many biblical creationists have with Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which is more popularly known as evolution. Some conservative Christians say that Darwin’s theories helped to inspire the eugenics movement whose advocates included Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. They therefore tie Darwin to the abortion rights movement, which Harry R. Jackson Jr, a leading African American conservative evangelical, has dubbed a “black genocide” (because of the large number of black women who seek abortions).
-
Resident FaithWorld Expert
-
Questions for the religious:
Your choice of religion is on average overwhelmingly determined by what deity your parents and community worships. Do you really believe that others who were born into religions not your own are eternally damned for just for being respectful and obedient toward their families?
All those children of God with the misfortune of choosing heretic parents will suffer for all time because they didn’t reject their whole society and embrace a religion which they may never have even heard of?
Do you actually believe that YOUR religion is the ONE TRUE religion? To get a feel for the odds of your luck to be born into the correct religion, allow me to show you a list of the most popular current religions:
Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
Buddhism: 376 million
primal-indigenous: 300 million
African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
Sikhism: 23 million
Juche: 19 million
Spiritism: 15 million
Judaism: 14 million
Baha’i: 7 million
Jainism: 4.2 million
Shinto: 4 million
Cao Dai: 4 million
Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million
Tenrikyo: 2 million
Neo-Paganism: 1 million
Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand
Rastafarianism: 600 thousand
Scientology: 500 thousand
I ask this of my fellow humans who are forcing themselves to believe the unbelievable in order to maintain their ties to their family, society, and history. When you are able to understand why you do not subscribe to any (or all!) of the religions on this list, not to even mention the dead religions like Zeus and The Shakers, then you will understand why I do not subscribe to YOUR religion.
Meanwhile, Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist = 1.1 billion. It takes courage to make sense of the universe on your own terms. Lack of courage is a poor rationale for belief in demonstrably false doctrines, however.
I’m not interested in depriving a spiritual cripple of the crutch they need to make their way in the world. That would be nearly as cruel as depriving an actual cripple of his actual crutch. But when religious people are constantly thrusting these silly beliefs (and before you get offended, look at that list and tell me you don’t see lots of silly beliefs) into our lives in myriad damaging ways, a little pushback is certainly called for.