Wednesday, April 14, 2004
God talk is everywhere
Nearly 40 years after Time magazine posed the question "Is God Dead?" signs of His resurrection are everywhere: Mel Gibson's "The Passion" is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing independent film of all time, while the apocalyptic "Left Behind" novels, based on the Book of Revelations, have sold 58 million copies, a publishing jackpot.
Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code," a theological whodunit with a new spin on Jesus and Mary Magdalene, leads the fiction bestseller list, and Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life," a 40-day spiritual workout, is outselling "The South Beach Diet."
The nation's born-again president pronounces Jesus his "favorite philosopher" and trumpets America's mission to battle evil in the world. And faith avowals are all but requisite on the campaign trail - with hell to pay for anyone who demonstrates biblical illiteracy, as did Vermont Gov. Howard Dean when he described Job as his favorite book of the New Testament and was promptly pronounced a heathen.
"God talk is ubiquitous today. You might even say we're drowning in it," said Phyllis Tickle, author of more than a dozen books about religion in America and contributing editor in religion for Publishers Weekly.
Even prime-time television, which once steered clear of overtly religious themes, suddenly has characters who converse directly with a higher power, from Joan of Arcadia to Jaye on the recently canceled "Wonderfalls." And network news divisions are churning out religious-themed specials like so many chocolate Easter eggs - from Dateline NBC's "The Last Days of Jesus" to ABC News' ambitious three- hour special on Jesus and Paul.
"There's just been a sea change in how religion is lived in this country," said the Rev. Margaret Peckham Clark of Trinity Church in Roslyn, who reports that hundreds of people have attended forums at her church on "The Passion" and "The DaVinci Code."
"You have many people who have drifted away from the tradition they grew up in, are disillusioned with it or have never been a part of it," Clark said. "And that creates a climate, particularly after Sept. 11, where people are groping for ways to understand what is at the core of what they believe."
All of this is occurring against a backdrop of growing tension between Islam and the West, and increasingly rancorous debate in this country about issues of morality, biblical authority and separation of church and state - from gay marriage to the deletion of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance to the struggle over a Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama courthouse.
Is America experiencing a religious revival? Is all this ferment a result of post-Sept. 11 anxiety? Or has spirituality become just another commodity in a world where consumerism has become the ultimate value?
"I think every major sociologist would agree that we're in a time of religious awakening," said Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in Manhattan. "But it's an awakening in which existing institutions like churches and synagogues are no longer mediating the sacred."
If you walk around America, Kula said, you see a booming spiritual marketplace with all sorts of small communities flourishing below the radar screen of institutional religion, from 12-step programs to yoga, meditation and Kabbalah centers, to Bible study groups of every possible stripe.
A new religious awakening?
But some evangelical Christians are equally certain they are seeing the stirrings of a more traditional revival.
"We are witnessing a religious awakening not just here, but all over the world," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. "In the East, poverty and tyranny are drawing people to Islamic fundamentalism. And in the West, people feel as if something is missing in their lives. It's a reaction to excessive abundance, and to divorce and empty relationships."
"And so people are reaching out. There are more churches than ever before, more Bibles being sold than ever before, and more people listening to Christian radio than ever before."
The evidence, however, is contradictory.
"The desire for spiritual moorings has been building since the mid-1980s," said veteran pollster George Gallup Jr., chairman of the George H. Gallup International Institute and executive director of the Princeton Religion Research Center.
On the other hand, church attendance has been static, save for a short-lived uptick immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, he said. Slightly fewer than four in 10 Americans said they went to church in the past week during 2003 - a level that has been constant for many years.
And despite the overwhelming majority of Americans who count themselves believers, 58 percent cannot name five of the Ten Commandments, less than half know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible and 10 percent say that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife, according to surveys.
Many who believe in God also believe in witches, haunted houses and extra-terrestrials, to name just a few, Gallup said. "Somebody once said that it's not that Americans don't believe in anything. It's that they believe in everything," he said.
"A great awakening? I don't think so," said Tom Lydon of Middle Village, a born-again Christian who works as an administrator for a human services agency in New York. "You walk through New York City, and there are still homeless people on the streets. There are still children starving. There are still abortions being done. I think we're a post-Christian country in a lot of ways. After 9/11, I think a lot of people looked at their mortality and said, 'Is this it? Is this life? Is this why we're here?' Any time a nation is in crisis, more people will be asking those questions."
American spiritual search
Those who track religion and popular culture suggest that what we are seeing is a peculiarly American way of spiritual seeking - one that is deeply individualistic, experiential and mediated by popular culture and the media. The Internet has also been key: A survey last week by the Pew Research Center found that 64 percent of the nation's 128 million Internet users say they've used it for religious or spiritual purposes.
"I think that what has happened is that as organized religion has become less important, or more in flux, people are cobbling together their own personalized spiritual plans, rather than relying on clergy," said Steven Waldman, founder and editor of Beliefnet.com, a multifaith Web site that reaches 4 million people a day.
"They're acting as consumers in a spiritual marketplace. And so they are choosing from a whole array of options: They read books about religion and spirituality, they watch TV, they see movies. Popular culture is providing a lot of the spiritual information that used to be gotten through houses of worship."
Tom Beaudoin, a Gen X theologian and author of "Consuming Faith," contends that many people now go to movies, pick up books and participate in thousands of religious chat rooms to work on their spiritual lives.
"I think we are well past the day when the majority of American Christians have their religious identity formed in church," Beaudoin said. "And so that allows for these searches and spiritual journeys that are highly personal and that are mediated by products."
But do these "products" - from "The Passion" to "The Purpose Driven Life" - move people deeply enough to inspire life-altering decisions?
"Are we going to end up with anyone who's committed to living out their beliefs, or will people just be consumers buying Christian music and Christian books, and listening to a Christian radio station?" wonders Goodhue, of the Long Island Council of Churches.
The jury is still out on that. An online poll on Beliefnet.com, answered by about 12,000 people, found that 62 percent were reading the Bible more often after seeing "The Passion." The poll also found that 41 percent had a more positive view of the Bible after the movie, while 53 percent said their view was unchanged.
"For those of us who take these subjects seriously, we should seize this moment," said Deirdre Good, a professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, who has been pleasantly surprised to find herself speaking to standing-room- only crowds recently.
BY CAROL EISENBERG
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