TruthBook Religious News Blog

by Emile Lester

Despite a slew of new books on atheism, the real trend in America might be that Americans talk about faith instead of living it

Date published: 6/17/2007

HENRICO--Thomas Jefferson did it 200 years ago. Karl Marx did it 150 years ago. John Dewey did it 75 years ago.

They all heralded the triumph of reason and the downfall of faith.

Now the popularity of a recent spate of best-selling books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins--criticizing religion and defending atheism--might seem to augur a similar outcome.

The predictions of Jefferson, Marx, and Dewey were wrong as applied to the United States in the past. Predicting the decline of religion based on the popularity of these new books is wrong as applied to the United States in the future.

More than 95 percent of Americans report believing in God or some form of Supreme Being, according to a recent Pew Forum poll. This percentage has remained virtually unchanged for the last 60 years, or ever since pollsters started measuring religious faith.

Indeed, Americans are embracing religions once spurned, but their skepticism toward atheism remains. Almost all Americans tell pollsters they'll vote for a Jew or Muslim for president, but in a recent Gallup poll only 45 percent say they'd consider voting for an atheist.

Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins are tapping into temporary disgust over how the Bush administration has applied religion to politics--but it would be foolish to bet this slight turn to secularism will become a widespread or long-term phenomenon.

Proclaiming belief in God has become woven into the fabric of our society. For better or worse, it's as American as apple pie and watching football.

But even if predicting the end of faith in America is far from right, it's not completely wrong, either. Professing religion is one thing, but taking it seriously is another. Religion in America, as religious scholar Robert Booth Fowler observes, runs "a mile wide but an inch deep."

"Moralistic, therapeutic deism" is what sociologists Christian Smith and Melissa Denton found when they recently conducted a nationwide survey of the religious views of American teenagers. That is, most teenagers ask not what they can do for their religion, but what their religion can do for them.

Boston University professor Stephen Prothero attributes this attitude largely to religious ignorance--which, he argues in his recent book, "Religious Illiteracy," is at an all-time high. Not knowing much about their own religion or any other, many Americans equate religion with moral restrictions, particularly about sexual activity that they would favor even if they weren't religious.

In short: The "religion problem" in America today is not that we're too religious, as Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins claim, but that we're not religious enough.

The First Amendment has always left Americans free to choose their own faith--and Americans have usually responded by exploring their religious options and creating many new ones.

We would be well-advised to take advantage of this new diversity by learning about these religions, reading their sacred books, and listening and talking to their adherents.

This doesn't mean we should all surrender our beliefs and partake in a United Colors of Benetton approach to religion. Exploration need not lead to relativism. But American religion has always been strongest when it engages with new ideas.

This engagement should extend to at least examining the critiques of religion made by Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins. Religious beliefs which don't challenge themselves, that great champion of free speech John Stuart Mill reminds us, soon become dead dogma.

If we don't heed Mill's advice, we might not become a land of atheists, but we might become something far worse--a land where religion has become uninformed and irrelevant.

Emile Lester, of Henrico County, is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Mary Washington. His report, "Learning about World Religions in Public Schools," co-authored by Dr. Patrick Roberts, is available at firstamend mentcenter.org.

Labels: atheism, faith, new ideas, religion, Stephen Prothero, therapeutic deism