TruthBook Religious News Blog

09/11/09

Religion in America is on the decline and has been dropping since the turn of the century. That's not an atheist's happy dream. It's the conclusion of researchers at Faith Communities Today (FACT), the multi-year study of American religion quarterbacked by the Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

The group released a preliminary look this week at results from a major survey done last year. For the bottom line, I really can't improve on their wording:

"The clear and consistent short-term direction is negative -- including worship attendance growth, spiritual vitality and sense of mission and purpose. And as suggested by the eight-year decline in financial health. . . . it is likely that the broader erosion of vitality dates to at least 2000. What makes this even more sobering is the fact that this pattern of decline, here shown for American congregations as a whole, also holds within each of FACT's four primary faith families -- old-line Protestantism, Evangelical Protestantism, Catholic and Orthodox, and Other World Religions with few exceptions."

You want numbers?

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: America, Faith Communities Today, Hartford Institute for Religion Research, religion, religious belief

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Friday, August 21, 2009

Free-flow spirituality

R Jagannathan
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

You may have read a story in DNA suggesting that as many as 65 per cent of Americans subscribe to the Hindu way of thinking about god -- which is that there are several paths to the ultimate. Among other things, the report says that 30 per cent of Americans think of themselves as spiritual, but not necessarily religious, and a quarter believe in reincarnation.

The report, based on a Pew survey of 2008 and a Newsweek poll of 2009, does not come as a surprise. Reason: as societies become richer and are freed from basic material cravings, they will seek higher forms of self-realisation. Organised religion, with its focus on dogma and scripture, is incapable of catering to the needs of evolved minds.

Abraham Maslow, a pioneer in defining the human hierarchy of needs, built a pyramid of five levels. At the basic level, every individual has physiological needs (like food, sleep, sex). Next comes safety, followed by social needs (love and belongingness). At the fourth level, there is the need for esteem, and, finally, self-actualisation. The last could mean seeking a higher purpose in life, a spirituality that transcends self.

Society's hierarchy of needs mirror those of the individual, though no society is a homogeneous mass. It has several strata. Even in the rich west, there will be poor people with basic physiological and safety needs; even in poverty-ridden India, there will be a sprinkling of classes at the top with evolved self-actualisation needs.

That said, one can still make a few generalisations: the developed nations, which have fewer numbers of the absolutely poor and destitute, will have more people seeking higher levels of spirituality. Conversely, the poor will see better alternatives in organised religious structures, of the kind offered by traditional Christianity and Islam. In India, Hindu fears about conversions stem principally from this belief that the church and the mosque may be better positioned in terms of their social philosophies to meet the needs of the poor. Upper-end Hindu or Buddhist spiritualism appears more elitist.

Two caveats are in order here. First, by Hindu one is not merely referring to a specific religion called Hinduism, but a set of broad cultural beliefs about life, god and spirituality. You can be a Hindu by believing in any kind of god, or even no god. You accept that others may have different ideas about god. You can move far away from the base-camp of religion to find your own spiritual altitude, and you will still be reckoned as a Hindu. On the other hand, you cannot be a Christian or Muslim by accepting any other god or spiritual goal as true. Acceptance of these two faiths means implicit denial of other faiths. Which, for the spiritually evolved, can be a limiting factor...

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.
And on the subject of "self-realization," here is a Urantia Book quote which may illuminate why Hindusim may be an attractive religion for some truth-seekers...

Religious experience is markedly influenced by physical health, inherited temperament, and social environment. But these temporal conditions do not inhibit inner spiritual progress by a soul dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven. There are present in all normal mortals certain innate drives toward growth and self-realization which function if they are not specifically inhibited. The certain technique of fostering this constitutive endowment of the potential of spiritual growth is to maintain an attitude of wholehearted devotion to supreme values. 100:1.6

Labels: America, Hinduism, R Jagannathan, religion, self-realization, spirituality

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Friday, August 14, 2009

Reinventing American Judaism

The financial crisis and demographic shifts are reshaping the Jewish community in ways we could hardly have imagined a generation ago. Historian and Brandeis University professor Jonathan Sarna, author of A Time for Every Purpose: Letters to a Young Jew , sheds light on what history can teach us about Jewish revival in uncertain times.

What happened the last time the Jewish community faced a financial crisis of this magnitude?

After the last frightening economic downturn, following the 1929 stock-market crash, American Jewry turned inward, paying little heed to what was going on abroad, particularly in Germany. As the American Jewish Year Book gently put it in 1931: “The Jews of the United States did not during the past year watch the situation of their overseas co-religionists with the same concentration as in the preceding twelve months.” We were, as a result, less prepared than we should have been to help the Jews of Europe after Hitler rose to power in 1933.

In addition, Jewish education was widely abandoned in the late 1920s and 1930s. The number of students enrolled in New York City’s Jewish schools dropped by 22% between 1928 and 1935, and in Chicago enrollment plunged 16% in the six months from December 1930 to June 1931. We paid a big price for these declines: Those young Jews never made up for what they lost. We need to be careful nowadays to avoid sacrificing Jewish education to economic expediency.

Were there any positive repercussions of the Great Depression?

Yes, Jews turned primarily to one another during the 1930s, relying on ties of faith and kinship to carry them through the hard times. Traditions of self-help and mutual aid overcame religious, ideological, and generational differences. These values have been forgotten in some circles during the more recent years of plenty, but they bear remembering: All Jews are family, and thus responsible for helping one another.

Also, the government took more responsibility for social services. Jews were initially reticent about accepting this welfare, but it ultimately transformed postwar Jewish life. Money freed up from social services was devoted to Israel and Jewish education. The New Deal also modeled for Jews the benefits of centralization at both the national and local levels.

How are today’s economic woes reshaping American Jewish life?

A new era of belt-tightening is threatening a number of bold initiatives fueled by the great rise of Jewish wealth in the ’80s and the ’90s. Compounding the problem is the fact that while different sectors of the American Jewish community are busy explaining to all who will listen why their particular area of Jewish service has to be preserved at all costs, no one has put forth serious ideas about how to cut the Jewish communal budget by one-third when Jewish foundations, even excluding the Bernard Madoff losses, are approximately one-third poorer than they were this time last year. Over the next few years we will see which organizations in Jewish life have kept strong balance sheets, budgeted prudently, and built broad-scale support, and which have not. At a time when individual needs are rising and communal means are falling, the Jewish community will have to engage in a kind of organizational triage. My guess is that many Jewish educational institutions, several Jewish museums, and some other Jewish organizations will not survive.

This is just a small snippet of a lengthy article which asks many more thoughtful questions regarding Judaism and the economic crisis. Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: America, crisis, economics, Judaism, The Depression, The New Deal

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Book Review: Almost Eight Years Following 9-11 A New Book Warns Ignorance of Islam Threatens America's Freedom

Pittsburgh, PA (PRWEB) July 29, 2009 --

Almost eight years following our experience of 9-11, Americans remain dramatically conflicted about the religion of Islam, practiced by 20 to 25 percent of the people of the planet. In a new book just released, Journeys into the Heart and Heartland of Islam, written by Marvin W. Heyboer, Ph.D., published by Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc., Pittsburgh, the author urges readers to answer the vital question: In the wake of terrorist attacks and threats of jihad, how do we and how should we relate to Muslims? Heyboer asserts that it is not a problem of identifying good Muslims and bad Muslims. Rather it is a matter of understanding the teachings of Islam regarding terror so that we can understand whether acts of terror are an aberration of or are consistent with the principles of Islam as taught by its prophet Mohammed.

In the end, Heyboer provides an answer to the question: Why do Muslims hate us so much? He concludes it is because the Judeo-Christian civilization refused to believe Mohammed was the fulfillment of the prophecies of Moses and Jesus. He sets forth his belief that our concern should not be about what each Muslim does or does not do but about what Islam instructs all Muslims to do. He believes that because of our ignorance of and refusal to openly discuss and critically study Islam, we are on a collision course with Islamic holy law and that America's freedom is at jeopardy. This opinion is hardly politically correct or perhaps even charitable, but the stakes are too high to ignore this well researched and thoroughly documented work.

Please click on "external source" for the complete review of this interesting book.

Labels: 9/11, America, Journeys into the Heart and Heartland of Islam, Marvin W. Heyboer, Mohammed, Muslims

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Monday, July 06, 2009

Are we really a Christian nation? Readers chime in

By TRACIE SIMER
July 4, 2009

Today is the day the United States celebrates its independence. This country's forefathers are considered by most to be patriotic.

There is debate, however, about whether any of those men were Christians or even religious, and if they founded the United States as a Christian nation.

Micah Watson, assistant professor of political science at Union University, said the United States has never had a Christian government.

"The forefathers could've put in explicitly Christian language in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; that would've been quite common for that time, but they did not," Watson said.

According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 81 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian. Almost 2 percent said they were Jewish, and 0.5 percent said they were Muslim.

Those who identify as "non-affiliated" or "other" were about 15 percent, the survey said.

Watson said there is only one mention of God in the Declaration, with mention of a "Creator." Men such as Thomas Jefferson who authored those documents were most likely theistic, he said.

"We have always been a predominately Christian people," he said. "Even if they weren't devout, they were respectful of Christian ideals and norms."
A Muslim nation?

In June, President Barack Obama talked with a French reporter before his trip to the Middle East, saying that America could be one of the largest Muslim nations in the world.

Watson said Obama's speech about America's religious identity was about him trying to present a new face to the Muslim world. He grew up in the Muslim culture and has credibility others didn't, he said.

"We do have a lot of Muslims, but if you look at the percentages, it doesn't quite work," he said. "Most Muslims hear that and say 'Yeah, right.'"

Lucy Overstreet, who attends Evangelical Community Church in Jackson, disagrees with Obama's views on America's religious culture. She said America is not and never will be a Muslim nation and was founded on Christian principles.

This only the first of a three-page article. Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: America, Christianity, Declaration of Independence, religion, Tracie Simer

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Friday, May 08, 2009

Why so many Americans switch religions

A new Pew survey suggests that many Catholics leave their church because of doctrine, whereas Protestants tend to leave because of life changes such as marriage.

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 27, 2009 edition

America is a country on the move in innumerable ways, and religion is no exception. Half of Americans have changed their religious denomination at least once in their lives – many several times – and 28 percent have switched faiths altogether (for example, from Christianity to Judaism). Amid this fluidity, the number of "unaffiliated" adults has grown to 16 percent of the population.

What is behind such extraordinary "churn" in US religious life? As a follow-up to its pathbreaking 2007 survey of the American religious landscape, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a new survey Monday – "Faith in Flux" – that explores in depth the patterns and reasons for such remarkable change.

Most people who switch their allegiance during their lifetime, the survey finds, leave their childhood faith while they are still young, before the age of 24. Yet the opportunities for attracting them to another religion appear to continue for some time.

The reasons for leaving differ according to the origin and destination of the convert. Roman Catholics, for instance, tend to leave because they don't accept certain church teachings. Those Protestants who switch denominations do so more often in response to life changes such as relocation or marriage, or because of dislikes about institutions or practices.

While 56 percent of US adults remain in their childhood faith, 16 percent left, joined another house of worship at least once, and then returned to their original fold.

Of those raised Protestant, 80 percent remain so, with 52 percent still in their childhood denomination. Twenty-eight percent have moved to another Protestant following, 13 percent are now unaffiliated, 3 percent have become Catholic, and 4 percent joined other faiths.

Of those raised Catholic, 68 percent remain in the faith, 15 percent are now Protestant, 14 percent unaffiliated, and 3 percent in other faiths.

As several polls have shown, the "unaffiliated" is the fastest growing group in the past two decades. Yet the Pew survey shows this group to be very diverse, and often serving as a way station for many still seeking a religion.

While about 40 percent in this group say they don't believe in God, another 40 percent say religion is somewhat important in their lives, and roughly one-third say they just haven't found the right religion yet.

Please click on "external source" to access the complete article, which provides the survey results in more detail.

Labels: America, faith, Faith in Flux, Jane Lampman, Pew Religion and Public Life Survey, religion

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Friday, April 17, 2009

Religion in America: A many splendored thing

By ARTURO MORA

Should America be guided by any specific religious viewpoint? You’d think the answer was obvious, considering the First Amendment.

Yet there are politicians and religious leaders who insist we are a Christian nation, and demand the majority religion should set the rules. They want it to dictate our laws, our education system, and even how we shop. (“There’s a “War on Christmas!” they complain.)

But are we a Christian nation?

The Pew survey also showed a lot of movement between religions. Americans are searching for meaning in their lives, and they care less about specific creeds or traditional faith lines.

For example, few in the survey said they were Buddhists. Yet mindfulness practice and meditation have grown beyond the fads they once were. Popular writers such as Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Thich Nhat Hanh mix Eastern and Western spiritual teachings. God, they say, is not Christian or Buddhist. God is just God.

So even if we were to agree Christianity should set the rules, whose Christianity would that be exactly?

Instead of claiming you’re oppressed, instead of yelling at one another, how about we talk to each other?

A relative of mine, a traditional Christian, called last year during a health crisis, and asked, “Have you thought that maybe the reason you got sick is you’re worshipping the wrong God?”

I explained the Buddha is not a God, and described what God meant to me. We talked for an hour about the role spirituality plays in our lives, and she directed me to a wonderful passage in Philippians (4:6-8), which helped me through my crisis. I go back to it often.

I’d love to have such discussions with many traditional Christians. If you see God and Jesus in a traditional way, or take the Bible as literal truth, I respect your beliefs.

Labels: America, Arturo Mora, Christianity, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, spirituality

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Easter coupled with articles about Americans' religious beliefs

by Elizabeth Hovde, Oregonian columnist
Friday April 10, 2009, 3:00 PM

A couple NEWSWEEK articles -- published just in time for Easter, the pinnacle of the Christian calendar -- are creating some controversy and mixed feelings.

The first, by Jon Meacham, is titled, "The End of Christian America." Check it out. It discusses surveys that show the percentage of self-identifying Christians has fallen 10 points in two decades time while the number of people calling themselves atheists or agnostics has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009.

Christians still make up the majority of Americans (76 percent of Americans in the survey still identify as Christians), but other faiths are on the rise and there has been an increase in the number of people who are religiously unaffiliated. And those people are more apt to identify with being "spiritual" rather than "religious." Meacham writes that the present belief system out there "is less about the death of God and more about the birth of many gods. The rising numbers of religiously unaffiliated Americans are people more apt to call themselves 'spiritual' rather than 'religious.'"

The next article, "One Nation Under God?," by Daniel Stone, reiterates that the U.S. remains a deeply religious nation. But Stone writes:

"A nation facing problems of biblical proportions appears to be looking less and less to religion for answers. According to a new NEWSWEEK Poll, the percentage of Americans who think faith will help answer all or most of the country's current problems dipped to a historic low of 48 percent, down from 64 percent in 1994. "The poll also shows changing perceptions about the religious makeup of the United States and its politics. Since Barack Obama took office earlier this year, the number of people who consider the U.S. a Christian nation has fallen to 62 percent, down from higher numbers during the Bush administration (69 percent last year and 71 percent in 2005)."

He adds:

"Americans' personal beliefs about religion haven't changed much in the last 20 years. The number of Americans with faith in a spiritual being--nearly nine in 10 -- has not changed much over the past two decades, according to historical polling. Seventy-eight percent said prayer was an important part of daily life, an increase of 2 points since 1987. Eighty-five percent said religion is 'very important' or 'fairly important' in their own lives -- a number that hasn't changed much since 1992. Nearly half (48 percent) described themselves as both 'religious and spiritual,' while another 30 percent said they were 'spiritual but not religious.' Only 9 percent said they were neither religious nor spiritual."

Christ is a champion of underdogs, offering endless mulligans to those who dare to believe in something much greater than themselves. He lived a life worth celebrating, worth remembering, worth affiliating with.

Labels: America, Christianity, Daniel Stone, Easter, Elizabeth Hovde, Jon Meacham

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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

"More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, 'I'm everything. I'm nothing. I believe in myself,' " says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

This is a lengthy article, complete with inter-active graphics and charts - worthwhile exploring. In addition, the following topics are covered: "Religion as a hobby," Social mobility a factor," and "Religious movement in the USA"
Please click on "external source for complete access.

Labels: America, Cathy Lynn Grossman, religion

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Friday, March 06, 2009

No Holds Barred: The spiritual roots of the economic crisis

Mar 3, 2009 20:00 | Updated Mar 4, 2009 9:59
By SHMULEY BOTEACH

You don't have to be an expert to see that no one in America really knows how to fix our economy. It's come down to trial and error; throw trillions of dollars against a wall and see what sticks. Still the Dow Jones tumbles, still the recession deepens. One day we hear that only by rescuing Detroit's jet-setting auto executives and Wall Street billionaires will we stabilize our economy. The next day we're told the exact opposite, that bailing out these spendthrifts encourages the greedy and slipshod business practices that got us into this mess. The other day a 22-year-old man who has never held a job told me he bought his girlfriend a four-carat diamond ring and took her around the world. When I asked him how he could afford such extravagance, he told me he simply put it all on credit cards. The bank who issued them has now been bailed out, and so you have Americans who can scarcely afford clothes for their families picking up the tab for this man's golfball diamond. And this is the way we rescue our economy?

AN OLD JEWISH aphorism says that the difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows how to extricate himself from a situation in which a wise man would never have found himself. As the sky falls around us, we've learned is that America, for all its smarts, lacks wisdom. And this time even our smarts may not extricate us.

Our current economic crisis is born of a spiritual crisis. Greed is a sickness of the soul. For all our wealth and high standard of living, we Americans are the most unhappy nation on earth, consuming three quarters of the world's anti-depressants. The modern history of our country is built on a lie that says affluence, fame, and a shopping addiction are the secrets to happiness.

None of these reflect authentic American values. George Washington refused to accept pay as commander of the Continental Army. Abraham Lincoln practiced justice even though he was killed for it. Martin Luther King lived in a modest home even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. These men understood that what made America great was its commitment to human liberty and dignity, and not only to a high standard of living.

In our time there is little to counter the consummate consumer hucksters. Religion has been neutralized by becoming politicized. New-age spirituality focuses on finding inner bliss rather than fixing external problems. And the American obsession with therapy is only leading more men and women to depend on professionals to navigate their lives rather than cultivating the inner voice of conscience which is the true hallmark of a wise adult.

America will only be healed if we replace the consumer itch with a whole new set of values: values which hold that money is a means to an end, and not an end in itself; values which teach that greatness comes, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, from the content of one's character rather than the content of one's bank account.

Americans have to stop focusing on a career and start focusing on a calling. Find something in life that requires fixing and devote yourself to healing it.

All of this must begin in childhood. We must teach our children that school grades are less important than intellectual curiosity, the kind of mental engagement that has them playing fewer video games and reading more books.

We can renew America, but it won't come solely through shoring up our banks, but through shoring up our families.

Labels: America, family, Shmuley Boteach, spiritual crisis, the economy, values

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Friday, January 23, 2009

The greatest American innovation in religion is tolerance

Andrew Brown
Wednesday 21 January 2009

Watching Obama's inauguration with its repeated invocations of the deity, both formal and informal, it struck me how astonishingly prolific America has been in religious inventions. A short list of religious ideas invented in America would include at the very least religious toleration (from Rhode Island) from the 17th century, the open-air revival meeting (from the Great Awakening) from the 18th, Adventism, and Mormonism, from the 19th century and Pentecostalism and Alcoholics Anonymous from the 20th.

Then there are all the American innovations which are either questionably religious, like worshipping your own constitution or the "free market", or were in some sense pioneered in Europe, like theocratic model settlements. This last also falls into the third category: American religious innovations that were ultimately unsuccessful, along with Christian Science, utopian communes, and, let us hope, scientology.

But the successful American religious innovations have all spread round the world. They have not just become ideas, but transnational cultures bound up with ritual and strengthened by myths about their own history. There has been nothing at any other period of history like that fountain of social invention emerging from one country or civilisation.

Their success is often taken to be an endorsement of the free market in religions: more precisely, it is argued that this is the outcome of consumer choice, as opposed to some nationalised model of religious provision. But to see these belief systems as choices made by rational and autonomous adults is to misunderstand what made them successful and what distinguishes them from the failures.

In the shopping model of religion, nothing much hangs upon your choice. If it doesn't fit, you can give it back, or go to another church. And of course a lot of American religion runs like this, but when it does, it doesn't last. The ones which have lasted and spread are those whose adherents feel that they don't have a choice. They are not deciding what to believe. They are recognising what is true.

This is most obvious in the case of AA, where it is also explicit. The convert is told that unless they understand the world in a certain way, they will die; and so far as anyone can tell, that's actually true. But of course this isn't and doesn't have to be denominational. As it happens, the three AA members I know best are all Christians, but that, I think, is because they are all journalists more or less specialising in religious affairs. But they are none of them proselytisers and I know slightly a couple of alcoholics who were distressed to have to invoke a higher power to stay alive. It went against all their principles. I want to get some of them to write about this experience, but that's for later.

If you don't convert, as to Pentecostalism or AA, then the inevitable quality of the religion has to arise from childhood. I think this is much less effective than conversion as an adult. If it were really the case that childhood indoctrination is impossible to break, the Catholic church in Ireland would never have collapsed: what happened there was broadly speaking that an entire generation which had been brought up as Catholic children stopped as adults believing and performing the rituals of belief and then failed to pass on either to their children. If these ideas about indoctrination were true, this could not have happened at all. But it did happen, for reasons which aren't entirely clear, but which seem to go back to the generation before the one that lost its faith: it's not enough to bring children up in certain beliefs, or rituals. What's needed is that life should continue to reinforce the message that these rituals work, and that the beliefs are true even if you can't see why.

Incidentally, there is of course nothing uniquely religious about a belief that is true because it just is. I have absolutely no idea why Australians don't fall off the bottom of the planet. I know there is a force called gravity, and that it works and accelerates things at 32ft per second per second. But I have absolutely no idea why this should be the case; it's just a given fact about the universe. Actual religious faith can work that way too. It doesn't appear to the believer as a willed belief, but as a recognition of brute truth.

This is of course extremely frightening. It's not much fun from from the inside, but it's even worse from outside and that's why I think that the greatest American innovation is the first: religious tolerance. It demands the ability to marry an experience of inner compulsion with the terrifying understanding that other people may have inner compulsions which are just as real and compelling, but entirely different from yours. This is horribly unnerving when you understand it applies even to of members of your own tribe. But it now seems to most Americans a simple brute fact about human nature, which they understand their constitution to say with its talk about the separation of church and state. Of course, that means they can't understand people who don't think the American constitution is a vehicle of universal truths, but then no tolerance is perfect and this one has just been proved a little wider than anyone thought possible a year ago.

Labels: America, Andrew Brown, innovation, President Obama, religion, tolerance

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Americans accept 'array of faiths,' abandon biblical teaching

Allie Martin 1/16/2009 6:30:00 AMBookmark and Share

A new survey finds Christianity is no longer the default faith of most Americans.

The survey was conducted by The Barna Group, which found that half of Americans believe Christianity is just one of many options for genuine faith. George Barna, the group's founder, believes the study confirms that more Americans are adopting a pluralistic mindset.

"Americans are increasingly very accepting of a diverse array of faiths," he notes. "They're less likely to think that Christianity is right or accurate in what it teaches."

According to Barna, the survey also finds that many Americans are adopting their own ideas about faith, apart from God's Holy Word.

George Barna"What we find is that people are deriving their biblical literacy and their views of spirituality from conversations that they have with friends, and they give that equal weight to things they might get in church or from other religious settings," he points out. "They'll get their faith views from their own personal reflections as well as from their personal experiences and observations."

The survey reveals that most Americans still call their faith an important source of personal and moral guidance.

Labels: Allie Martin, America, Barna Group, Bible, Christianity, faith

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Randy Sheridan: American culture and religion: Is it on the rise or in decline?

January 14, 2009 06:10 pm

In the mid 1700s the Age of Enlightenment was sweeping across Europe like an Oklahoma grass fire.

The European culture’s love affair with liberation theology or better yet, no theology at all was in full bloom. Its theme is akin to the modern day slogan, “If it feels good, do it!”

Some progressive thinkers and prognosticators suggest that America has reached a similar point where religion is no longer a vital part of the fabric in our culture, and its time has come and gone.

Some recent studies might offer some validity to that observation.

A recent Harris Interactive poll suggests a decline of belief in key religious concepts. In 2003, upwards of 90 percent of the post 9-11 populace expressed their belief in God, while five years later that number dropped by 10 percent.

Such decline begs the question: Is the American culture prone to foxhole religion, or is it simply human nature to turn to God more readily during hard times, while holding loosely to our religion during periods of prosperity?

Sounds a bit “Old Covenant like” doesn’t it?

The poll shows even more disturbing trends as Americans continue to discount their belief in heaven, down from 82 percent to 73 percent in that same five-year period. Believing the devil is more mythical than real, a 9 percent drop to 59 percent. Bringing up the bottom, pun intended, the view of hell being real dropped from 69 percent to 62 percent.

What does all this mean? Does it have any bearings on our culture today? And how does this affect you, the average John and Jane Doe of America? Little or much, it all depends on your perspective.

An extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life details statistics on religion in America and explores the shifts taking place in the U.S. religious landscape. Many of these new paradigms are the basis for greater spiritual interests.

Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.

More than one-quarter of American adults, 28 percent, have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion or no religion at all.

Just as it was during the Age of Enlightenment, a torrential uprising of spiritual fervor was sweeping across the European continent, so here in America there appears to be a sustaining devotion to all things spiritual in spite of the latest polls.

Simultaneous to Europe’s liberal utopia, America was experiencing the first Great Awakening. Department of Delaware historian Christine Heyrman writes of what historians call “the first Great Awakening” can best be described as a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s:

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists alike experienced an increase in seekers in unprecedented numbers. In emotionally charged sermons, all the more powerful because they were often delivered extemporaneously, preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, famously known for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” evoked dramatic, terrifying images of the utter corruption of human nature and the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in hell.

Although our nation has sunk into a recession, is fighting two wars, and humanism is alive and well — you might be surprised to know that church attendance is holding steady and is even on the rise in many parts of our country. An average of 42 percent of adults in America, say they attend worship services weekly.

On the decline? Possibly, but American psyche has been so thoroughly “blood washed” for the last 300 years, I don’t think we are going away anytime soon!

Randy Sheridan of Burleson is a speaker, counselor and mediator. He can be reached at drsheridan@aol.com.

Labels: America, church, God, Harris Interactive, heaven, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Randy Sheridan, religion

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Study: Americans 'Customize' Their Religion

CBNNews.com
January 14, 2009

CBNNews.com - A new nationwide study says a majority of Americans pick and choose their religious beliefs, effectively customizing their religion rather than adopting beliefs taught by a church.

The survey conducted by The Barna Group, claims that 71 percent of Americans say they are more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs. Young people under the age of 25 led this particular 'a la carte' group.

The survey, released on Monday, also shows that among those people who describe themselves as being a Christian:

-Almost half believe that Satan does not exist.

-One-third say that Jesus sinned when he was on earth.

-Two-thirds say they do not have a responsibility to share the Gospel with others.

-One-quarter dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.

George Barna, founder of the Christian survey group, said the findings show that a growing number of people are serving as their own "theologian-in-residence." This results in Americans embracing an "unpredictable and contradictory body of beliefs."

Those claiming to be "born-again" Christians indicated they would be least likely to a adopt an a la carte approach to their religious beliefs. But according to the survey, 61 percent say they also have mixed their set of beliefs.

The Christian Post noted the survey findings show Americans are now combining their beliefs from different denominations and even religions, instead of following the theological teachings of a denomination or church.

A Christian Nation?

The survey also revealed that Christianity is no longer viewed as the default religion of America. More than 50 percent of the respondents said that Christianity is no longer considered to be the automatic religious choice for Americans. Previous studies indicated a basic assumption among responders that if one was born in America, that person would automatically be affiliated with the Christian faith.

Despite the changes in religious beliefs, a majority of Americans still look to their religious faith as an important source for moral guidance. Nearly three out of four Americans said their faith influences their moral judgments.

The study's results are based on telephone interviews conducted by The Barna Group with a random sample of 1,004 adults selected from across the United States, ages 18 and older, during August of last year.

Sources: The Barna Group, The Christian Post

Labels: America, Barna Group, religious belief

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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Survey: Americans believe religious values are ‘under attack’

59 percent say Hollywood does not share their moral values

Christian Examiner staff report

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — A majority of Americans believe that religious values are “under attack,” and that Hollywood insiders do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans, according to a survey from the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL-commissioned poll found that 61 percent of the American people continue to believe that religious values in this country are “under attack,” while 59 percent of Americans agree that “the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans.”

The national poll, “American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood,” was released Nov. 14 during the League’s 2008 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. Conducted by The Marttila Communications Group, it surveyed 1,000 American adults in October.

Other findings of the ADL survey, included:

• Forty-three percent hold the view that Hollywood and the national media are waging an organized campaign to “weaken the influence of religious values in this country.”

• Significantly fewer Americans believe today that Jews control the TV and film industries. The survey showed that 63 percent disagree with the notion that “the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews,” while only 22 percent agree. When ADL conducted its first survey on anti-Semitic attitudes in 1964, nearly half of all Americans believed that the television and film industries were run by Jews.

• There is surprising support for censorship. Nearly 40 percent of the American people support the notion that “dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries,” and nearly the same number of Americans disagree with the statement that “censoring books is an old-fashioned idea.”

• Nearly half of those surveyed—49 percent—believe that the United States is becoming “too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles;” 47 percent disagreed with that statement.

“It is troubling that so many Americans feel as if the output of Hollywood is part of an organized campaign to undermine religious values in this country and believe that censorship is acceptable,” Foxman said.

The survey was conducted by the Marttila Communications Group, a Boston-based public opinion research firm that has conducted numerous national surveys for ADL, measuring American attitudes on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

Published, January 2009

Labels: America, Anti-Defamation League, censorship, Hollywood, Marttila Communications Group, religious values

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Friday, November 07, 2008

Report: religion becoming more diverse in America

Katie Martinez
Issue date: 11/5/08

Growing up in a two-faith household, Margaret Foland, whose mother is a devout Catholic and father is a Southern Baptist, said the only fights she remembers growing up were over religion.

The junior theatre major was raised in the Catholic Church, a faith she embraces to this day, with the exception of one little bump in the road.

"My faith wavered and when I got into high school," she said. "So I have come full circle from doubting my own faith to defending it wholeheartedly."

Foland's experience is an example of the changing landscape of religion in America, which a Pew Research Institute Survey says is becoming increasingly more fluid and diverse.

The report, released earlier this year, included 35,000 respondents nationwide and found the current American religious marketplace to be characterized by constant movement with every major religious group simultaneously gaining and losing large numbers of adherents.

The survey showed that 37 percent of married Americans have a spouse of another faith, and 28 percent of respondents left the religion in which they were raised for another, or none at all. And when considering those who left one form of Protestant-based faith for another, the number of affiliation changes rose to 44 percent.

By the Numbers

4 percent of Americans say they are atheist or agnostic.
10 percent of Americans say they are former Catholics.
25 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 say they are not affiliated with any particular religion.
37 percent of married Americans have a spouse of a different faith.
44 percent of Americans have left the faith in which they were raised for another or none at all.
51 percent of Americans are affiliated with a Protestant-based faith.
Source: The Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life

Labels: America, faith, Katie Martinez, Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, religion

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

Survey: Most Americans Believe God Uniquely Blessed U.S.

By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Oct. 23 2008

This is page one of a two-page article. Please click on "external link at the end of this page.

WASHINGTON - Most Americans strongly believe that God has uniquely blessed America, and a similar majority believe that the United States should set the example as a Christian nation to the rest of the world, a survey, released Wednesday, found.

Sixty-one percent agree that America is a nation specially blessed by God, and 59 percent believe the United States should be a model Christian nation to the world, according to a poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc. for the PBS news program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and the United Nations Foundation.

Support for the idea that America is uniquely blessed by God was highest among people who attend religious services weekly (80 percent), with 86 percent of evangelical Christians sharing this belief. In comparison, less than half (48 percent) of those who attend religious services less regularly held the same view.

The nationwide survey of 1,400 adults, including an oversample of 400 evangelical Christians aged 18-29, was conducted to find how religion shapes people’s view of America’s role in the world and its foreign policy.

People who strongly believe that America is blessed by God and should set a strong Christian example are also more likely to say that the United States is morally obligated to play a significant role in world affairs.

Overall, most Americans also believe the United States has a responsibility to be very engaged (24 percent) or moderately involved (70 percent) on the global stage. However, most Americans believe (67 percent) the United States’ relation with the rest of the world is on the wrong track.

In terms of foreign policy priorities, there was not much of a difference between what the general American public and what white evangelicals consider most important issues. They both agree that controlling nuclear weapons around the world and fighting global terrorism are the two top agendas for Washington.

There were also no significant differences between the two groups on other issues such as fighting global disease, preventing genocide in countries like Sudan, improving the standard of living in less developed nations, and promoting democracy in other nations.

What the general American public and white evangelicals most sharply contrast on in terms of foreign policy priorities is supporting Israel - 65 percent of white evangelicals consider this extremely or very important compared to 46 percent of the general American public; promoting religious freedom in other nations (67 percent white evangelicals vs. 53 percent); combating global warming (43 percent vs. 59 percent); and providing women with reproductive healthcare (53 percent vs. 60 percent).

Differences can be explained by religious views held by evangelical Christians, who largely see Israel as the birthplace of Christianity and link abortion to reproductive healthcare.

In addition to examining faith groups as a whole, the survey also looked in particular at young white evangelicals.

Labels: America, evangelicals, God, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc, Michelle A. Vu

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

How religion got deep into politics

How religion got deep into politics

By John Shulson | The Virginia Gazette
October 1, 2008

WILLIAMSBURG -- Bruton Parish Episcopal Church recently launched its fall series, “The Influence of Religion on Presidential Politics,” with an overflow crowd in Lewis Hall to hear Dan Roberts speak on “America’s Vacant Public Square.”

Roberts, a true Renaissance man, is a professor of history at the University of Richmond. He’s also a Presbyterian minister, a Bronze Star Medal recipient and a jazz pianist. Roberts created the syndicated Public Radio series, “A Moment in Time,” which plays to 2 million listeners eager to resist “this growing epidemic of ignorance about the [historical] past.”

The radio program was inspired by a survey in which 78% of college seniors from 55 top universities could identify Bevis and Butthead, while only 33% could connect the dots between George Washington and Yorktown. Roberts set about to make history relevant in short radio bursts.

His thoughts concerning religion and politics date back to the founding days of our country and its disenchantment with the Church of England.

Assuredly, “Church and state were tightly locked,” he told his Bruton Parish audience, “but distrust also existed.” He recalled that the Founding Fathers rejected sectarian religion in government. “The state would not be the people’s moral salvation, and it wouldn’t seek to manage people’s lives.”

Instead, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution addressed religion in non-specific terms. “We could have created a Christian republic, but we looked west toward something new,” he said.

However, the seeds of a growing religious movement within the state were sown when the Constitution was ratified. “Evangelicals said they wanted a Bill of Rights and freedom of religion and bartered with James Madison to achieve this.”

As America began to grow into a diverse republic, the Great Awakening saw a growth in evangelical churches. Later, the immigration of many Catholics and Jews tended to undermine Protestant dominations, he said.

Roberts said presidential candidates realize “it’s dangerous to play the religious card. Candidates try to avoid making it an issue... in order not to offendcategories of people.”

Since candidates need to be careful not to make overt appeals, Roberts said, politicians resort to code language such as “family values.” He explained that “family values” can mean one thing to a couple with a child in Virginia and quite another to two men who adopt a child in Chicago.

Of the need to tread lightly in the use of religion, Roberts illustrated three candidates who traversed political minefields: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon.

Even though Jefferson was accused of being a deist and the father of a child born to a slave, he refused to respond to allegations and chose to ignore the subject of religion. He decided instead to hit hard on John Adams’ position on war.

Lincoln didn’t conform to orthodox religious folks. He reacted against sectarian rivalry and even used reason and ridicule to counter aspects of the Bible. However, Lincoln eventually grew into a form of Unitarian religion, using it not in debates but in other ways. He used biblical language in fighting slavery. He could speak the religious language of the voters he needed. The result was that his humor and his personal demeanor propelled him to office even though the people didn’t share his religious beliefs.

It was Nixon, Roberts said, who started “pious presidential pandering” to play to the religious. He explained that Nixon, a Quaker, occasionally went to church, preferring to hold Sunday services in the White House. However, Nixon tended to stay away from the subject of religion.

Instead, he used overt religiosity as a code.

“Nixon’s strategy was to win the Southern white vote. Many in the South were racists and religious. He realized a direct racist appeal couldn’t be done. But he did appeal to them through the use of code phrases familiar to Southern whites such as ‘states’ rights’ and ‘law and order.’”

In drawing his extensively prepared comments to a close, Roberts returned to his theme of a town square.

“The vacant public square is under attack. Many voters calculate to use religion to determine who they’ll vote for. It’s now factored into the strategy. The fate of the public square hangs in the balance.”

Labels: Abraham Lincoln, America, church-state, Dan Roberts, history, John Shulson, politics, religion, Richard Nixon, Thomas Jefferson

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

VIDEO: Madeleine Albright Discusses “The Mighty and The Almighty: United States Foreign Policy and God”

VIDEO: Madeleine Albright Discusses “The Mighty and The Almighty: United States Foreign Policy and God”

By ReligiousLiberty.TV ? August 24, 2008

From Fora.TV - Recorded May 7th, 2006 - Madeleine Albright talks about The Mighty and The Almighty: United States Foreign Policy and God. The former secretary of state offers a provocative and very personal look at the role of religion in America’s foreign policy. She argues that understanding the place and power of religion, and knowing how best to respond to it, is essential if America is to lead successfully around the world.

Labels: America, foreign policy, God, Madeleine Albright, religion, video

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Friday, August 08, 2008

Religion, the Election, and the Media

By: Welton Gaddy
Thursday August 7, 2008

The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life have published a report that confirms my suspicions about the use of religion on the campaign trail. The study found that we are in the midst of an election for a Pastor-in-Chief rather than a Commander-in-Chief.

An analysis of over 13,000 news stories from January 2007 through April 2008 revealed that religion is playing a disproportionate role in this election. Religion accounted for roughly ten percent of all stories that did not focus on political strategy or tactics. By comparison, foreign policy issues garnered 14 percent of these stories, and stories about race and gender only made up 11 percent.

The United States is in the midst of two wars, one of which is costing our taxpayers $6 billion every month. Terrorism represents the greatest foreign policy crisis of our generation. At the same time, American society is being transformed as Senators Clinton and Obama challenged traditional stereotypes of who is best fit to be president. And despite these profound changes and challenges, religion is receiving almost as attention in the media as foreign policy and race/gender issues. And the scary thing is that George W. Bush, who revolutionized using religion for partisan gain, isn't even on the ballot.

There is much blame to go around that explains this troubling trend. The presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle were more willing than ever to seek the endorsement of religious leaders, incorporate religious rhetoric into their speeches, and promote their religious affiliation as a misguided proxy for sound judgment and clear vision.

Both Senators McCain and Obama had some buyer's remorse after seeking the support of controversial clergy. But candidates cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to use clergy for political gain and then discard them when it no longer fits their agenda.

The media deserve much of the blame as well. Last summer, CNN's Soledad O'Brien asked Senator John Edwards to name his biggest sin. Multiple debate moderators asked various candidates to name their favorite Bible story.

These types of questions have no bearing over a candidate's ability to serve as president. The media are the staunchest supporters of the First Amendment's guarantees of free speech and press, yet it appears they have not read Article VI of the Constitution, which prohibits imposing a religious test for public office.

The problem is not that religion is being incorporated into the presidential campaign. Rather the problem is that religion is being used as a divisive tool instead of a unifying power. The candidates need be less concerned with appearing "holier than thou" and focus instead on explaining the role their values play in their political worldview. The media needs to stop asking irrelevant (and irreverent) questions about the candidates' religion and start asking the candidates to outline their views on the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.

If we can nurture a more positive relationship between religion and politics, a survey result like this one would be encouraging rather than lamentable.

Labels: America, Barack Obama, John McCain, Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religion, Welton Gaddy

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Friday, March 07, 2008

I'll have a side of Christianity with that

Amy Baack
Issue date: 3/7/08

We live in an era of freedom of choice. Everything in our society is designed to provide us with options; we like feeling we are in control of our own lives. Don't tell me what to watch on TV - let me choose from 100-plus cable channels. Burger King's slogan sums up our choice-driven culture, as it encourages Americans to "Have it your way."

A recent study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows Americans are beginning to shop around more when it comes to selecting their spiritual beliefs. Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that more than 40 percent of the survey respondents said they changed their religious affiliation since childhood.

In addition, 16 percent of those surveyed call themselves "unaffiliated," meaning they do not identify with one particular religion or do not have any definitive spiritual beliefs. This number is startling - it is twice as large as figures from past surveys.

Americans today are simply not willing to mindlessly absorb information thrown at them about what to believe. People no longer stick to one religion, and some are not committing to any religion at all.

The survey results indicate an important trend: Americans are challenging authorities and not accepting ideas as truth simply because they were raised with them, instead they first explore multiple sides of the issue.

The survey also found that among Americans aged 18 to 29, one in four respondents are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

An additional study by Pew conducted in February examined the spirituality of college students during their undergraduate careers, with spirituality defined as "the students' search for meaning and purpose, … their values … and their self-understanding."

College is supposedly a monumental stage in one's life, when one's values and beliefs are solidified; the fact that students gain spiritual maturity throughout their college years is no surprise.

Our generation has been raised to demand choices, and it makes sense that in our pivotal 20s, we are exploring multiple religions and questioning our faith. What is unusual is that the rest of America seems to be following our lead in this collegiate route of self-discovery.

One of the strongest American values is freedom, and Americans are now applying it to their spiritual pursuits, exploring multiple religions to try to figure out what they really believe.

The survey also found that Protestantism, the leading religion in America for generations, is actually on its way to becoming a minority faith. In the 1980s, 65 percent of Americans called themselves Protestants, but the results of Pew's survey indicate this number is now down to 51 percent.

America is becoming more of a nondenominational country, freed from the boundaries of religious institutions. People are exercising their First Amendment rights and exploring whatever religions strike their fancy. As a result, religion is being shaken out of its traditional cut-and-dry mold as Americans begin to piece together their own individual beliefs, creating a sort of custom religion derived from a sampling of sources.

Spiritual beliefs are not one-size-fits-all; they are intensely personal, and we are beginning to treat them as such. No one can tell me what to put on my iPod playlists, and I can certainly practice whatever religion I choose. I don't need to settle on one religion at all; I can create my own. People are free to believe whatever they want; this is the beauty of modern America.

Religion is just the latest part of our culture to receive the choice-filled menu treatment. So what will it be today? Would you like to try some Judaism, or perhaps a bit of Scientology? I hear the Buddhism is fantastic.

Labels: America, Amy Baack, belief, choice, college, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, spirituality, students

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Monday, March 03, 2008

Revolutionary religion revealed

Monday, March 3, 2008

By Sally Pollak
Free Press Staff Writer

Book Review: "Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America's Founding Fathers" by Gary Kowalski.

The book focuses on the beliefs and interests of six men who were influential and instrumental in the founding of the nation: Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Paine, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

These leaders, Kowalski said, were "original and idiosyncratic religious thinkers." Kowalski said he would characterize all of them in two ways:

Religious naturalists: The men found God in nature rather than scripture or the traditional revelations.

Religious liberals: They believed that faith should flourish, but it should do so in the private sphere -- within a certain "inviolable zone of personal freedom that neither the state nor the church can intrude upon," Kowalski said.

Kowalski's interest in researching and writing about the faith of the founding fathers was driven by what he thinks are common misperceptions about who these men were and what they believed in. There are many people who believe the United States of America was founded as a Christian nation by a group of men who were devout believers in the bible, Kowalski said.

He learned that the founding fathers were curious thinkers with an interest in science and philosophy. They were comfortable asking questions that yielded ambiguous and complex answers. Their insistence on the separation of church and state was intended to help religious freedom and religious diversity flourish -- and an effort to prevent the submission of certain religions by a dominant faith, Kowalski said. They were religious pluralists who believed the nation benefited from a diversity of faiths.

"I think the founders would be disturbed by the way journalists and voters seem to be applying a religious screen to the presidential candidates," he said. "They were discreet about their religious beliefs, and never paraded them for purposes of gaining votes. They'd be dismayed to see the way candidates are expected to profess their piety as great church-goers -- as though that's a qualification for public office. The idea that God identified with some party platform would've been completely foreign to their thinking."

Kowalski used a combination of primary and secondary sources for his research. Private correspondence, including condolence letters sent when family members died, revealed insights into the men's beliefs, he said.

Kowalski writes that Washington "deliberately avoided using the word 'God' in his public statements."

He notes that Jefferson put together his own bible, the first version titled "The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth." In his bible, Jefferson eliminated miracles -- including the virgin birth.

Adams, who was interested in scientific inquiry, had a particular interest in astronomy. He speculated about life on other planets and the connectedness of the universe, writing that "it is highly probable every particle of matter influences and is influenced by every other particle in the whole collected universe."

"The founders believed and hoped that religion would be a cohesive social force," Kowalski said. "They believed that all denominations share some of the same values -- justice, love, mercy -- and that religion lists us above narrow self-interests in its concern for the public good."

Labels: America, Founding Fathers, Gary Kowalski, George Washington, John Adams, Liberal, naturalism, religion, Sally Pollak, Thomas Jefferson

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Friday, February 08, 2008

Religion and the Death Penalty

Religion and the Death Penalty

By Walter Berns
Monday, January 28, 2008

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Constitution allows the death penalty for the rape of a child.

--New York Times, January 5, 2008

The best case for the death penalty--or, at least, the best explanation of it--was made, paradoxically, by one of the most famous of its opponents, Albert Camus, the French novelist. Others complained of the alleged unusual cruelty of the death penalty, or insisted that it was not, as claimed, a better deterrent of murder than, say, life imprisonment, and Americans especially complained of the manner in which it was imposed by judge or jury (discriminatorily or capriciously, for example), and sometimes on the innocent.

Camus said all this and more, and what he said in addition is instructive. The death penalty, he said, "can be legitimized only by a truth or a principle that is superior to man," or, as he then made clearer, it may rightly be imposed only by a religious society or community; specifically, one that believes in "eternal life." Only in such a place can it be said that the death sentence provides the guilty person with the opportunity (and reminds him of the reason) to make amends, thus to prepare himself for the final judgment which will be made in the world to come. For this reason, he said, the Catholic church "has always accepted the necessity of the death penalty." This may no longer be the case. And it may no longer be the case that death is, as Camus said it has always been, a religious penalty. But it can be said that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed by a religious people.

The reasons for this are not obvious. It may be that the religious know what evil is or, at least, that it is, and, unlike the irreligious, are not so ready to believe that evil can be explained, and thereby excused, by a history of child abuse or, say, a "post-traumatic stress disorder" or a "temporal lobe seizure." Or, again unlike the irreligious, and probably without having read so much as a word of his argument, they may be morally disposed (or better, predisposed) to agree with the philosopher Immanuel Kant--that greatest of the moralists--who said it was a "categorical imperative" that a convicted murderer "must die." Or perhaps the religious are simply quicker to anger and, while instructed to do otherwise, slower, even unwilling, to forgive. In a word, they are more likely to demand that justice be done. Whatever the reason, there is surely a connection between the death penalty and religious belief.

European politicians and journalists recognize or acknowledge the connection, if only inadvertently, when they simultaneously despise us Americans for supporting the death penalty and ridicule us for going to church. We might draw a conclusion from the fact that they do neither. Consider the facts on the ground (so to speak): In this country, 60 convicted murderers were executed in 2005 (and 53 in 2006), almost all of them in southern or southwestern and church-going states--Virginia and Georgia, for example, Texas and Oklahoma--states whose residents are among the most seriously religious Americans. Whereas in Europe, or "old Europe," no one was executed and, according to one survey, almost no one--and certainly no soi-disant intellectual--goes to church. In Germany, for example, leaving aside the Muslims and few remaining Jews, only 4 percent of the people regularly attend church services, in Britain and Denmark 3 percent, and in Sweden not much more than 1; in France there are more practicing Muslims than there are baptized Catholics, and a third of the Dutch do not know the "why" of Christmas. Hence, the empty or abandoned churches, or in Shakespeare's words, the "bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang."

What explains this obsession with the death penalty? Hard to say, but probably the fact that abolishing it is one of the few things Europeans can do that make them feel righteous; in fact, very few. Nowhere in the new European constitution--some 300 pages long, not counting the appendages--is there any mention of religion, of Christian Europe, or of God. God is dead in Europe and, of course, something died with Him.

This "something" is the subject of Camus's famous novel The Stranger, first published in 1942, 60 years after Nietzsche first announced God's death, and another 60 before the truth of what he said became apparent, at least with respect to Europe and its intellectuals. The novel has been called a modern masterpiece--there was a time, and not so long ago, when students of a certain age were required to read it--and Meursault, its hero (actually, its antihero), is a murderer, but a different kind of murderer. What is different about him is that he murdered for no reason--he did it because the sun got in his eyes, à cause du soleil--and because he neither loves nor hates, and unlike the other people who inhabit his world, does not pretend to love or hate. He has no friends; indeed, he lives in a world in which there is no basis for friendship and no moral law; therefore, no one, not even a murderer, can violate the terms of friendship or break that law. As he said, the universe "is benignly indifferent" to how he lives.

It is a bleak picture, and Camus was criticized for painting it, but as he wrote in reply, "there is no other life possible for a man deprived of God, and all men are [now] in that position." But Camus was not the first European to draw this picture; he was preceded by Nietzsche who (see Zarathustra's "Prologue") provided us with an account of human life in that godless and "brave new world." It will be a comfortable world--rather like that promised by the European Union--where men will "have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night," but no love, no longing, no striving, no hope, no gods or ideals, no politics ("too burdensome"), no passions (especially no anger), only "a regard for health." To this list, Camus rightly added, no death penalty.

This makes sense. A world so lacking in passion lacks the necessary components of punishment. Punishment has its origins in the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men, men who are angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered, men utterly unlike Camus's Meursault. This anger is an expression of their caring, and the just society needs citizens who care for each other, and for the community of which they are parts. One of the purposes of punishment, particularly capital punishment, is to recognize the legitimacy of that righteous anger and to satisfy and thereby to reward it. In this way, the death penalty, when duly or deliberately imposed, serves to strengthen the moral sentiments required by a self-governing community.

Walter Berns is a resident scholar at AEI. An earlier version of this essay appeared in Democracy and the Constitution (AEI Press, 2006).

Labels: Albert Camus, America, capital punishment, Europe, religion, Walter Berns

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Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Why US Muslims live in peace

By AMNON RUBINSTEIN

At a time when European countries are debating among themselves about how to deal with the burgeoning extremism among their Muslim immigrant communities and how to contend with the dangers to their national security and culture from those who demand official recognition of their separate culture, there is no sign of similar unrest in the US. Close to a million Muslims live in America in peace.

Whereas in Europe acts of terror are initiated by local Muslims, the perpetrators of the terror attack on the World Trade Center were not aided by a single Muslim-American collaborator.

A PUBLIC-OPINION survey conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in 2006 to gauge the views of Muslim voters showed that 84 percent said Muslims should strongly emphasize shared values with Christians and Jews; 77% said Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews; 89% said they vote regularly; 86% said they celebrate the Fourth of July and 64% said they fly the stars and stripes. Nothing similar can be found in European surveys.

What is the explanation of this dramatic contrast? True, the Muslim minority in the United States represents a much smaller proportion of the population than in Europe, but that alone cannot explain the distinct dissimilarity.

THERE ARE five fundamental differences between Europe and the United States.

First, the US has been a land of immigration from its inception and has a great deal of experience in absorbing immigrants from other cultures, while in Europe, the phenomenon of immigration is relatively new.

Second, the US maintains maximum, if not absolute, separation between religion and state, making religion an individual matter. That means there is no room for Muslim-religious demands.

Third, the United States has a tradition of individualism: It is the individual that stands alone facing government; the individual pledges his allegiance to the flag and the constitution when he becomes a citizen; the individual can conduct a dialogue with the government on his own and has no need for an intermediary, such as the Muslim Councils established in Britain and France.

FOURTH, the immigrant to the United States knows that his economic fate is up to him and his own efforts: He knows that he is immigrating to a country where he has the chance of becoming rich, of becoming a celebrity. The immigrant to Europe is motivated, among other reasons, by the opportunity to become eligible for national welfare.

Fifth, multiculturalism is recognized in both cultures, but in the United States, the concept is limited to certain specific areas: tolerance, recognition of other cultures and of the need to have affirmative action and diversity in education and employment. In Europe - and especially a short time ago in Britain, Holland and Scandinavia - multiculturalism has been translated into group cultural rights, which isolate the immigrants from the majority population.

Because of all these things, scholars and political leaders in Europe are now turning their gaze to America to learn from it about how to absorb Muslim immigrants.

IN ISRAEL, the situation is of course quite different, largely because of the conflict and the extremist anti-Israeli stance taken by the Israeli-Arab leadership. But the American example is significant: The most important question of all, for us too, is whether there is any chance that the Arab world will ever make its peace with modern democratic values, which place the emphasis on individual freedoms, thought and expression, redirecting religious injunctions to the private domain.

The democratic world stands on two principal pillars: the Jewish pillar - that all humans are created in God's image - and the Greek pillar, which encourages criticism of accepted thought.

So far, not a single Arab society has accepted these two foundations. On the contrary, Arab societies are increasingly moving in the direction of oppressive extremism and suppression of all independent thought and freedom.

In this area, Israel can learn two things from America: the need for all immigrants and those receiving citizenship to take an individual oath of allegiance, and the importance of making the economic changes necessary to enable every Israeli Arab to advance economically, without being suffocated by red tape.

The writer is a professor of law at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, a former minister of education and MK, and the recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize in Law.

Labels: America, Amnon Rubinstein, Council on American-Islamic Relations, democracy, Muslims

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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Devil more popular than Darwin in America

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles

More Americans believe in the existence of hell and the devil than Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to a nationwide poll.

Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of US residents polled said they believed in a literal hell and the devil, 60 per cent said they believed in the virgin birth.

Only 42 per cent of those surveyed, however, said they believed in Darwin’s theory of evolution, or “natural selection”. Some 39 per cent of respondents said they believed in creationism.

Broken down by religion, the survey found that only 16 per cent of born-again Christians (or evangelicals) compared to 43 per cent of Catholics and 30 per cent of Protestants believed in Darwin’s theory.

Meanwhile, 60 per cent of born-again Christians, but only 43 per cent of Catholics, believed in creationism.

Overall, the poll reflects the centrality of faith to American life, politics and culture, with 82 per cent saying they believed in God.

Three quarters agreed there is a heaven while 72 per cent believed Jesus is God or the Son of God and 79 per cent believed in miracles.

The question of faith is proving a key issue in campaigning for next year’s presidential election.

The poll, by market researchers Harris, involved 2,455 US adults from across the country selected to reflect the national population in terms of age, sex, race, education and household income.

It also found that significant minorities of Americas believe in ghosts (41 per cent), UFOs (35 per cent), witches (31 per cent), astrology (29 per cent) and reincarnation (21 per cent).

Born-again Christians were more likely to believe in witches (37 per cent) while Catholics were found more likely to believe in astrology and re-incarnation

Labels: America, astrology, Catherine Elsworth, Catholic, creationism, evangelicals, evolution, faith, ghosts, politics

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Thursday, October 18, 2007

Study shows Americans want theocracy, not democracy

Rebecca Mahfouz
Issue date: 10/16/07

Page one of 2 - click link to "external source" for whole article.

The First Amendment Center released the dismal results of its yearly "State of the First Amendment" survey last month, revealing that Americans' ignorance of their Constitution surpasses even their notorious ignorance of geography.

An astonishing 65 percent of those surveyed believe the founders intended America as a Christian nation, while 55 percent believe that the Constitution explicitly establishes America as a Christian nation. Fifty-eight percent think that teachers should be allowed to lead prayers in public school and a terrifying 50 percent believe the Bible should be taught as a factual text in public schools.

A small bright spot appeared among the disheartening results, as 97 percent said that the right to practice one's own religion was "essential." That tiny candle of hope was extinguished by the results of the next question, wherein just 56 percent agreed that the right to worship applies to all religious groups, meaning that a good number of the 97 percent who purport to believe in freedom of religion really mean freedom to practice their religion and no other.

As though any further proof were needed that we have failed miserably in the area of education, those surveyed seemed never to have been required to take a high school civics course. When they were asked to name the five freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, just 3 percent were able to name the right to petition, 16 percent the freedoms of press and assembly, 19 percent freedom of religion and 64 percent freedom of speech.

One can cling to the belief that this survey is a fluke, that Americans can't possibly be so ill-informed of their essential liberties, especially given the increasing curtailment of those liberties. The results of the survey, however, have been fairly consistent over the past 10 years, exposing us for the hypocrites we are.

Labels: America, Christianity, First Amendment Center, Rebecca Mahfouz, religion, US Constitution

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Sunday, September 30, 2007

American Buddhism: Eastern faith seeing Western growth

By Ryan Holeywell — The Monitor
September 29, 2007

EDINBURG — Government security forces in Myanmar have reportedly killed at least three Buddhist monks who were peacefully participating in massive, ongoing protests against that country’s military government.

Tensions started to rise last month, when the government drastically raised fuel prices in the impoverished country.

Persecution of Buddhists in Myanmar and Tibet have consistently garnered media attention and cries for justice from activist groups in the United States.

Experts say the number of Americans who actually identify themselves as Buddhists — as opposed to just sympathizing with them — continues to steadily grow.

Appeal to Westerners

About 401,000 Buddhists lived in America in 1990, but by 2001 that number had climbed to more than 1 million, according to a City University of New York survey. There are an estimated 6 million Buddhists living in America today, said Charles Prebish, a professor at Utah State University.

Experts attribute the growth of Buddhism in America to the increased volume of literature on the subject available in books and online, as well as the growing number of university courses about the religion.

“Buddhism tends to appeal to Westerners because it’s very rational,” Kojin Dinsmore, a priest at the Austin Zen Center.

“(Buddhism) doesn’t ask you to believe in anything. It is mostly psychological.”

Those in the Valley drawn to Buddhism say one of its aspects that they find particularly attractive is meditation, a central component of the religion.

“When you meditate you have to clear your mind and think only of the present moment,” said Jen Klement, who lives near La Feria. “That’s not easy to do because these thoughts keep coming in. You mainly focus on your breathing. If you’re thinking about your breathing you can’t be thinking about much else.”

Growth in America

Buddhism first found its way onto the U.S. religious scene with Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 19th century. It resurged during the Vietnam War era as Asian immigrants came to the United States.

But about 20 percent of Buddhists in the United States are not of Asian descent, which means there are more than 1 million American converts by Prebish’s estimates.

Labels: America, Buddhism, meditation, Ryan Holeywell

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Monday, July 23, 2007

America Goes Kosher

Madonna drinks Canaan wine, Paris Hilton orders kosher steaks, Bono eats sushi under the supervision of the Beth Din, Donald Trump holds his meetings at one of Manhattan’s kosher restaurants – and everyone burns calories to the tunes of Sarit Haddad and Eyal Golan. Kosher is trendy in the USA

Yaniv Halili Published:
07.06.07

This latest American trend has celebrities enquiring about the coveted kashrut seal before letting a morsel of food touch their mouths. Apart from Madonna (who has a private room at the Prime Grill), many others are rushing around in search of steaks from cows that were slaughtered under the supervision of a rabbi.

A not very trendy 3300 years late, Americans are discovering that kosher food is both healthy and spiritual. The subject is complex, but it is encouraging to realize that we were right all these years and that it was worth insisting on manna in the desert. New kosher restaurants are opening all the time in big cities throughout the United States, offering dishes that have not been boiled to death. Kosher products are finding themselves on supermarket shelves and major producers in the dairy industry are strict about having the kosher stamp on their product labels, knowing that the “gentiles” want kosher products too. Even Hollywood is slowly turning kosher: the current most popular restaurant is a kosher meat and sushi bar where paparazzi photographers have a permanent place at the entrance.

Kosher Buddhism

Until recently, the words “kosher food” would have the average person running away rather than meet the dubious culinary experience. These days the two words mean prosperity. In Manhattan, kosher Chinese, French, Japanese, Indian and Iranian restaurants have opened. There is even a kosher Buddhist restaurant - indeed, Buddha spent his youth in a yeshiva.

In the last decade, kosher food sales in American supermarkets have reached a growth rate of 15 percent as opposed to a four percent growth rate for food that is not kosher. Eleven million Americans buy kosher food, and they are responsible for a yearly turnover of $9 billion. What’s interesting in all this data is that there are only just over six million Jews in America and even fewer keep kosher. Slowly but surely the kosher food market is being taken over by non-Jewish Americans who are on the lookout for kosher food that is not just gefilte fish and matza.

So, have the gentiles finally realized that Judaism is cool? Not necessarily so. In a recent survey carried out by Mintel International, 55 percent of kosher food consumers do so because they believe that kosher food is healthier, not due to religious reasons. The health merits attached to the kashrut seal are welcomed by mouths wide open: this last year Americans have had to swallow avian flu, mass poisoning and E.Coli bacteria.

The American Health Department’s statistics are scary: 76 million people - one in four Americans - suffer each year from diseases caused by spoiled food. As the numbers of diseases rise, so does people’s awareness and conscious consumers are on the look out for alternatives.

Kosher food is popular mostly amongst health food fans and strict vegetarians who can eat at a dairy restaurant and be sure that no suspicious pieces of meat will find their way into their plates and that they won't meet chunks of smoked bacon in their salads.

Americans like the fact that kosher food is prepared under the watchful eyes of supervisors, often more than one, and kosher restaurants in Manhattan are proud to announce that “all the food here is prepared under strict supervision”. This impresses the customers, even if the watchful eyes are those of a kashrut supervisor who is only making sure that the dairy and meat utensils stay separate from each other.

A survey published just before Independence Day shows that Hebrew National sausages made of 100 percent beef is the highest selling brand in America. Muslims and Christians too are among Americans who eat kosher food. Certain Christian groups follow a diet that is prepared “in the spirit of the Bible.”

And for dessert Eyal Golan

The kosher trend in New York got a big push last year when Madonna arrived in the city for her Confessions tour. After each show, she packed up her dancers and musicians and took them all to the Prime Grill for a steak. These intimate gatherings got a lot of coverage by the local press and the fashion police raised an eyebrow at the relatively unknown establishment that Madonna chose to eat and party at. Madonna doesn’t come to this restaurant only for its food; the owners play Israeli music and are sure that the songs of Sarit Haddad will make the desserts taste even sweeter. Madonna finds it hard to contain her excitement.

Madonna is a sure bet for kosher food, but a rather more unexpected personality who has found her happiness in kosher land is Paris Hilton. The idea that the young heiress finds solace in something that is not studded with diamonds has young Hollywood girls rushing to the Prime Grill in Beverly Hills. The tabloids and entertainment TV shows were amazed when Hilton chose to celebrate her birthday at the kosher sushi and meat bar. She invited 40 of her closest friends, but 200 guests showed up. “She loves our sushi”, admits the owner. “Before her birthday she asked us to prepare a lot of sushi, but she was most concerned about us baking a cake for her.”

Even now, from the heights of the garbage dumps she’s in, Hilton doesn’t forget where she came from and who fed her. Although her plea to bring kosher catering to her jail cell didn’t come through, two weeks ago during the embarrassing fiasco when she was under house arrest, she celebrated her temporary freedom feasting on kosher catering.

But even the huge amounts of kosher food that are going into Hilton’s mouth still don’t qualify it as trendy. So Sasha Baron-Cohen (“Borat”) steps in to help. The English star probably leaves half his monthly salary at the Prime Grill. Baron-Cohen is seen so often at the Hollywood branch of the Prime Grill that the sight of a fork is rarer.

“Sasha eats only kosher food, so he has no choice”, says the owner. “He loves steaks and eats a lot, often complementing his meals with expensive, kosher Israeli wine. He celebrated his Oscar nomination here with his fiancée and a few friends. But for Sasha, a meal is not a meal if it doesn’t have Eyal Golan, Kobi Peretz or Shlomi Shabbat singing in the background. He says these songs remind him of Tel Aviv.”

Signing deals over steaks

The celebrity-watch website TMZ.com reported that Donald Trump has connected to his lost roots, and not the roots of his hair: Trump has turned the Manhattan kosher restaurant Solo into his boardroom. Bono also pops in from time to time, and when he’s not snacking on flies in Africa, he keeps to his ideals and eats only kosher or organic. When he dines at Solo he insists on ordering the salmon in miso and at the Prime Rib he eats kosher sushi.

But, in spite of the star dust being sprinkled over kosher foods, some claim that making kosher trendy is not a kosher thing to do. Most in the Jewish community are not swayed by star dust and are against turning Judaism into “a modern, trendy cult,” says one of the heads of the rabbinical committee in America, who choose to ignore the phenomenon. “This is just a fashion that will soon disappear”, he says. “Everything Jewish is suddenly popular, but after the noise has quietened down and the storm has passed, only the core will remain, but anyway, the core is what’s important in Judaism.”

There are also some who understand that the phenomenon is typical of the American society, which adopts a new ritual every 15 minutes, heralds it as the new king and discards it when the next trend starts to bloom. “Obviously Madonna has played her part in making kosher trendy, but there is a wider issue of self-searching at hand,” says David Deutsch. “After Scientology and Buddhism, it’s now Judaism’s turn. Judaism has been around for a long time and that makes people ask how it’s managed to last so long and wonder what its secret can be. It’s like a closed family where people want to peep inside and see the beauty.”

But why kosher food now?

“The kosher trend fits in with modern life. Like the Kabbalah, it combines the old with the new. Kosher food meets spirituality and health in one plate, and that’s what people are looking or today: a little spirituality with an everyday practicality. Add to that the celeb quality and the fact that Hollywood has many famous Jews that people want to imitate. It’s very easy being Jewish in America today.”

Labels: America, food, health, Judaism, kashrut seal, kosher, Madonna, Paris Hilton, spirituality, Yaniv Halili

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Is the United States really becoming a Christian nation?

By: Joe Morehart
Issue date: 7/18/07

Both the Christian cross and the American flag are often shown together in this country, and many preach patriotism as they say, "This is a Christian nation." To say this means to say that each individual inside the U.S. borders would agree with Jesus Christ, which is simply not true in a nation that depends largely on diversity of beliefs. It also means to say that Christ would agree with both the Christian church and with this nation's policies, which is highly unlikely, but impossible to know for sure.

"In God We Trust" was added to currency after the Civil War and "under God" was included in the Pledge of Allegiance after it was added by Congress in 1954. Is this the direction the Founding Fathers would have encouraged? This is impossible to know for sure.

History's truth has been spun and rewritten to serve the interpretations of different beliefs so much so, that some say our Founding Fathers were mostly deist, while others claim that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were based on the Ten Commandments.

Which is true? How much religion actually filters into governmental policies, and how realistic is the promise of a separation between church and state?

"[No elected official should be] limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation," John F. Kennedy said. Many polls, however, show that Kennedy's opinion is not entirely shared.

In a survey conducted in 2003 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 52 percent said they would be reluctant to vote for an atheist and 38 percent said they would be reluctant to vote for a Muslim.

"I would suspect the real numbers are much higher," said Jeff Peake, political science professor at the University, said. "In those surveys, people tend to go for the more politically correct answer."

A favorable appearance for the candidate during the primaries is one of the most important reasons that they are elected. How much does religion affect the appearance of the candidate?

"If you are not Catholic or Protestant, religion is going to be the story," Peake said. "Just look at [Republican presidential hopeful and member of a Mormon church] Mitt Romney."

The media is quick to find the religious labels, which then become important, for one reason or another, to the candidates' identities. Is it more important what Romney thinks about health care or that he is a Mormon? Was it more important what Kennedy thought about civil rights or that he was Roman-Catholic?

Once in office, do the newly-elected officials govern based on what is best for the country or do they govern based on their religious beliefs?

The Pew Research Center, in the same survey attributed above, said that religion plays a role in the everyday life of 67 percent of those surveyed. Is this not the same for politicians whose "everyday life" consists of making and enforcing laws that the entire nation must obey?

Republicans have to appear more religious during their campaign to appease conservative voters, then once in office, they must compromise this religious appearance with the moderates and liberals in order to get their policy through, Peake said. To the Democrats, religion is less of an issue during their campaign so there is less of this compromise needed after being elected.

Gay marriage, stem-cell research, abortion, censorship, intelligent design versus evolution in schools and many other issues of today's world bleed over from religion to politics and are disputed on a daily basis. The separation of church and state as defined in the Constitution by America's founding fathers leaves the door open for different interpretations of what exactly that means. In the end, who has the authority to say that their beliefs are right?

Labels: America, Christian, Joe Morehart, Pew Research Center survey, politics, religion, separation of church and state

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Wednesday, July 04, 2007

America free from religion? We all need its foundation

Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Supreme Court this week dismissed a lawsuit from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation charging that President Bush's "faith-based initiative" program is an unconstitutional promotion of religion.

Good.

There are dangers in excessive government entanglement with religion, but there also are benefits in supporting proven, grass-roots programs that deliver needed services in an efficient manner. Reason, common sense and goodwill can help us build a consensus on how to protect religious freedom while providing public services such as drug counseling, soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

In an era when anti- religion polemicists gather attention with books, such as Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," Chris topher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great: How Re ligion Poisons Every thing" and Sam Harris' "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason," it would be wise to pause to consider what an America -- and a Northeast Ohio -- would be like free from religion.

Take away groups such as Catholic Charities, the Interfaith Hospitality Network and the City Mission, which meet the basic needs of thousands of the region's neediest, and Cleveland would be a tinderbox of frustration and injustice. As important as the services religious charities provide is their witness that those suffering are not alone, that many of their neighbors in the region believe poverty and homelessness are crimes against humanity that cry out for a response.

The ability to give hope amid even the most overwhelming crises was evident at the recent conference, "Leveraging Change: The Politics and Economics of Global Poverty and Health Care" at Hiram College.

In one session, leaders of Northeast Ohio organizations discussed how their groups are changing lives throughout the world despite crushing poverty, disease and economic injustice.

Joseph Cistone, executive director of the Cleveland Heights-based International Partners in Mission, spoke of his group's work in a Nairobi slum where women are sexually exploited and children suffer from malnutrition and malaria.

Catherine Monnin, director of Worldview International, a Christian group based in Olmsted Falls, spoke of her group's efforts to promote literacy programs and health clinics in Africa.
How to build on such efforts to create support for health care as a basic human right is a more formidable task.

In a separate session, Nicholas King, assistant professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, discussed why people who are well-off should care about the health of the poor. Can or should a case be made on the basis of self-interest?

The idea I came away with was that utilitarian arguments -- caring for the poor can prevent epidemics and reduce public health expenditures -- may be one way to build support for efforts to provide universal health care. We should, however, be grateful for all the people whose ethics mandate a humanitarian response irrespective of personal gain.

In America, faith contributes to the ethical foundation of a majority of its citizens.

More than ever, in a nation where politicians from both parties have abandoned the poor to the baser instincts of Americans, we need the positive values of religion. Lower taxes and a balanced budget -- not self-sacrifice for the greater good -- are the mantra of today's politicians.
We should welcome to the public policy table individuals and groups who uphold self-sacrificial love of neighbor as the ideal of living in community.

There is reason for hope when broad-based religious coalitions join with citizens groups to work for social justice. Last November, religious groups helped overcome powerful political and business interests in successful campaigns to raise the state's minimum wage and defeat slot machines and casino gambling.

An America free from religion?

No thanks.

To reach David Briggs:
dbriggs@plaind.com, 216-999-4812

Labels: America, charities, David Briggs, faith-based initiative, public service, religion, the poor

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Monday, March 05, 2007

Book Review - Blind Faith

Americans believe in religion -- but know little about it.

RELIGIOUS LITERACY
What Every American Needs to Know -- and Doesn't
By Stephen Prothero
HarperSanFrancisco. 296 pp. $24.95

Reviewed by Susan Jacoby
Sunday, March 4, 2007

The United States is the most religious nation in the developed world, if religiosity is measured by belief in all things supernatural -- from God and the Virgin Birth to the humbler workings of angels and demons. Americans are also the most religiously ignorant people in the Western world. Fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

In this book, the author combines a lively history of the rise and fall of American religious literacy with a set of proposed remedies based on his hope that "the Fall into religious ignorance is reversible." He also includes a useful multicultural glossary of religious definitions and allusions, in which religious illiterates can find the prodigal son, the promised land, the Quakers and the Koran.

The condition Prothero describes in Religious Literacy is unquestionably one manifestation of a more general decline in the public's cultural and civic knowledge. According to polls conducted by the National Constitution Center, only one third of Americans can name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Is it any more startling that only one third can identify the preacher of the Sermon on the Mount?

A 2005 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly two-thirds of Americans endorse the simultaneous teaching of creationism and evolution in public schools. How can citizens know what creationism means, or make an informed decision about whether it belongs in classrooms, if fewer than half can identify Genesis? No doubt the same proportion of Americans think that Thomas Edison said, "Let there be light."

Approximately 75 percent of adults, according to polls cited by Prothero, mistakenly believe the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves." More than 10 percent think that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. Only half can name even one of the four Gospels, and -- a finding that will surprise many -- evangelical Christians are only slightly more knowledgeable than their non-evangelical counterparts.

It is less surprising but more dangerous, given America's role in the world, that the public knows even less about Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism than it does about Christianity and Judaism. As Prothero notes, President Bush repeatedly declared that "Islam is peace" in the months after 9/11, while the prophet Muhammad was called a "terrorist" by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. "Who was right?" Prothero asks. "Unfortunately, Americans had no way to judge."

The book's main concern, though, is ignorance about the role of religion in American history. Prothero dates the beginning of the long decline in our religious literacy to the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s. The fervor of America's periodic cycles of revivalism, rooted in a personal relationship with God rather than in theology handed down by learned clergy, has always had a strong anti-intellectual as well as spiritual component.

Yet the author also sees the Protestant-influenced 19th-century schools as an important factor in maintaining the Puritan heritage of Americans as "people of the book." This may overestimate the religious influence of schools. It is hard to believe that religious literacy, already instilled by families and churches, needed reinforcement from the once ubiquitous McGuffey readers, which rendered the Ten Commandments in such rhymes as, "Thou no gods shall have but me/ Before no idol bend the knee." In 1880, the average American still had only four years of schooling (although the figure was higher in cities than in rural areas). Yet 19th-century autodidacts, including Abraham Lincoln (who had less than a year of formal education) and Robert Green Ingersoll, the orator known as "the Great Agnostic," achieved both religious and secular literacy by reading Shakespeare and the King James Bible without any prompting from teachers.

Prothero views the 20th century's much sharper decline in religious literacy as a product of changes in both religion and society. One ironic factor is an emphasis on a bland tolerance that, while vital to pluralistic American democracy, has also discouraged our awareness of religious distinctions. A politician may intone the phrase "Judeo-Christian" in every speech, but Jews still do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and Christians do. If no one knows what "Messiah" means, though, it hardly matters. But one inexplicable omission from Prothero's analysis is the post-1950 shift from a print to a video culture, with its incalculable erosion of all forms of cultural literacy. Many of the religious allusions and metaphors explained by Prothero in his glossary were once as common as the universal reference points now supplied by television.

The weakest part of this otherwise excellent book is Prothero's proposed remedy: high school and college courses dealing with the historical and cultural role of religion. As the author rightly notes, teaching about religion -- as distinct from preaching religion -- is not prohibited by the First Amendment's ban on "an establishment of religion." But given the failure of so many schools to inculcate the most elementary facts about American history, it is hard to imagine that most teachers would be up to the task of explaining, say, the subtleties of biblical arguments for and against slavery. Furthermore, a curriculum that would meet with the approval of Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and nonreligious parents would probably be a worthless set of platitudes.

Prothero movingly calls on Americans to reconstruct the "chain of memory" that once made the acquisition of religious knowledge as natural as breathing. But religion is no longer the air we breathe, and it is doubtful that schools can accomplish what parents and congregations cannot or will not in a society where people read fewer and fewer books of any kind -- including the book they consider the word of God.
·
Susan Jacoby is the author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism."

Labels: America, literacy, Pew Forum, religion, Stephen Prothero, Susan Jacoby