TruthBook Religious News Blog

By DON O'BRIANT / For the Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/26/07

Americans are keeping the faith more than ever, contrary to some surveys and at least one best-selling author.

Although Christopher Hitchens denies the existence of a deity in his book, "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (Twelve Books, $24.99), 91.8 percent of Americans in a 2006 Baylor University survey said they believed in God or a higher power.

Not only is God apparently not dead, or nonexistent, he may be one of the major factors in the 2008 presidential election. In a July 23 cover story on "How the Democrats Got Religion," Time reports that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are leading their party's crusade to win over religious voters that voted for Republicans in the past.

What does all this mean? Although most of the Americans interviewed in the Baylor survey said they believe in God, less than half — figures range from 36 percent to 44 percent — attend religious services on a regular basis.

According to the Baylor survey, your image of God may depend on demographics. Fifty-three percent of African-Americans said they believed in an authoritarian God; Easterners tended to believe in a critical God, Midwesterners in a benevolent God, West Coast residents in a distant God and Southerners in an authoritarian God.

In most cases, a person's image of God is formed at an early age, but sometimes that view changes later in life. When Georgia author Tina McElroy Ansa moved to St. Simons Island more than 20 years ago, she discovered a group of older black women who taught her what it truly means to be a Christian.

"As a cradle Catholic raised in the South who had attended 12 years of parochial school, I knew all about the liturgy, the sacraments, the saints. I could follow the Mass in Latin and English, and I was familiar with the canonical calendar. However, it was these women of the Sea Islands who taught me what I now know, truly know about Christianity," says Ansa, whose fifth novel, "Taking After Mudear," will be published this fall.

"For them, belief was not something to be paraded on Sunday while wearing a new hat and outfit. It was what they lived every day of their lives, under sometimes extremely adverse circumstances. I learned the meaning of true forgiveness and grace, of service and surrender," she says.

"The God I serve and believe in not only died on the cross for my sins, but also sits in the garden alongside me and calls me, 'Baby.' "

How do others see God and his role in their daily lives? Here are what some famous as well as ordinary people had to say:

"I absolutely believe in God and I do enjoy going to church. My father taught me what I believe in the deity, about God. I don't think of God as having posed for the Sistine Chapel ceiling. My father was a naturalist. He saw God in a blade of grass, in how plants come out of the ground. My concept of God was the constancy of life, the renewal of life.

"The real issue is: Do you believe? That Christmas book of mine, 'To Whom the Angel Spoke,' is what it's all about. Here are three shepherds who heard the same thing and saw the same thing, yet came away with a different interpretation."

TERRY KAY

author of "To Dance With the White Dog"

"Protecting me and holding me tight in an embrace of unconditional love. God is like that to me. I also believe that only God knows the true possibility and potential of me. So he leads and I do my best to follow."

LEAH WARD SEARS

Georgia Supreme Court chief justice

"My relationship with God affects everything I do — from the way I raise my children, to the reason I took a job paying less to the way I view my role as a wife."

TISA WASHINGTON

writer in Conyers

"I see the Lord as an ever present help in time of need. Being in a war zone brings that need to the forefront. I see God as someone as gracious. Not punitive or distant or absent.

"My observation in the war zone is that people seem to be taking incremental steps toward God. If they haven't been going to church or chapel, they're starting to go. War changes the way they view life. They have questions about the separation from home and family, good and evil, war and peace. There's a lot of grief and anger and a search for meaning."

MARK ROBERTSON

Air Force chaplain from Decatur

"I never want to impose my religion on anybody else. But when I make decisions I stand on principle. And the principles are derived from who I am. I believe we ought to love our neighbor like we love ourself. That's manifested in public policy through the faith-based initiative where we've unleashed the armies of compassion to help heal people who hurt. I believe that God wants everybody to be free. That's what I believe. And that's one part of my foreign policy. ... And so my principles that I make decisions on are part of me. And religion is part of me."

PRESIDENT BUSH

during 2004 presidential debate

"I believe in a benevolent God who loves us and wants the best for us. God is a stabilizing force in the chaotic world in which we live. God is the rock, the foundation of life's many challenges. I seek God and his purpose each day. As I strive to make each experience of the day complete, I am mindful of God's presence — in a person, a kitten, a lily. Each is precious to God and has a place in the context of the universe. I believe there is a place within our inner being that is sacred and protected by God's presence."

"My job is helping visually impaired persons get a job and go to work. I feel like my vocation is part of my everyday life, my ministry. God is omnipresent, but also present in each of the people I encounter at church or anywhere. I go to church because it's part of our covenant that we come together as a community. We experience good through each other, through nature, through the arts, through worship. God is in many things, not just when you're sitting in a pew."

PATRICIA MCNULTY

vocational rehab worker

"I have nothing like a clear picture of God, but if I had to distill all of my many notions into one characteristic, about the best I could do is describe God as some sort of originating principle, or creating force, which has been envisioned by folks of different times and cultures in a great many ways.

"I've always wondered what was behind the impulse to write serious literature, the drive to create art of any kind. For me, an interesting clue comes from Robert Penn Warren. He suggested that this impulse was, in his case, the quality of spiritual yearning.

"The quality of yearning that Warren identified in himself is, indeed, the characteristic that fuels the drive behind all good poetry and perhaps all profound art and science. It's the simple but insistent longing to discover meaning in the world, the need to understand not only how the world works, but why.

"The poet is an explorer, a seeker who scavenges both the outer world and the inner for clues to the big mysteries. Actually, at the most fundamental level, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet are all trudging along toward the same city. They're only taking different roads. The poet chooses the scenic route — the path of story, metaphor, myth — and the poem, I think, is the best vehicle here because it's the most intimate literary form, the form the soul loves best."

DAVID BOTTOMS

state poet laureate of Georgia

"For me, religion is not so much about a belief in dogma and traditions. It must be a spiritual experience, and I find it impossible to have that experience when I cannot reconcile myself to the Judeo-Christian assumption that man was God's principal creation, with woman [Eve, fashioned from Adam's rib] a mere derivative afterthought.

Nor can I accept woman as the cause of man's downfall, an assumption that has permitted men through the ages to regard women with suspicion and misogyny. Women were anything but an afterthought for the Jesus I believe in. His acceptance of a friendship with women was truly revolutionary at a time when the male-dominated status quo had severed religion's connection to the prepatriarchal ancient goddess and to nature."

Labels: Baylor survey, Don O'Briant, God