Wake-up call for organized religion

[seafan]

Wake-up call for organized religion

By LEONARD PITTS JR.
Miami Herald

March 14, 2009

We are losing our religion.

That, with apologies to R.E.M., is the startling conclusion of a new study, the American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by researchers at Trinity College of Hartford, Conn. The poll of over 54,000 American adults found a sharp erosion in the number of people claiming religious affiliation.

.....

Some of the findings from the American Religious Identification Survey:

HARTFORD, Conn. - The Catholic population of the United States has shifted away from the Northeast and towards the Southwest, while secularity continues to grow in strength in all regions of the country, according to a new study conducted by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College. "The decline of Catholicism in the Northeast is nothing short of stunning," said Barry Kosmin, a principal investigator for the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). "Thanks to immigration and natural increase among Latinos, California now has a higher proportion of Catholics than New England."

.....

In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 survey. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million "Nones." Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent "Nones," leading all other states by a full 9 points.


"Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly," Keysar said. We now know it wasn't. The 'Nones' are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union."


The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.


Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/Born Again," or "non-denominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of megachurches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.


"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism--mainline versus evangelical--is collapsing," said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States."

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More commentary from the Herald piece:

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Some have suggested our loss of faith is due to increased diversity, mobility and immigration. I'm sure there's something to that, but I tend to think the most important cause is simpler: Religion has become an ugly thing.
People of faith usually respond to that ugliness -- by which I mean a seemingly endless cycle of scandal, controversy, hypocrisy, violence and TV preachers saying idiot things -- in one of two ways. Either they defend it (making them part of the problem), or they regard it as a series of isolated, albeit unfortunate, episodes. But irreligious people do neither.

And people of faith should ask themselves: What is the cumulative effect upon outside observers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker living like lords on the largess of the poor, multiplied by Jimmy Swaggart's pornography addiction, plus Eric Rudolph bombing Olympians and gays in the name of God, plus Muslims hijacking airplanes in the name of God, multiplied by the church that kicked out some members because they voted Democrat, divided by people caterwauling on courthouse steps as a rock bearing the Ten Commandments was removed, multiplied by the square root of Catholic priests preying on little boys while the church looked on and did nothing, multiplied by Muslims rioting over cartoons, plus the ongoing demonization of gay men and lesbians, divided by all those ''traditional values'' coalitions and ''family values'' councils that try to bully public schools into becoming worship houses, with morning prayers and science lessons from the book of Genesis? Then subtract selflessness, service, sacrifice, holiness and hope.

Do the math, and I bet you'll draw the same conclusion the researchers did.

Who can be surprised if the sheer absurdity, fundamentalist cruelty and ungodly hypocrisy that have characterized so much ''religion'' in the last 30 years have driven people away? If all I knew of God was what I had seen in the headlines, I would not be eager to make His acquaintance. I am thankful I know more.

Including that God and religion are not synonymous. God is, for the faithful at least, the sovereign creator of all creation. Religion is what men and women put in place, ostensibly to worship and serve Him. Too often, though, religion worships and serves that which has nothing to do with Him, worships money and serves politics, worships charisma and serves ego, worships intolerance and serves self.

The ARIS survey should serve as a wake-up call to organized religion. It continues in this manner at the risk of irrelevance. I am reminded of a line from the movie Oh, God!, with George Burns as the deity and John Denver as the grocery store manager reluctantly recruited to spread The Word.

''I don't even go to church,'' says the manager.

And God says, ``Neither do I.''

Extremely fascinating findings.

IMHO, a number of collective groups have cloaked themselves in the sanctimony and piety of organized religion, only to implement extreme ideological agendas that have little to do with the betterment of fellow men, women and children.

[upi402]

1. Imagine, "and no religion too" n/t

[leftstreet]

2. The high point had to be the Fundies praying over the Wall Street bull

:rofl:


Interesting articles.

[ddeclue]

4. Did they just miss the whole passage on false idols?

it's not a "golden calf" but damn if it isn't pretty close..

:rofl:

[Lost in CT]

5. Most brain dead act of Christianity since the Death Penalty.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. It was the height of irony to have these fundies praying to Ba'al

next thing you expect is human sacrifice.

I actually told a preacher that one day....

He said that they were praying for the economy

I said, no Ba'al pure and simple, and pointed to the passage in Exodus and the Golden Calf.

T'was fun... to see a preacher schooled by an unbeliever

[seafan]

16. 4 years ago, Jeb Bush swooped in with "Terri's Law" to force a feeding tube into a dying woman.

Police 'Showdown' Over Schiavo Averted, March 26, 2005


AP Photo/Phil Coale


'Barbara Bush, are you proud of your sons now?'




RIP, Terri Schiavo., March 31, 2005


Timeline: Terri Schiavo case

[patrice]

3. Somechurches in this country just banded together to KILL 1,000,000 Iraqis who did NOT need killing.

People are NOT so stupid that they can't see who was behind BushCo and SOCIALISM for the PRIVATE Military-Industrial Complex, previously known as Blackwater et al. Look up The Order of the Spur and see who the last person to receive their highest honor was. This is an organization who congretates for their religio-military rituals in $200K privately owned diesel motor coaches, hundreds of them. I know people who have seen them in Colorado Springs.

[Lost in CT]

6. Actually churches fought the Iraq war... It seemed to me the non-religious

that supported it in greater numbers.

[patrice]

9. Sorry, too broad a point, BUT, somehow the Religious War Supporters were far more

effective and louder than the 100s of thousands of people, many of them religious, whom I saw in D.C. and NYC on several occasions between 2002 and 2005.

What do you suppose the distribution was? Total Religious folk = 1/3 Religious War Supporters + 1/3 Confused/Undecided + 1/3 Religious War Opposers?

[AntiFascist]

12. You should watch the film "Charlie Wilson's War"....

certain Evangelicals were likely responsible for helping fund the creation of Al Qaida, all in the name of capitalism fighting communism, of course. Many on the Religious Right believe deep down that Americans need to be punished.

[patrice]

13. Odd how things work out, 'cause it sort of looks like we are being punished, for lying to ourselves.

[Rob H.]

17. Not here in my corner of the South, they didn't

Most of the church marquees around here had some variation of "God Bless America" on them when we started bombing Iraq; the only one I saw that said something different was in front of a congregationalist church. Their marquee simply said, "May God Forgive Us."

And don't forget W and his fundagelical nitwit base--they probably still believe to this day that Bush was chosen by God himself to bomb the crap out of a country that had nothing to do with 9-11.

[anonymous171]

7. Oh my, what a broadbrush you have. nt

[baldguy]

10. They should stop playing politics.

[Lost in CT]

18. Boy I hope you don't express such thoughts on MLK day.

[baldguy]

20. Show me when prominent racists were compared to the anti-Christ by MLK or his followers?

[Lost in CT]

21. Um they wern't as far as I know what that has to do with

a desire to ban the MLK's of the world I am not sure.

[baldguy]

22. You're right. MLK & his followers don't make it a habit of demonizing their opponants.

They don't cast them in the role of Satan's minions. MLK & his followers don't call into question their faith, or their genuine desire to do good, or their patriotism. For them, politics is a moral & social activity. They're engaging in the process. If you don't support them it's not a sin; you're simply a human being who has made an error - and who may be an ally in the future.

All these things are part and parcel of the conservative fundamentalist playbook. They go further: if you don't vote the way they tell you, then you're evil. This isn't politics for the - it's war. Anyone who doesn't fully support their view is an enemy to be utterly defeated. They don't want to engage in the process - they want to destroy it.

So, in spite of your obtuse interpretations of my posts - there's plenty of room for people who use their faith as a guide for their political participation. There's no room for people who would turn America into the Weimar Republic.

[Lost in CT]

23. So you want to only ban those churches you disagree with. nt

[baldguy]

24. I've stated my thoughts.

If you lack the reading comprehension skills required to understand or have such a diminutive ego as to feel the need to intentionally misconstrue them, so be it.

[Ilsa]

11. I think people are tired of providing financial support for the

religion manufacturing-retail complex. They pay big salaries to central leadership to create products that serve little practical purpose. Many people need spirituality, but not a place to go to be made to feel guilty or goofy. They want practical religion, one that helps them when they need help.

I stopped going to my church a few years ago. I've never been happier. I still give to charities, especially one involving a religious children's foster care. But I don't want to have anything to do with building large monuments, giant organs for church services, etc. when our retirement savings are in danger.

[grantcart]

14. the 'wake up' call ship left years ago --- now its 'last call'.

[LongTomH]

15. This isn't exactly a new trend.

There have been earlier studies identifying the same underlying trend, like this 2005 article on the Religious Tolerance.org website.

"The proportion of the population that can be classified as Christian has declined from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2001." ARIS Study.

ARIS refers to the American Religious Identification Studies conducted in 1990 and repeated in 2001.

A lot of the people who don't identify with an organized church or religion aren't necessarily atheists, according to Prof. Rodney Stark of the University of Washington:

"People who believe in God — and they do — who pray — and they do — are not secular, they are just unchurched. They've never been to church and, in many cases, their parents didn't go either."

This matches what I hear in discussions, like the friend who remarked: "I'm spiritual, not religious." I think there's also a growing number of individuals whose identification with an organized religion is rather tenuous, people who may attend church once or twice a year.

[SPedigrees]

19. proud to be a vermonter

Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent "Nones," leading all other states by a full 9 points.

So happy to live here.... And many of the organized religions we Vermonters/New Englanders do have are passionately against war, for instance the friends (quakers) and universalist unitarians. Hell, the unitarians are supportive of their members who are atheists and encourage their beliefs.

[Ladyhawk]

25. Speaking for myself, I've become anti-religion.

I've learned, however, that I can hate the game and still care for the players.