by VorJack
A new Pew Research Poll has found that significant minorities of American religious believers mix their primary religion with elements of other faiths. For example:
- 24% of respondents say that they occasionally attend services in a faith different from their own.
- 22% of Christians indicated that they believe in reincarnation
- 23% of total respondents believed that yoga is a spiritual practice in addition to a form of exercise
They also found belief in a variety of “New Age” practices, with about one quarter of Americans believing in astrology and “spiritual energy.”
These kinds of results aren’t really surprising to anybody who’s been paying attention. Actually, they seem a little low. But the Pew Forum concludes that:
The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories. [...] large numbers of Americans engage in multiple religious practices, mixing elements of diverse traditions.
So many Americans continue to practice “cafeteria Christianity,” picking and choosing the spiritual beliefs they accept while resisting some of the traditions and revealed wisdom of their church.
When I read this, I automatically think of the Burned Over District, when Upstate New Yorkers seemed to mix and match their beliefs and folding the result into their existing Christianity. April DeConick over at Forbidden Gospels compares it to 2nd century Christianity:
The argument I have been developing about second century Christians is that they were eclectic, and that gnosticism was an amalgamation of Egyptian astrology and religion, Greek mysteries and Hermetism, middle Platonic philosophy, Judaism and Christianity, with its constituents comfortable attending more than one religious house or being part of a multiple of religious bodies. It is exactly the kind of ‘hybrid’ that we are seeing today, and may have been seeing since the 1800s. I think it has something to do with ‘internationalization’, when a variety of religious traditions become available for consumption within a given culture at a given point in history.
Several branches of Christianity came out of the Burned Over District, including Seventh Day Adventist and the Church of Latter Days Saints. I wonder what the current mix is going to produce. Any ideas?
Zen Christianity, a new form of Gnosticism, and a hard-line fundamentalist sect which blends New Age beliefs with old-fashioned Christianity and some whole new crazy.
That’s some pretty sloppy work on God’s part, if none of his followers can decided how the hell they’re supposed to be following his strict worship plan.
Also, even the people writing the astrology column six hundred years ago knew it was bullshit you use to con people out of money. It makes me think these people were born with Mars rising in the sixth house, to be that stupid…
Ah, unless of course God doesn’t actually HAVE a strict worship plan. Maybe he’s more of a “figure it out your own damn self – what the hell do you think you’re there for – why the hell do you people keep asking me to do all the work” kind of guy. Or gal. Or human-bodied-guy-with-a-hawk-head. Or collection of noodles with meatballs for eyes. Or what have you.
I’m not a believer, but when I was drifting away slowly my conception of God kind of changed to one of “well, if he made us in his image he must be kind of a jerk.” After all, even in Christian myth it isn’t the eating of the “forbidden fruit” that made us assholes – that just gave us the knowledge of good and evil and so that we could tell when we were being assholes. God already had that knowledge so if we’re made in his image God must be an asshole at some level as well. Even a cursory reading of the Bible supports this view – remember Isaiah where God takes credit for creating everything including evil? And especially that whole NT part where he refuses to admit that he was wrong, but he knows he was, so he goes through a convoluted scheme to send himself to Earth in the form of his own son to have himself killed by us so that he can forgive us after all. All so he doesn’t have to admit “hey, I f-ed up and went too far. Sorry about that but Adam really cheesed me off. You know how it is.”
A quick skim of the poll suggests that the headline is misleading, to say the least. It seems that the majority of the 24% don’t attend services ‘of a different faith’, but of a different denomination of their own faith.
Mind you, where I was brought up, the majority of my fellow Protestants didn’t regard Catholics as Christian at all, and would refer to them simply as ‘Papists’, if they were being polite.
I agree with Geoff, the poll sounds misleading.
Also, there are a lot of gray areas in religion that many individuals consider perfectly in-line with their christian belief system. “Reincarnation” to a lot of people simply means life after death, which I understand isn’t the definition, but a lot of the lesser educated people in my family would probably consider that going to heaven.
Polls like this are frustrating for the same reason organized religion is frustrating, they take advantage of the weak minded. The fact is that most people put little thought into their religious beliefs and most have never considered being any other religion. Many think this: God is the god, Jesus was his son, the Bible is a historical document. Everything else is what is in question, other ideas are possible but probably not true.
At the same time, cafeteria christians are terribly annoying. The fact that there are hundreds of denominations of protestant faith is proof of the hypocrisy within Christianity. Even as a young child I thought it was weird that there were so many churches if we supposedly believed in the same thing and began questioning the validity of the whole thing.
Several branches of Christianity came out of the Burned Over District … I wonder what the current mix is going to produce. Any ideas?
Hopefully, a better one. One that is less driven by fear and hate and instead replaces those values with hope and love.
Sounds like a good idea. If you build it they will come.
How about a religion based on the Bible, but does not take the Bible as literal truth but myth.
It could be called Mytheism.
As in My-Theism or myth+ism?
Yeah, I hadn’t thought of My-theism. But that’s a good one.
I was thinking, we could go thru the Bible and instead of making a more conservative version, take out all the bad stuff. The genocide, injustice and the like. Maybe throw everything out but the wisdom books and the gospels.Maybe a little Paul. But all taken metaphorically. And of course we’d want to keep our neopagan Christian holidays.
Several branches of Christianity came out of the Burned Over District … I wonder what the current mix is going to produce. Any ideas?
I once had a black co-worker, who not only believed Jesus was the son of god, but Mohammed was also god’s prophet. He was mixing his black-nationalist Christianity with the racist paranoia of the Nation of Islam. He believed the devil created the white, Asian and “so-called” Jewish race. The true lost tribes of Israel were blacks living in the western Hemisphere. Science was also a tool of the devil and Charles Darwin was responsible for the slave trade.
I guess you can call this new religion “Chrislam”. And it’s not an improvement.
that is bizarre
The Nation of Islam has a mythology that is as strange as the Mormons
What a shame Black Americans aren’t taught about the thriving trade in black slaves conducted by North Africans and Arabs from the 7th century onwards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade#Books_in_English
Yeah, and to bad they are not taught about the difference between that Arab slave trade and the European.
The Christians who believe in reincarnation are the ones who really bug me. Where the HELL does the Bible mention you get another life on Earth after this one?
Heh. Not an american phenomenon. At all. Here’s the same thing… woo is contagious, I guess.
I think that it’s instructive to remember that The Da Vinci Code is one of the best selling books of the last century: here’s a poorly written book that warms over the old “Holy Bood, Holy Grail” idea about Jesus and Mary running off and starting a Blood Line that’s being hidden away in a millennium spanning conspiracy blah, blah, blah. This got the Fundagelicals panties into a predictable knot (we even had the predictable local minister who tried to organize a boycott of theaters who dared to show the movie while admitting that he’d never actually read the book himself down here in SC) … but an absolutely STUPID number of people ate it up with a spoon!
Think about that.
Think about the fact that the two largest denominations of Xian in America, the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, BOTH spent a good deal of time and effort trying to PREVENT people from reading the book or watching the movie and yet the vast majority of the Church Going Public ignored the cries of heresy and partook any-damned-way (just like they keep watching teh pR0n and doing the pre-marital lambada ect ect).
Now think about the fact that both of those denominations have lost numbers of self identifying members over the last decade while the ‘Nones’ have shot up to third place (just behind TSBC) which means that the fastest growing ‘religious group/denomination’ in America right now are those who refuse to pick ONE group to identify with in the first place.
I’m sure I’m not the only Atheist who was raised Xian (Southern Baptist in my case) and yet eventually saw how absurd it was despite ‘living in the bubble’ in the Deep South entirely because of idiotic ranting on the part of my church about something that I knew from personal experience was harmless: in my case I was around 12 years old and it was D+D/RPGs (although they didn’t like comic books nor Rock-N-Roll in my Sunday School class either); and I’m just as sure that there are legions of Harry Potter fans out there who aren’t even finished with puberty that have sat open mouthed while some clueless prat foamed and ranted about how The Hogwart’s Express was going to take all of their classmates to Hell.
Now imagine the bloodbath when Mitt The Mormon and Palin The Pentecostal have to share a stage with Mike The Minister: the Catholics and the Mormons and the Baptists might all agree to “protect Family Values” by shitting on the Gays right now … but the Protestants and the Catholics will cheerfully throw the Mormons under a bus at the first opportunity (neither of them will accept the idea that Mormons are Christians and the general population has NO IDEA how goofy some of their beliefs are; South Park notwithstanding) and when it comes to love lost between the OTHER two themselves … well, I trust that the history of Catholic/Protestant relations over the last 400 years or so throughout Europe speak for themselves.
Regarding the actual question you asked about the Shape of Things To Come: I’m not sure. The safest thing you can have is a large number of groups that cancel each other out: it’s hard for the Southern Baptists to outlaw booze if the Catholics sell beer at their church fair every year and insist on using actual wine for their services; it’s also hard for the Xians to outlaw working on Sundays if you have Jews, Moslems and Seventh Day Adventists who WANT to work on Sundays because they picked another day of the week as ‘Special’ and so on and on.
Human beings are much much more likely to be assholes if they think that almost everyone in the room already agrees with them so you want as many different basic systems/beliefs as you can get to ensure that the stupid cancels itself out.
I’ve noticed some of the “GREEN” movement seeping into some of the local Xians: nothing remotely wiccan/gaian mind, but my mother’s preacher (who is a Young Earth Creationist) is big on growing his own garden (even had his own egg laying hens) and they’re both big on recycling and very anti-Big Oil … so the idea of being a Good Steward of Creation (in the sense of taking care of the toys that God gave you) might catch on. Of course I’ve got an even lower opinion of the PETA/vegan wiccan types that I’ve known than I do of said Preacher (who is a very live-and-let-live kinda guy even if he is telling my mother that Science Is A Lie … also he keeps giving me free eggs. I like eggs.) so that might end up going south if it catches fire.
When you stop and think about it: would anyone really have thought that Scientology would take off?? Or Mormonism??? If you had asked me this same question a few years ago when the character Willow on the television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer had made the term ‘hot wiccan chick’ mainstream and I seemed to know an inordinate number of 20-something neo-pagans I’d have pointed and said: THAT! Right There!! Wicca is gonna be HUGE! It’s got your tree-huggin’ greenies, your goofy supernatural/magic stuff, and grrrl power! BAM!!!
But Wicca doesn’t seem to have gotten much past the “angsty tween wanting to piss off her folks in the ‘burbs” level and I don’t think I’ve ever met a “witch” who didn’t admit eventually that they were really charter members of the “Path Of What The Fuck I Was Gonna Do Anyway” when it came down to brass tacks.
And don’t undersell the influence of immigration: there are enough Hindus locally to have their own temple and there is a family that lives just around the block from me who’s wife wears a Sari more often than not … that would have blown my mind when I was a teenager; today it doesn’t even raise eyebrows around here.
Then there’s the Mega-Church thing a-la Saddleback’s Rick Warren and his Profit Driven Gospel: although Warren isn’t new doctrine wise (the Prosperity Gospel’s been around longer than the Televangelists have been): he’s just updated Billy Graham’s arena filled Crusades with the latest in Corporate Marketroid Targeting Technology … he’s not a theologian, he’s a SALESMAN. Regardless of the ‘religion’ I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be the pitchmen more than the product that pushes ‘sales’ at least in the short term.
PML metalcynic. You kinda lost direction at the very end there but otherwise that was a rockin’ post.