Have you ever wondered to yourself why the voices declaring that “America is a Christian Nation!” seem to be getting louder and louder in recent years? Wonder no longer. Results from the latest American Religious Identification Survey are out. I invite you to read the full report, but this table extrapolating from the representative survey to the adult population tells most of the story:
Those voices are shouting more loudly about America’s supposed Christian nature because they are insecure: America is becoming less Christian. More than 34 million Americans indicated they have no religion. Only 70% of Americans report belief in a God.
When it comes to religious behavior (not just self-professed religious identification), only 71% of adults report undergoing religious initiation like baptism or a bar mitzvah. Only 69% of adults who’ve been married report that their marriage was a religious one. This last statistic undercuts the argument of theocrats who want to make same-sex marriage illegal on the basis of some imagined religious marriage tradition. As these latest ARIS results show, Americans’ marriages are often irreligious.
In case you watched one of those election-mailer DVDs and are wondering about the “Muslim invasion” of America, well, herm: Muslims make up just 0.6% of the adult population in the United States. Some invasion.
Um…See The Bios for the two Directors in charge of the Survey.
Yea… it’s like James Dobson doing a survey to see the value of Christianity in American Life. Think there is a skew in the results? Progressive secularists, both of them. Spin the results, taint the questions. Either way The results are manufactured to promote an agenda. Mother Earth should be insulted with her carbon based children’s bad behavior.
Dr. Barry A. Kosmin is the Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and
Culture (ISSSC) and Research Professor, Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College. A sociologist,
Dr. Kosmin has been a principal investigator of many large national social surveys in Europe, Africa, Asia
and the U.S. including the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification, the American Religious
Identification Surveys of 2001 and 2008 and the recent Worldviews and Opinions of Scientists-India
2007-08 (http://www.worldviewsofscientists.org).
Dr. Ariela Keysar, a demographer, is Associate Professor, Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College
and the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture. She is a
principal investigator of the American Religious Identification Survey 2008 and the recent Worldviews
and Opinions of Scientists-India 2007-08. Dr. Keysar was the Study Director of the American Religious
Identification Survey 2001. She is the co-author, Religion in a Free Market: Religious and Non-Religious
Americans, Paramount Market Publications, Ithaca, N.Y., 2006.
That Trinity College is sooooo secular!
Do you have proof or evidence that the results are manufactured to promote an agenda?
Have you even looked at the methodological section of the report? Here’s the question:
“What is your religion, if any?”
WOW! How BIASED!
I think the religious Right strengthens the political Right’s antigovernment lobbying efforts. I a sense a less religious nation could end up being a more Statist nation, which could spell disaster.
“Rothbard wrote for conservative Christian publications in the early 1950s and onward because he saw in Christianity a devotion to law and morality, not of state but of transcendent origin. Early memos even have Rothbard praising Catholicism for its implicit universalist anarchism as opposed to the nationalist-statist strains in Protestant history. Moreover, Rothbard showed how the demands of the rank-and-file Christian Right were mostly libertarian: keep government out of our churches, families, communities, and schools. Even today, libertarians have yet to understand the potential for strategic alliances here.”
Gods don’t exist. If they did they’d be pretty poor gods; having all that power at their fingertips yet not bothering to intervene in human affairs-specifically gods don’t intervene in situations where children are imperiled. If I were a god, which I am not, I would try my utmost to protect children from harm. I don’t have any problem with stating that I am better than god. If by some wierd chance there actually is a universe that has gods in it, those gods are woefully inadequate. Truly thoughtful people know better. Gods don’t exist. If I were a god and had lots of power you damn betcha little children wouldn’t get abducted, raped, killed, ect. I’d also do something about starvation and plague. I’m not afraid of divine retribution because it isn’t real. Any god would have a lot of explaining to do. What kind of god would stand silently by while horrible things happen to little children? In this country we prosecute people who witness a crime and don’t do anything about it. If it got found out that I saw my next door neighbor abduct a girl child and then rape her repeatedly for a couple of days before burying her alive, and I did nothing to report it or to try to stop it, I would be a criminal. So why does god get a pass? It’s importent- vitally so- that we climb out of the past era of believing in gods and get together as people who are concerned about each other and other species with whom we share this beautiful and delicate planet. Belief in gods is a dangerous road; do we really want to go there? The world is enough.
Atheists and Gnostics are right in most of their thinking
It has been common among religious believers to look with misgiving to atheists and Gnostics, and to think that they are mistaken; however, in many instances the opposite is the truth; some religious beliefs are not just irrelevant, but baseless. The “God” of main line traditions simply does not exist. I accepted the challenge of finding the One who may be recognized even by Gnostics and atheists: the Existence itself, “All-That-Is.” If something is there, that is God. Look at the book “Christianity Reformed From ist Roots – A life centered in God” (Amazon.com). I am confident that some of your friends will be relieved of the illusion, as I did myself.
Jairo Mejia, M. Psych., Santa Clara University
Retired Episcopal Priest
Carmel Valley, California
http://www.mbay.net/~jmejia/Grudzen.htm
http://www.mbay.net/~jmejia/Churcher.htm
“In God We Trust”…Might be worth voting about:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10103521/