Category Archives: Religion in America

More on that Pew survey

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I blogged on this last week, but there’s an interesting series of comments from scholars about the survey and what it reveals and doesn’t reveal. Perhaps the most interesting point, made by several of the scholars, had to do with religious knowledge itself. What constitutes religious knowledge? Is it being able to parrot doctrine in response to questions? Is it being able to recite the creed, or to know that Catholics believe the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ?

To take the latter question, if someone has deep Eucharistic devotion and is wont to meditate or pray at the Reserved Sacrament, yet cannot articulate the doctrine of transsubstantiation, do they believe that bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ? Their actions certainly suggest they are encountering the divine in some way.

Certainly, religion is more than doctrine and faith more than assent to a series of propositions. One academic suggested that part of the problem is that preachers don’t preach what seem to be core doctrines to theologians. Thus mainline Presbyterians rarely mention the finer points of Calvinist theology from the pulpit.

Wearing the hat of a scholar of religious studies, I grant the point. As a pastor, I also know that people attend and belong to churches for all sorts of reasons. Still, it seems to me that it can’t hurt to pose the questions occasionally, to ask people both what they know and what they believe, and to try to determine whether there are discrepancies between faith, religious knowledge, and religious practice.

One of the scholars brought up the category of “Lived Religion,” briefly put religion as expressed through ritual, practice, and the like. In my experience, some of the most vocal believers could express their faith easily in words, but did not demonstrate it either in their ethical actions or in their religious practice.

Religion and Secular Reason

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The Immanent Frame posts a blog entry by John H. Evans on the use of secular and religious reason by religious people in arguments. He contends that for many conservative Christians, the appeal to religion (Lev. 18:22 in the case of homosexuality, for example) is rarely foregrounded. Instead, they make secular arguments.

He’s playing off of those theorists like Rawls, Rorty, and even Habermas, who argue that religious people must be able to communicate in secular terms in order to have a place in public debate. Rorty, for example says that “religious reasons are a conversation-stopper, because they are unintelligible to those who do not share one’s religious beliefs.”

I’ve posted on these issues before. Evans in keeping with the folks behind The Immanent Frame, is trying to test these things empirically. So he has interviewed religious people and secular people about how they use argument and how they think about religious reasons when making arguments.

What struck me was not his research, the questions he asked, or his advocacy of translation (of religious arguments into language accessible to all), but rather the role religious argument plays in convincing people of their own positions. I’ve long suspected that most conservative Christians (and adherents of other religious traditions) come to their political and ethical positions first, and then seek religious sanction for them.

Don’t know much about religion…

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Once again, screaming headlines in the news: “Atheists know more about religion than Christians,” or something like that. The Pew Forum produced another one of its polls that seem designed to get headlines, if not careful analysis. A poll of some 3400 Americans asked 32 questions about religion. On average, atheists got 20.9 correct. Evangelical Protestants got 17.6 correct and mainline Protestants scored even lower.

Two articles I read, in the NY Times and AP pointed out that neither Protestants or Catholics knew some of the basic tenets or historical details of their faith. 45% of Catholics didn’t know they were supposed to believe in transsubstantiation; 51% of Protestants don’t know that Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation.

That atheists and agnostics answered more questions correctly than Evangelical Protestants is hardly surprising. The survey questions about Islam and other religions, and no doubt most Christians got few of those questions correct.

What’s the takeaway? My guess is that if the Pew Forum polled clergy about the religious knowledge of their congregations, they would receive strongly-worded replies about their inadequate understanding of their own faith.

This past Friday, Professor Tom Long of Candler School of Theology at Emory University spoke to clergy and laypeople in Madison. He told a great story about a rabbi friend of his in Atlanta who was invited to attend an interfaith group meeting that involved members of his synagogue and members of a nearby Protestant church. When asked what he thought of the meeting by someone in attendance, he said something like, before you can have interfaith dialogue, you have to know something about your own faith and suggested that he knew more about Christianity than many of the Christians in attendance.

The problem is not unique to churches. Americans seem to avoid thinking deeply about anything or wanting to learn. Is it a problem of our educational system, the media culture? But it’s a tragedy that we can’t seem to do anything about it in church, either. If people wonder why my sermons are long on historical background and the biblical text, it’s because I’ve realized that the pulpit has to be the primary locus of education in contemporary Christianity. Now, whether or not the people will stay awake, that’s another question

NY Times article on financial shortfalls among churches

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The Episcopal Cafe points to a New York Times article that highlights the financial concerns of churches and other religious organizations. The article highlights congregations as diverse as a Conservative Jewish synagogue in New Jersey, an African-American church in NY and a hispanic congregation in Brooklyn, and mentions financial problems at churches like the National Cathedral in DC and the Crystal Cathedral.

Although it doesn’t provide much detail or analysis, the article highlights other factors besides the recession that affect giving. For example, baby boomers give about 10% less than the parents did.

Nick Knisely comments at the Cafe that churches are experiencing the same sort of challenge that newspapers have been going through. Old “business models” are no longer applicable given changes in the way people relate to religious institutions and changing demographics.

Sobering thoughts as we begin our stewardship campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/us/25religion.html

More on Religion and Secularism

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I had just posted on the pope and Habermas, and I came across this story on madison.com about the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin giving an official welcome to the annual Freedom from Religion conference. For a sense of how problematic discourse about religion’s role in American society and politics is, check out the comments.

But it’s not just random folks who comment on newspaper articles. Here’s something by Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University who is studying “how natural and social scientists at top research universities understand religion, ethics, and spirituality.”

Her research has found that of the scientists she’s studied, about 50% of them label themselves “religious” and 1/5 attend religious services. So far so good. She continues by pointing out that most scientists want to come questions of religion, morality, and value out of the classroom. They see university science departments as the lone holdout against the onslaught of fundamentalism in the US.

But Ecklund herself seems to have a fairly unsophisticated notion of religion or of the academic study of religion. She somewhat gratuitously points out in her opening paragraph that a third of the  prominent  research universities were founded with a Christian purpose in mind and that while some retain divinity schools, most have a department or program in Religious Studies.

Later in the essay, while discussing scientists’ efforts to keep religion out of their classrooms, she observes: “And religious viewpoints are relegated to separate, isolated departments and programs.” One wonders whether she has ever encountered a member of the Religion Department at Rice. Most of them are probably as strident in silencing fundamentalists in class as their colleagues in the sciences.

Habermas’ statement that I quoted in the previous entry is good advice for scientists and social scientists, too: “the content of religion must open itself up to the normatively grounded expectation that it should recognize for reasons of its own the neutrality of the state towards worldviews, the equal freedom of all religious communities, and the independence of the institutionalized sciences.”

Tribal Church

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I’ve been reading Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt. According to Merritt:

A tribal church has certain characteristics. It understands and reaches out to the nomadic culture of young adults. This church responds to the gifts and needs of adults under forty by taking into account their physical, social, and spiritual circumstances. The term ‘tribal’ reflects (1) a gathering around a common cause, (2) a ministry shift to basic care, (3) the practice of spiritual traditions, and (4) a network of intergenerational encouragement. (p. 8)

I’ve read a lot of sociology of religion over the years and a great deal of congregational development material as well. I’ve rarely had the kind of “Eureka” moment I had while reading the following:

When a young person walks into a church, it’s a significant moment, because no one expects her to go and nothing pressures her to attend; instead, she enters the church looking for something. She searches for connection in her displacement: connection with God through spiritual practices, connection with her neighbors through an intergenerational community, and connection with the world through social justice outreach. (p. 17)

Having worked in a church in Boston in the 1980s, I already had sensed then that young adults were no longer coming to church (Of course, those young adults who didn’t come to church in the 80s are now in their 40s and 50s). It’s even more true today and much more true in Madison than it was in the South. But I had always interpreted it in negative terms–the only young adults who came to church were deeply needy (usually emotionally and psychologically). Merritt helped me to see that in a new way, as a wonderful possibility, as an attempt to make connection and reach out beyond themselves. She goes on in the book to talk about ways churches need to change to meet these needs and how pastors need to change as well.

We are doing some of this at Grace but we could do much more. We also need to change our expectations. She had some very interesting things to say about creating intergenerational community that involves people from across the lifespan and doesn’t segregate them out by age cohort.

“We’re all Congregationalists now.”

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The Episcopal Cafe points to a Christianity Today interview with Stanley Hauerwas.

Hauerwas is among the most important Christian thinkers of our day. A professor of Ethics at Duke Divinity School, he has authored many books and has become famous for his earthy conversation style (he blames that on his father, who was a bricklayer in Texas).

Here is the quote in question:

I say, “We’re all congregationalists now.” I don’t particularly like it, but we are. How to ensure given that reality that Eucharistic assemblies are not separate from each other is one of the great challenges before us. The role of the bishop is very important to make sure that Eucharistic assemblies are not isolated from one another. There are also other ways to do it. Certainly sending people from one congregation to another helps. But how we recover Christian unity in the world in which we find ourselves is a deep challenge. By “unity,” I don’t mean just agreement about ecclesial organization; I mean the refusal of Christians to kill one other. I think that the division of the church that has let nationalism define Christian identity is one of the great judgments against the Reformation in particular.

When Corrie and I were teaching Religious Studies in the South, we did a lot of research on Religion in the South and most of our students came from that region of the country. We used to joke that in the South,  “everyone’s Baptist; even Catholics are Baptist.” By that we meant Baptist understandings of religious experience and conversion permeates religion in the South (it’s even beginning to influence non-Western Religions).

But there’s another side of that. I think Hauerwas is correct only if he has a very narrow notion of “we.” The Baptists contributed a great deal to the large push toward individualism in American religion. In fact, we aren’t all Congregationalists, now. Those few of us who belong to churches might be, but most of us (even in the South where weekly church attendance is below 50%) find connection with the divine outside of organized religion and do it by ourselves or with ad hoc groups.

The interview mentions Hauerwas’s tenure at Notre Dame and Duke and explores his denominational affiliations (he now is a communicant at the Episcopal parish where his wife serves as Assisting Minister). It doesn’t mention his deep engagement with John Howard Yoder, one of my teachers, nor with the Anabaptist tradition from which I come. If you want to know about this, check out the most recent issue of Mennonite Quarterly Review.

Hauerwas recently published a memoir Hannah’s Child, which is on my reading list.

Church marketing and self-promotion

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There’s a website I visit occasionally called churchmarketingsucks.com. It’s actually pretty insightful, if geared toward evangelicals and mega-church wannabes. But I wonder what their take is on the current controversies around the Ground Zero Church and the guy in Florida. It turns out the Ground Zero church had its first service this past Sunday. About fifty people were in attendance, at least half were members of the media. And the guy in Florida has about fifty in his congregation. But they’ve both gotten lots of attention. It may not result in “saved souls” but perhaps there are book deals in their future.

We live in a culture that prizes outrage–that’s what the political right has feasted on for years. We also live in a media culture and a twenty-four hour news cycle that requires product. Both of these pastors are appealing to that and both of them have gotten what they wanted. The question is not whether burning the Q’uran is wrong or inappropriate, or resorting to the tactics of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. He wanted to draw attention to himself and he got his wish. He’s also given progressive and moderate Christians something to be outraged about, and help them feel good about themselves by joining facebook pages that decry his actions.

The question for the rest of us is not how to protest the actions or beliefs of people like this. The question is how we can model a different kind of Christianity, that embraces diversity and expresses love to all.

May we live in interesting times

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Between Glen Beck and the growing Islamophobia on the one hand, and the declining influence of institutionalized religion (at least in the form of Protestant denominations) on the other, observing American religion is a fascinating pastime.

According to most of those present at the rally last weekend, what Beck and his supporters did was more religious revival than political statement. A number of people in attendance seemed surprised by the lack of overt references to politics. It was all about “taking back America,”  religious piety wrapped up in patriotism. For some, Beck has become the first Mormon televangelist.

For others, Beck represents the devolution of Evangelicalism. The current Dean of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary sees a decline from the evangelical heavyweights of the 70s to Beck. Russell Moore writes:

It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.

Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership, as long as with it there is sufficient political “conservatism” and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.

He continues by comparing a “liberation theology of the left” with that of the “right,” seeing little good in either.  Moore places much of the blame for the Christian right’s theological prostitution on the LDS (Mormons). Of course, other Evangelicals also worry about Beck’s commitment to Christianity. (For them the Jesus Christ Church of Latter Day Saints isn’t a Christian denomination, at best, it’s a “Christian cult.”

As I was reading these essays, I came across another one, perhaps even more disturbing and challenging. In Esquire, Tom Junod writes about a memorial service sponsored by Transocean for the victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Writing about that service, he said that the common theme of all of the speakers was that the victims were fine Christian men. But so too were the executives of Transocean who spoke, and who are trying to limit their payouts to the victims’ families. Judon expands:

But there is no doubt about the Transocean whose executives took to the pulpit and declared that what was most important about the men who died was their shared faith: it styled itself as a Christian corporation, and as such it is a fulfillment of the Republican dream that began when Ronald Reagan first took office. Forget church and state; the genius of Reagan and his handlers was to forge a partnership between church and corporation by enlisting each in an ostensibly common cause: freedom. That freedom for a corporation and freedom for a church meant two different things; that freedom for a corporation meant the freedom to do whatever the hell it wanted and that freedom for a church meant freedom to tell people that they couldn’t do whatever the hell they wanted, even or especially with their own bodies: this wouldn’t matter so much anymore. What would matter — and still matters — was that the church and the corporation would be held to have the same values, so that one could always speak for the other. Corporations would be liberated, individuals would be exposed to Christian suasion, and the two irreconcilabes of conservative politics would be united under the big Republican “tent.”

Later in the essay, he writes:

we witness the spectacle of Transocean and BP blaming each other for the death of the Deepwater Horizon, but also the spectacle of a corporate shill like Glenn Beck calling for national Christian renewal in an event blessed by Rupert Murdoch. The partnership brokered by the Republican party thirty years ago between the unfettered church and the unshackled corporation has paid off in an historic American divide between individuals and the institutions they serve; has paid off in an America whose culture of individual virtue exists in complementary equipoise with its culture of institutional corruption; has paid off in an America where the individuals are better than the institutions they serve, and know it. Fox and its minions address that divide by insisting that the real divide is between believers and non-believers; companies like Transocean by having its executives speak of the Lord at an event that ultimately owes its existence to corporate negligence.

Stanley Fish’s comments about the way individuals are blamed when their attacks offend us (see Timothy McVeigh and the recent stabber of a NYC cabby) and whole cultures are blamed when the attack offends us (9/11) provides an interesting comparison with Judon’s discussion of the meaning of freedom for individuals and corporations today.