Ebony's Pearls

Fairy Farden Behind Bench
Originally uploaded by nodigio

The new ARIS is out. The full report is here: http://b27.cc.trincoll.edu/weblogs/AmericanReligionSurvey-ARIS/reports/ARIS_Report_2008.pdf

It has some interesting statistics in it. If you read the actual report and not the news reports about it (with such sensationalist headlines as “Americans are Less Religious” – conflating “religion” with “Christianity” – does that irk anyone else as much as it does me?), the trend isn’t away from religion, but towards more meaningful and personal religion. It’s away from institutionalized religion and towards a more integrated and pervasive spirituality. I don’t think America is less Christian than that it is less institutionalized Christian. There is a difference.

Some of the statistics look better than they should. If we had raw numbers, it wouldn’t look nearly the same way as the pretty charts and graphs in the report look, because yes, 59% 0f the Muslim population has college degrees, but then, the Muslim religion only accounts for less than 2% of our overall population. The same with the New Religious Movement religions – an inordinately high percentage within the religion are college educated, yet again, it accounts for less than 2% of our overall population.

I feel that comparing religions with such a huge number disparity between them is making the more numerous religions look worse than they really are, and the smaller one look better.

On the other hand – when a religion is small and tightly-knit, it offers advantages that large, anonymous religions can’t offer. The individual members of a small supportive religion will do more and strive harder, with stronger marriages and firmer faith; while those lost among thousands of others will feel disenfranchised, disconnected, and will more easily give up – their marriages will be weaker, their adherence to their religion more vociferous and yet with weaker faith. This seems borne out in the statistics, with a higher percentage of smaller religions being better educated, with longer lasting marriages, fewer divorces, and fewer losses to the religion – indeed, the smaller religions continue to grow while the larger ones continue to lose members.

More people are choosing a civil union over a religious marriage and fewer people of all religions are marrying within their religion. Ditto for funerals. Since those Christian religions that practice baptisms have stopped doing them automatically at young ages, the number of people who have had confirmations and baptisms has declined, but may spike back up as the population ages, so that statistic is in flux and I’m going to discount it. But the knowledge that fewer people are marrying and being buried in a religious ceremony tells me that people are not afraid to take responsibility for their choices in life partners and aren’t afraid of what will happen to them after death.

The move away from institutionalized religion means there’s less need for buildings dedicated to a singular religious purpose, and less need for a salaried clergy. To me that means the monies collected for maintaining those buildings and those salaried clergymen ( mostly men) could be better used for other purposes. It means a restructuring of how formerly institutionalized religions now interact with their adherents – and they are adherents more than they are congregationalists. People feel they have as much access to and personal relationship with their deity as the priesthood does, and they no longer need a priesthood to intercede for them. They need priests to help them learn about the religion, to help them organize charities, to render aid to the needy in a disaster, to officiate at ceremonies, to provide spiritual counseling, but they don’t need to be preached at, sermonized, or have someone else intercede for them. They feel they’ve grown up and can handle the minutiae of daily beliefs.

I find this a Good Thing, empowering and freeing. We don’t need to be told how to behave, to be goaded or threatened into being kind, neighborly, charitable, generous, or spiritual – we can do that on our own. We take responsibility for our relationship with others and the divine. I find this trend to be uplifting and heartening – we have gained steps in spiritual maturity.

I can understand the institutionalize religions who depended upon a fearful congregation to support them to be worried about their loss of congregationalists, and the subsequent loss of money. What I cannot condone is their attempts to lash out at all Americans to force us to ante up money to support them. Using tax dollars to support faith-based charities makes me grind my teeth – religion and government should not be dependent upon one another. That Obama is strengthening the faith-based funding angers me because I think he should be bolstering the government based charities – ie welfare, medicare, medicaid, social security, food stamps, housing assistance – we have government programs that are hurting for funding and he tosses our tax dollars to whiny churches who only assist their members and not all Americans as the government programs do (or should, anyway).

Overall, that Americans are shifting away from institutionalized religions makes me happy. They aren’t losing faith, they are integrating it within themselves. They have more faith and less need to flaunt it.

Go, Americans!