Godless
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.
The Pew organization has found out it can get the most attention and media buzz by periodically providing anti-Christian content for the news cycle, every so often, giving discouragement to religious believers, Christians, most of all. It's kind of like how the "ethics" industry gets attention for itself by periodically assuring us of some group of people or other it's OK, even good to kill. It's part of the longstanding habits of the publishing industries, the commercial one and the academic one. I'm tempted to go into a particularly stupid example from that which has been on my mind lately but that's for a longer post.
I have answered the various points in Duncan's article many times, especially the bogus category of "Nones" which was explicitly created by an ideological atheist-sociologist explicitly to inflate the number of atheists in the bogus science he and Pew practice. I mean, he said it as explicitly as Mick Mulvaney admitted that there was a quid pro quo yesterday, but the science of sociology takes absolutely no notice of the fact that they are peddling ideological junk science as ersatz fact. If I wanted to try to remember where I read it, I'd point out that such scientific surveying has turned up some rather odd things, including atheists who believe in a god, but the way in which the explicit statement of how "Nones" were created out of the data to promote an ideological viewpoint has made no difference so that debunking of the methods of such ersatz science isn't likely to, either.
I'm not greatly troubled about the survey, I'd have to read what was asked, how it was asked, who the scientifically invalid sample of the population were (there is no such thing as a really random sample in surveying and polling so ALL SUCH SCIENCE RESTS ON AN UNSCIENTIFICALLY CONSTRUCTED SAMPLE).
I have recently reused this passage from Eric Alterman's book, Why We're Liberals
To what degree, asks the political philosopher Michael Sandel, are our liberal virtues fashioned in relative isolation, and to what extent can they be found embedded in relations with others? Are we, ultimately, atomistic, individual beings or members of various interlocking communities? "Rawlsian liberalism defines certain actions as beyond the bounds of a decent society," Sandel complains, "but wherein lies its commitment to the good, the noble of purpose, the meaning, as it were, of life?"
For guidance in these intractable liberal positions, the historian James T. Kloppenberg suggests we turn to one of civilizations oldest moral traditions, and one whose roots are shared by most Americans: Christianity. Conceptually, Kloppenberg notes, the central virtues of liberalism descend directly from the cardinal virtues of early Christianity: "prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice." He adds that "the liberal virtues of tolerance, respect, generosity, and benevolence likewise extend St. Paul's admonition to the Colossians that they should practice forbearance, patience, kindness and charity."
This view is reinforced by the arguments of Jurgen Habermas, post war Europe's most significant liberal philosopher and perhaps the last great voice of the once preeminent (and neo-Marxist) Frankfurt School. "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civiliaztion," Habermas told then cardinal Joseph Ratinger, now Pope Benedict, during a January 2004 conversation, "To this day, we have no other option [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter." No one understood this better than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Asked by a reporter about his political philosophy, FDR replied, "Philosophy? I am a Christian and a Democrat - that is all."
Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America
By Eric Alterman
I have asked what if Habermas, if Kloppenberg and, I assume Alterman are right about the ultimate source of that type of Western liberalism. the kind on which egalitarian democracy may well depend? Why would anyone of even Duncan Blacks's sluggardly style of liberalism rejoice in the decline of the source of that liberalism? Especially as one of the most renowned and acclaimed atheist-quasi-Marxist philosophers and scholar of political-economy in the post-WWII era points out "TO THIS DAY, WE HAVE NO OTHER OPTION [TO CHRISTIANITY]" AS "THE ULTIMATE FOUNDATION OF LIBERTY, CONSCIENCE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY, THE BENCHMARKS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION."
The stupidity of the play-left is longstanding and complete. I see it here, I see it in Britain (Jeremy Corbyn is a total failure and a completely stupid ass) I have been a witness to that for more than half a century, now. Eventually you have to figure they're never going to change, they will willingly ride their hobbyhorse down to total destruction just as - well, they aren't great readers so, here's an audio-visual aid.
Why do I think I'd have to explain where this comes from and what it means to the younger kiddies? Hey, Duncan, if the troll is right and you were taunting me, let me know, you know what this film clip is?
Update: I should mention that I doubt that Duncan Black encountered much of the claimed Christian cultural hegemony he based his squib on. The middle-aged boy was born in 1972, well after the Supreme Court rulings removing religion from governmental events and venues were issued. The media he grew up with was hardly pushing that POV. I suspect he's exaggerating it out of the same habit of expression I mentioned is common to the college-credentialed class in the English speaking world. I was an adult when he was born, I remember that period as an adult.
Not to dismiss what you said, but when the numbers reach 40% of the population (or was it 45%? I haven't looked it up again), we'll be back to where we were in the early 20th century.
ReplyDeleteBesides, having experienced so many "baptized heathens" in the pews, I don't think these poll results mean that much. "Default Christian" has always meant cultural Christian, never meant that much about religious belief.
Besides, all this emphasis on majority opinion sounds like Trump's reasoning. He's actually proving useful in a negative way, exposing some of the really shoddy reasoning so many of us routinely engage in.
I agree, if I were writing on this from a different angle, I'd have noted that I've written over and over again about people who profess Christianity but whose actions hardly measured up, very much, to doing Christianity. I once heard, back when the media was pushing the "evangelicals" as the real-right way to be a Christian, a woman who noted it was a lot easier to Praise The Lord!(in the Pat Robertson manner) than it was to follow him. My post about Catholic universities, the ones mentioning Raymond Burke et al, . . . If Christianity meant just those who made an honest, strong attempt to live up to the bare branches of Rahner's "Winter Christianity" loving God and loving your neighbor, would be a lot lower than the Pew numbers. I'm not under any illusion that the Calvinist liberalism that is the origin of the kind of traditional American style liberalism that is the only kind I think is worth supporting was ever the majority way of life for Americans but it was strong enough to be importantly influential. It struggled against the "Christianity" of slave owners and greedy capitalists. I would love to see if my hunch about a difference in those places where the Geneva Bible was dominant as opposed to where the King James Version was is in evidence.
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered if maybe the quote about many being called but few chosen might have been more accurately rendered as many being called but few choosing.
I do think that it takes something as strong as believing that God wants us to do to others what we would have them do to us, to do for the least among us as we would to God is the will of God to make it a strong enough force in society so that it makes a real and positive difference. It might not require that in some individuals, though I'm dubious about that being sufficently strong without a belief that it is what God wants. I know some very nice, middle-class atheists but I've noticed their kids, and now grandchildren, tend to become ever more selfish with every generation. I think the same thing can be seen among nominal Catholics among the Irish, as their Catholicism gives way to vulgar middle-class materialism, especially when it aspires to wealth. I notice it in once Protestant families, as well. I don't think depending on "the shadow of the Buddha" translated to the memory of Christ is enough to save Western democracy or to push it to be real, egalitarian democracy. I think Habermas was right,I think Kloppenberg was, too.
What is missed is that while the number of religious Americans has declined, the number of spiritual Americans has remained generally steady. This article at 538 https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-marianne-williamsons-brand-of-spirituality-isnt-working/ about dropping religious affiliations for Democrats but a substantial "spiritual but not religious" segment led to this Pew Research article https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/06/more-americans-now-say-theyre-spiritual-but-not-religious/ that is more direct about the topic.
ReplyDeleteAbout 75% of Americans think of themselves as spiritual (54% of Americans are spiritual and religious),and another 8% as only religious. Just 18% are neither. Even of that 18%, I seriously doubt they are all militant atheists but a mix of agnostics, indifferent to religion and a smattering of soft to hard atheists. I suspect that part of the decline of "religious" is just a part of the general overall decline of civic participation. The Rotary Club, Kawanis Club, bowling leagues and many more groups are shrinking and dying as people decline to participate. Scout groups are shrinking away, they can't get parent volunteers, sports leagues struggle to find parent coaches. Our local school considered dropping the annual musical because they couldn't get enough parents to volunteer for set building, costumes, ticket sales, etc. They were saved by only doing musicals were they can rent already prepared sets and costumes, lessening the need for participation. It isn't surprising that religious institutions are suffering the same declines. Despite the fantasy of wealthy churches abusing their tax free status, most are thinly funded and only exist by the volunteer participation of their congregations. People don't want to commit to that anymore. There are bigger trends as work, we are becoming more fragmented and atomized across our entire culture. Decline of religious participation is just one more facet of that same trend.
I think you're right about the general decline in civic engagement, I think it's directly associated with the expansion of at-home electronic entertainment. When I was young, the downtown of my small town and the small town directly next to it were swarming with teenagers and young adults most evenings, it's like a ghost town at night now. I do think that the decline in Christianity as a named identity is also related to the continual discrediting of Christianity in commercial and would-be academically informed culture. That has been a definite ideological program matched in destructiveness only by the Mammonism of the anti-Christ, the kind of thing that Barr and Pompeo have been calling to guard to protect the Trump regime.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is a majority in the two or so Pew surveys included as "Nones" comprised a majority of those who expressed belief in god of that title or other. The lowest component of them were those who called themselves "atheits" and "agnostics" Barry Kosman invented the term in order to make the superficial consumer of such opinion surveys believe the presence of atheists were a lot higher than even his work could make them seem. As I recall Pew noted that though the "Nones" seemed to be the fastest rising category of such surveys, it was also one of the most unstable categories, people passing out of it into other categories of believers at a very high rate. I don't recall where I found the report but apparently parents who identify as atheists have one of the lowest retention rates for their faith among their children of any group. As I recall it was something like 30% of their children identified as atheists. Maddy Murray O'Hair only managed to pass on her atheism to one of her sons, and, reportedly, he was completely under her thumb as was her unfortunate granddaughter.
I think the idea that people could suddenly go from seeing movies maybe once or twice a week to watching TV 8 hours a day without it having a profound effect on the civic engagement of the population was one of the most astounding and ridiculous assumptions of the late 20th century. As that field of distraction rises in its hold on the collective attention span of the population, things won't get any better.