Americans are more nuanced in religious beliefs than soundbites portray, according to a giant new study
http://religions.pewforum.org/
But I wonder if this expert quoted in this Boston Globe article http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/06/24/americans_see_truth_in_a_range_of_faiths_massive_study_finds/?page=2 about the study has ever set foot in India?
" "While one applauds what could be thought of as an openness to other religions, one has to wonder if this is essentially bland secularism," said Todd M. Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary."
In my college Anthropology of Religion class, our professor described America as a big India with a little Europe stuck on (that would be New England, where religion at least appears more nominal).
In India, religion is everywhere, infinitately diverse, visible, talked about constantly. There is a palpable reality to religion, and there is also so much of it going on, that acceptance of its diversity is also a palpable daily experience.
What's really going on here in America? In a less intense, visible and talked about way, Americans do get to see for themselves great varieties of faith, and know from their daily lives that these are good people, and religious people. In addition, they may be accepting of varieties of faith because they or family members have switched faith themselves.
But more importantly, many Americans (not just those who have actually switched) have seen the truth in multiple religions directly. So far I haven't found these stats in the Pew studie's website, but many Americans have participated in other religions' ceremonies or been present in their worship spaces, usually for special events, but sometimes just with friends or for education.
As someone who has worshipped alongside or observed "in action" each major religion refered to and several more obscure ones, there is something very different in any of these than the rest of daily American life. There is really something to faith and religion apart from dogma, and Americans are of course capable of percieving this, even if some religious leaders prefer orthodoxy.
It is this "something", which may be made of the presense of God, spirituality, community and/or other factors, that is really going on, that all people of faith share, and on some gut level know they share.
What is mystifying is that Americans continue, decade after decade, to maintain such a variety of deep faiths, and the vast majority of us even spend time every week or even every day reconnecting with them, and yet in our daily public life, you would still think unbridaled, blind, Big Oil, melt-the-earth and build more nukes Capitalism with a big C was the real religion of America.
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