Perilous
Times and The Great Falling Away
More Americans designing a make-up-your-own religion
By Cathy Lynn Grossman (Religion News Service), Updated: Thursday,
September 15, 7:28 AM
That’s one of the key findings in newly released research that
reveals America’s drift from clearly defined religious
denominations to faiths cut to fit personal preferences.
The folks who make up God as they go are side by side with
self-proclaimed believers who claim the Christian label but shed
their ties to traditional beliefs and practices. Religion
statistics expert George Barna says, with a wry hint of
exaggeration, America is headed for “310 million people with 310
million religions.”
“We are a designer society. We want everything customized to our
personal needs — our clothing, our food, our education,” he said.
Now it’s our religion.
Barna’s new book on U.S. Christians, “Futurecast,” tracks changes
from 1991 to 2011, in annual national surveys of 1,000 to 1,600
U.S. adults. All the major trend lines of religious belief and
behavior he measured ran downward — except two:
— More people claim they have accepted Jesus as their savior and
expect to go to heaven.
— And more say they haven’t been to church in the past six months
except for special occasions such as weddings or funerals. In
1991, 24 percent were “unchurched.” Today, it’s 37 percent.
Barna blames pastors for those oddly contradictory findings.
Everyone hears, “Jesus is the answer. Embrace him. Say this little
Sinner’s Prayer and keep coming back. It doesn’t work. People end
up bored, burned out and empty,” he said. “They look at church and
wonder, ‘Jesus died for this?’”
The consequence, Barna said, is that, for every subgroup of
religion, race, gender, age and region of the country, the
important markers of religious connection are fracturing.
When he measures people by their belief in seven essential
doctrines, defined by the National Association of Evangelicals’
statement of faith, only 7 percent of those surveyed qualified.
“People say, ‘I believe in God. I believe the Bible is a good
book. And then I believe whatever I want,’” he lamented.
Southern Baptist-affiliated LifeWay Research reinforces those
findings: A new survey of 900 U.S. Protestant pastors finds 62
percent predict the importance of being identified with a
denomination will diminish over the next 10 years.
Exactly, said Carol Christoffel of Zion, Ill. She drifted through
a few mainline Protestant denominations in her youth, found a home
in the peace and unity message of the Baha’i tradition for several
years, and then was drawn deeply into Native American traditional
healing practices.
Yet, she also still calls herself Christian.
“I’m a kind of bridge person between cultures. I agree with the
teachings of Jesus and ... I know many Christians like me who keep
the Bible’s social teachings and who care for the earth and for
each other,” Christoffel said. “I support people who do good
wherever they are.”
And it’s not only Christians sampling hopscotch spirituality. The
Jewish magazine Moment has an “Ask the Rabbis” feature that
consults 14 variations of Judaism, “and there are many,” said
editor and publisher Nadine Epstein.
“The September edition of Moment asks ‘Can there be Judaism
without God?’ And most say yes. It’s incredibly exciting. We live
in an era where you pick and choose the part of the religion that
makes sense to you. And you can connect through culture and
history in a meaningful way without necessarily religiously
practicing,” Epstein said.
Sociologist Robert Bellah first saw this phenomenon emerging in
the 1980s.
He sees two sides to the one-person-one-religion trend. On the
positive: It’s harder to hold on to prejudices against groups — by
religion or race or gender or sexuality — if everyone wants to be
seen individually.
“The bad news is you lose the capacity to make connections.
Everyone is pretty much on their own,” he said. And all this
rampant individualism also fosters “hostility toward organized
groups — government, industry, even organized religion.”
Paul Morris, an Army medic at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and
veteran of six tours in the Middle East, said he has seen
Christianity, Judaism and Islam in action, for better and for
worse, and, frankly, he’ll pass.
Morris grew up “old-style Italian Catholic,” but said he never
felt like his spiritual questions were answered. So, “I just wiped
the slate clean. I studied every major religion on the face of the
planet. Every one had parts that made sense, but there was no one
specific dogma or tenet I could really follow,” Morris said.
“So now, I call myself an agnostic — one who just doesn’t know.
What I believe is that if you can just do the right thing, it
works everywhere.”
(Cathy Lynn Grossman writes for USA Today.)