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"divine deli"
Here is a pretty good article that touches on the confused state of religious relativism and pluralism in this country.
-As a scholar of religion, I am supposed to simply observe all this without rendering any judgment, but I can't help feeling that something precious is being lost here, perhaps something as fundamental as a sense of the sacred. Harvard philosopher George Santayana once observed that "American life is a powerful solvent," capable of neutralizing new ideas into banal clichés.....
A new Pew study, released last week, shows that Americans are swingers as well as switchers, flirting with religious beliefs and practices other than their own without officially changing their religious affiliation. Catholic leaders have long denounced "Cafeteria Catholics" for going down the line and picking and choosing the Catholic beliefs and practices they choose to uphold. According to this new study, Americans as a group are now bellying up to what my Boston University colleague John Berthrong has referred to as the "divine deli."
Not counting travel, or special events such as weddings and funerals, more than one-third of Americans attend worship services at more than one place, and nearly a quarter attend services held by another religion. Much of this religious infidelity happens in the family, or within the extended family—Lutherans attending Baptist services or Baptists attending Catholic Mass. But among black Protestants 8% attend services at synagogues, and 5% of this same group go to mosques. Meanwhile, large numbers of American Christians affirm beliefs that their theologians have long denounced as heretical: 23% believe in astrology, 22% in reincarnation and 21% in yoga as a spiritual practice.
( Read more... ).
-As a scholar of religion, I am supposed to simply observe all this without rendering any judgment, but I can't help feeling that something precious is being lost here, perhaps something as fundamental as a sense of the sacred. Harvard philosopher George Santayana once observed that "American life is a powerful solvent," capable of neutralizing new ideas into banal clichés.....
By STEPHEN PROTHERO
So much for the jealous God. A survey released earlier this year by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that the U.S. is a "nation of religious drifters." If, in the realm of love, Americans gravitate toward serial monogamy (moving from marriage to divorce to remarriage and so on), we likewise flit from one religious affiliation to another, pledging our fidelity, say, to Methodism in our youth, Catholicism in middle age and Episcopalianism in our dotage.A new Pew study, released last week, shows that Americans are swingers as well as switchers, flirting with religious beliefs and practices other than their own without officially changing their religious affiliation. Catholic leaders have long denounced "Cafeteria Catholics" for going down the line and picking and choosing the Catholic beliefs and practices they choose to uphold. According to this new study, Americans as a group are now bellying up to what my Boston University colleague John Berthrong has referred to as the "divine deli."
Not counting travel, or special events such as weddings and funerals, more than one-third of Americans attend worship services at more than one place, and nearly a quarter attend services held by another religion. Much of this religious infidelity happens in the family, or within the extended family—Lutherans attending Baptist services or Baptists attending Catholic Mass. But among black Protestants 8% attend services at synagogues, and 5% of this same group go to mosques. Meanwhile, large numbers of American Christians affirm beliefs that their theologians have long denounced as heretical: 23% believe in astrology, 22% in reincarnation and 21% in yoga as a spiritual practice.
( Read more... ).
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