Freedom of Religion

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Heracleum Persicum
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Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: Freedom of Religion

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

Typhoon wrote:.

I still think that Spenglerman's greatest mistake was to abandon his Spengler nom de plume.

He had people speculating that he was Henry Kissinger.

It was also the beginning of his descent into what might be described as madness.

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Agree

Comin out of closet, revealed David Goldman as dime a dozen garden variety 2-bit Zionist

That "cheap" Iran bashing ruined what had left

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Heracleum Persicum
Posts: 11567
Joined: Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:38 pm

Re: Freedom of Religion

Post by Heracleum Persicum »

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Thou Shalt Worship None of the Above
Is religious belief declining or just reshaping itself ?


“Nones,” who according to the study now account for nearly 23 percent of all Americans, are made up of people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.” Within these denominations of the unaffiliated, there are in fact deep theological divisions. Though the survey’s “nones” include those who have little use for belief or the acts associated with it, others in the category “believe in God, pray at least occasionally and think of themselves as spiritual people.”

While the prospect of a future Inquisition begun by the orthodox Church of the Believing Nones against the heretical Nothing in Particular sect sounds like a satire of the whole exercise of quantifying something as elusive as belief, the use of such categories is a reminder that the history of religion is rife with seemingly trivial differences that morphed into epochal debates.

American religious history especially has been shaped by sagas of minor disagreements revealing hidden rifts that shift power from dominant beliefs to those on the margins.

This history suggests that, despite the headlines to the contrary, we are not necessarily seeing a period of religious decline. Rather, this may be just the latest in a series of moments when more Americans are intent on custom-tailoring their religious identities. The Pew numbers support this: At least a third of Americans today do not maintain the affiliation with which they were raised.

Change of a similar magnitude marked America’s first period of religious upheaval, the 18th century’s Great Awakening. Then, too, another quickly growing portion of the population was leaving traditional ways behind. Called the “New Lights,” as opposed to the “Old Lights” of traditional belief, they replaced what one minister called the “old rotten and stinking routine of religion” with hugely popular open-air revivals, building on long-simmering dissatisfaction with existing worship styles to become newly ascendant denominations. Many of these churches are those that appear to be losing numbers to the “nones” today.

The man often credited with jump-starting this new phase of American religious life, the itinerant evangelist George Whitefield, was known for sermons calling into question the divisions between Christians, which was as close as anyone at the time might get to praising disaffiliation. Standing on a balcony in Philadelphia, the city in which Benjamin Franklin once estimated that Whitefield could reach a crowd of 30,000 with his unamplified voice, the orator called out to the sky to ask “Father Abraham” who could be found in heaven.

“Any Episcopalians? No.” Whitefield preached. “Any Presbyterians? No. Any Baptists? No. Have you any Methodists, Seceders or Independents there? No, no.” He shouted with dramatic exasperation, “Why, who have you there?” The answer he provided, as if in the voice of Abraham himself — “We don’t know those names here” — surely gave solace to any believing “nones” who heard him.

More recently, Americans’ desire in the 1970s and ’80s to devise spiritual identities apart from traditional categories was labeled “Sheilaism” by the sociologist Robert Bellah, for a woman called Sheila who believed in God, did not go to church, but trusted her own internal voice to direct her on a spiritual path.

Many of today’s “nones” are yesterday’s “Sheilas,” and some of them may be spiritual descendants of those New Lights whose innovative ways of being (and not being) religious established trends in American belief nearly three centuries ago. The rising and falling preference for the open air of unaffiliation is not only not new, it is exactly how religion in America has been periodically enriched and expanded from the beginning.

It’s too soon to tell what the continuing negotiation between belief and unbelief described in the Pew study will bring, but the picture it provides of religious communities in flux suggests that the next Great Awakening — a transformation of the religious character of the nation as radical as it is unexpected — might be led by those with too many spiritual influences to choose just one.

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