[Buddha-l] The Churching of America

[Richard Hayes]

Dear denizens (be ye churched, churchless, church-mice or churls),

When I was in the library a while back, an interesting tome fell off the shelf 
into my hands, a sure sign that God wanted me to read it and report on it for 
the benefit of all sentient beings in the trichiliocosm (except for Stan 
Ziobro). The work in question was written by a team of sociologists. As a 
logician, epistemologist and incorrigible addict of scientism, I am required 
to regard all social scientists as unfortunate souls who have gone over to 
the Dark Side. Be that as it may, I have \begin(whispering) actually enjoyed 
this book.\end{whispering} It has turned at least some of my thinking upside 
down and made me abandon (only for a short time, of course) a few of my 
deepest prejudices.

The book, written by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark (a team named Finke and 
Stark HAD to go into either sociology or Vaudeville), is entitled "The 
Churching of America 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy." 
Its main argument (bolstered, of course, with heaps of statistical analysis, 
bar graphs, pie graphs and other pseudo-scientific legerdemain) is that the 
religious institutions that have survived and thrived in America have been 
those that make the most demands on their members. Churches that require 
members to sign creeds, make substantial pledges of financial support, and 
hew to behavioral codes both gain and keep members. Exclusivism, they argue, 
has always been a crowd-pleaser. The churches that have steadily lost 
membership down through the centuries have been the ones that welcome 
everyone and allow people to believe and act as they see fit. 
Congegationalism, Unitarianism, Universalism, and the liberal wings of 
Protestant denominations have steadily declined in overall membership and in 
the number of churches. Unprogrammed Quaker meetings have dwindled, while the 
more evangelical and fundamentalist programmed Quakers have thrived. So say 
these fellows (who can barely conceal their astonishment, since their 
findings fly in the face of most sociological and historiological dogma from 
the time of Weber and James onward).

If their findings are valid, what are the implications for the survival of 
Buddhist institutions in the West? Will only those that require new members 
to pay substantial membership fees and do thousands of prostrations and go on 
intensive retreats and neglect their spouses (or is it spice) and children 
live to see the next century? Will only those who routinely ridicule 
Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews live to write the history of Western 
Buddhism, while all the ecumenists amongst us abandon the three jewels and 
drift off to join AA, the YMCA and the local Jungian Society? Cripes. I'm 
glad I'm getting old. With any luck, I'll die before all that happens.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico