[Buddha-l] The Churching of America

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Richard Hayes schreef:
> 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.
>
>   
This phenomenon is not just limited to the U.S. of A. In Holland the 
liberal ('vrijzinnige') denominations have been reduced to restgroups 
to. I guess there are not more then a few hundred members left of 
organisations like the I.A.R.F. and W.C.R.P. I used to be a chairperson 
of an interreligious organisation which took its support from these 
circles. Liberal protestantism used to be influential here in the first 
half of the 20th century, even the former queen used to go to such a 
church. Nowadays the only growing church is the pentecostal movement. I 
believe that the heavy demands also make islam attracktive for some 
westerners.

Erik

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