[Buddha-l] The Churching of America

[Richard Hayes]

On Sunday 04 November 2007 03:29, Erik Hoogcarspel schreef:

> This phenomenon is not just limited to the U.S. of A. In Holland the
> liberal ('vrijzinnige') denominations have been reduced to restgroups
> to. 

People have been arguing for a long time that in countries that have a culture 
of religious tolerance one would expect a growth of tolerant religions. In 
the early part of the 20th century sociologists were predicting that 
secularism would become the societal norm in the USA and that most religions 
would either become secularized or cease to exist. (When I was growing up in 
the 1950s, most of the people I knew were pretty confident that religion 
would soon disappear from the USA, thereby answering their prayers.)

Those predictions have not turned out to be accurate. It is estimated that at 
the time of the American revolution, about 17% of the population belonged to 
a church or attended church services regularly. By the time of the civil war 
(1860s), about 40% of the American population belonged to a church. The 
brutality civil war apparently made a lot of people cynical about 
religion---even old Mark Twain got a bit cynical---and church attendance fell 
after that war. It then picked up again in the 1880s and has risen steadily 
ever since. At present about 65% of Americans belong to a church and attend 
regularly. That amazes me.

And the churches that most people attend are not at all secular, and many are 
not especially tolerant. So what religious freedom has evolved into (or 
perhaps was ordained by God to become) is that everyone is free to choose his 
or her own brand of religious intolerance. People who want to be secular and 
liberal tend to stay away from churches. They become academics instead.

I'm sorry to hear about the Netherlands following a similar pattern (although 
I'd guess that the numbers of people attending church regularly is lower 
there than in the land from which I write, which is paradoxically both 
God-saturated and God-forsaken).

> Nowadays the only growing church is the pentecostal movement. I
> believe that the heavy demands also make islam attracktive for some
> westerners.

A book that quite a few people have been reading recently is Bruce 
Brawer's "While Europe Slept." Do you know it? It's a hysterical diatribe 
written by an American who moved to the Netherlands to escape the religious 
fanaticism of America, only to find himself surrounded by fanatical Muslims 
in Amsterdam. Brawer is homosexual and claims he feels more persecuted by 
Dutch Muslims than he ever felt by American evangelical Christians. Needless 
to say, the book feeds the feverish sentiments of the American Crusaders, who 
feel there will never be a moment's peace until Islam has been eradicated 
from the face of the earth.

I still wonder what all these trends mean for the future of Buddhism in North 
America (and the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europa).

I'd say more, but I have to run along to church now. It's Sunday, you know.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes