[Buddha-l] Lukewarm American Buddhists

[Richard Hayes]

On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 15:25 -0700, Richard Hayes wrote:

> Look, I know that when it comes to religion Americans are probably the
> most confused and ignorant people in all of recorded history, but these
> Pew statistics completely baffle me.

I still maintain that Americans are more confused about religion than
most people, but I have started reading the full report put out by the
Pew Charitable Trusts, and the more I see of it the more amazed I am at
how incompetent the people designing the questions were. For example,
how would you expect a Buddhist to choose between: "I believe my
religion is the one true religion that leads to eternal life?" and "I
believe many religions lead to eternal life." (Whatever happened to
nirvana, which is, as I understand it, most decidedly not eternal life?)

Well, it turns out that 86% of American Buddhists surveyed said that
they thing that many religions lead to eternal life. Now the way I would
want to answer that is that many religions have a capacity for keeping
people distracted from the unpleasant reality of their own mortality,
but there is NO religion that leads to eternal life. Sarvam anityam and
all that, eh?

Only Hindus (at 89%) are more enthusiastic than Buddhists about
religious pluralism, and Jews are just a few points less enthusiastic
than Buddhists. The religion with the largest percentage of their polled
membership stating the conviction that only their religion leads to
eternal life is Jehovah's Witnesses (80%), followed by Mormons (57%).
Islam comes in at 33%. (Not wanting to alienate patriotic Americans bent
on depicting Islam as a fanatical religion of murderous savages, Pew
helpfully provides a footnote pointing out that most American Muslims
are highly educated professionals whose views probably do not reflect
those of Muslims worldwide. Oddly enough, they forgot to mention that
40% of American Buddhists are highly educated Jewish psychoanalysts
whose views probably do not reflect those of anyone west of Park Avenue
in upper Manhattan.)

I have yet to find in which of the Pew categories Unitarians and Quakers
would fit into. I guess they are lumped in with Baha'i, Subud,
Theosophy and the Cherokee wolf clan in the category called "Other
religions."

-- 
Richard Hayes