[Buddha-l] Religion and political affliliation

[Curt Steinmetz]

According to the ARIS study there were 766,000 Hindus in the US in 2001. 
Here is a link to the 47 page pdf for the 2001 American Religious 
Identification Study at CUNY:
http://tinyurl.com/ay8k3u

This is higher than the numbers for several important Christian sects, 
including Seventh Day Adventists,  Eastern Orthodox, and Mennonites. It 
is over three times the number for the sect that my maternal 
grandparents belonged to: Christian Science. It is also over 100,000 
more than the number of UU's. In 2001 there were 100,000 more Hindus 
than there were members of the Assemblies of God (Sarah Palin's church) 
in 1990.

Hinduism, by the way, is an exceedingly pluralist religion.

"Hinduism promotes not only tolerance and respect for differences in 
belief and religion, but also acceptance of those paths as legitimate."
Statement on "Hindu Pluralism" American Hindu Foundation:
http://www.hinduamericanfoundation.org/hintro_pluralism.htm

"Hinduism is the largest pluralistic religions in the world. It teaches 
that there are many paths, many sages, many holy books and that no 
religion can claim any exclusie or final representation of truth."
Dr. David Frawley "A Hindu Call for Religious Pluralism":
http://www.dharmacentral.com/articles/plural.htm

"Hinduism has a great deal to offer to the West. Its inherent 
pluralistic teachings offer the best resolution to the question of how 
people of different religions can co-exist peacefully in a multi-faith 
society."
London Vivekananda Cetre website:
http://www.vivekananda.btinternet.co.uk/

"The deeper reason for this social and religious pluralism in India 
perhaps lies in the fact that the Divine, as described by Sri Aurobindo, 
has infinite potentiality and thus manifests itself in infinite forms, 
each of which, through the process of evolution, try to express their 
essential Divine character."
"Sri Aurobindo's vision of spiritual universalism":
http://www.auroville.org/journals&media/avtoday/august_04/sri_vision.htm

Curt

jkirk wrote:
> What happened to the Hindus, who're missing from the list? They
> could hardly be considered "pluralistic" here in the USA, where
> it's Sanatandharma all the way.
> JK
>
> ==============
>
> With apologies to all the many buddha-l denizens who do not live
> in the United States, there is just one more set of statistics I
> thought some people might be interested in. The Pew Charitable
> Trust conducted some surveys near the time of the 2008 elections
> to determine how religious denomination correlates with political
> party membership. The full table is much more complex than the
> following summary; for example, the full table acknowledges that
> there are different types of Jews (although it does not
> acknowledge that there are different kinds of Muslims or
> Buddhists). As the United States prepares for the inauguration of
> its next president, mull over the following statistics. "R" means
> either either Republican or "leaning toward Republican" and "D"
> means either registered Democrat or leaning toward Democrat. (The
> Pew table separates those out.) There were no data for the Green
> Party.
>
> D	R	Denomination
> 77	10	Unitarians and other pluralistic denominations
> 67	18	Buddhist
> 65	23	Jewish*
> 63	11	Muslim
> 56	23	Unaffiliated
> 48	33	Catholic
> 44	32	Protestant**
> 22	65	Mormon
> 15	10	Jehovah's Witness***
>
> * This is a composite of Reform, Conservative and Orthodox
> ** This is a composite of evangelical and mainline, Caucasian and
> African-American
> *** The majority of JWs refused to answer the question 
>
> A survey of non-Asian Buddhists in America that was done by James
> Coleman in the 1990s showed 4% were registered Republicans and 9%
> were registered Green. The Pew survey did not separate Asian and
> non-Asian Buddhists; my guess is their political leanings are
> probably significantly different, but that guess is based on
> purely anecdotal evidence (which as Dignāga reminds us is no
> evidence at all). 
>
> --
> Richard Hayes
> Department of Philosophy
> University of New Mexico
>
> _______________________________________________
> buddha-l mailing list
> buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com
> http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/listinfo/buddha-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> buddha-l mailing list
> buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com
> http://mailman.swcp.com/mailman/listinfo/buddha-l
>