[Buddha-l] Unpopular Buddhism

[Jackhat1 at aol.com]

This is contrary to other sources I have read lately. Below is an example  
from Spirit News. I also read another recent article somewhere which had a 
title  saying Buddhism is now the most popular religion in the US. Of course, 
I can't  find the article now. The articles didn't say it had the most 
adherents but  that more people had a positive view of it.
 
jack
 
 
""The  current issue of the Journal for the  Scientific Study of Religion 
includes one of the most  important pieces on  Buddhism in America to appear 
in recent years. “Buddhists  and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of 
Influence,” was  written by sociologist of American religion Robert Wuthnow 
and  ethnographer of Theravada  in the USA Wendy Cadge. 
[snip]
 
 
This means  that the number of people who identify overtly as Buddhists   
doesn’t  tell us much about whether Buddhism is impacting American religion 
  
generally,  particularly because many people who regularly attend Buddhist  
 
temples  and meditation centers do not consider themselves explicitly   
Buddhist.  Within Buddhist circles, this phenomenon has been noted for some 
  
time:  approximately 50% of Tricycle’s readership, for instance, doesn’t   
self-identify as Buddhist.  
Historian  of American religions Thomas Tweed has coined the term   
“nightstand Buddhists” for people who might read a Buddhist  book before  
bed or  perform some meditation in the morning, but aren’t connected to   
Buddhism  as an institutional religion—such people are usually left out of  
 
quantitative studies that attempt to gauge the number of  Buddhists out  
there. So  in reframing the question, Wuthnow and Cadge have found a better 
  
avenue of  investigation that comes closer to capturing the real situation  
 
of  Buddhism in America.  
And what  did they find? Even for the specialist in the field of American   
Buddhism,  the numbers Wuthnow and Cadge came up with will prove   
surprising. Based on their survey conducted in 2002-2003,  they found that  
one out of  every seven Americans has had at least a fair level of contact  
 
with  Buddhism, and that one out of eight Americans reported that Buddhism  
 
had  influenced their religious life. Those are staggeringly high numbers.  
 
To put it  in perspective, there are about four million Americans who   
actively  identify as Buddhists. But if we ask how many Americans include   
Buddhist  elements—a little or a lot—in their personal spiritual lives, 
the   
number  appears to be about 12.5% of the population: that’s 26,125,000   
adults.  The number who say the Buddhist influence has been significant is  
 
almost the  same: at 12%, that’s 25,080,000. Clearly Buddhism is exerting   
an  influence far beyond the relatively small number of people who claim   
Buddhism  as their primary religious identity.  
There’s  another lesson to be learned between the lines. The number of   
Americans  who have had at least a fair amount of contact with Buddhism is  
 
14%, or  29,260,000 adults. The gap between those who have encountered   
Buddhism,  and those who have adopted some Buddhist elements into their   
lives, is  small. Using Wuthnow and Cadge’s figures, we learn that 87.5% of 
  
people who  have encountered Buddhism believe it has had an effect on them, 
  
and 85.7%  report a substantial impact. Not surprising, Buddhism scored   
high with  positive assessments, with many more people reporting positive   
associations with Buddhism than negative ones. In other  words, whenever  
Americans  have come into contact with Buddhism—and the study shows that   
this is a  much larger number than might have been guessed—they have   
overwhelmingly reacted favorably and incorporated elements of  it into  
their  religious thinking or practice.  
Extrapolating further, a scenario of ever-increasing Buddhist  influence  
within  American religious life can be discerned. Even a casual observer   
will  quickly concede that the amount of Buddhist materials available to   
the public  is far higher today than ever before, and growing steadily   
every  year. Buddhist temples continue to be founded across the country,   
and  Buddhist elements in movies, television, books, and online are   
becoming  more common. And since Buddhism appears to exert an influence on  
 
virtually  everyone who comes in contact with it (and a positive one at   
that), the  widespread penetration of Buddhism into American religion and  
culture appears to be a coming certainty.  "