The Emerging Religious Landscape in America

I just got done perusing some new figures and poll information that suggest a growing population of Muslims in America and continued downward trend of mainline Catholics and Protestants. There was also a decline in those who claim Judaism as a religion. Finally, there is a rise in atheism. America is beginning to looking more and more like her European cousins every day. 

(You can read the original article here.)

As a progressive, what concerns me most are radical expressions of these minority religions taking root in American soil, and not for any reason usually given by conservative Christians who fear the loss of majority status and power. As I find radical conservative Christianity an often idealistic and sanitized vision of the divine message given to humanity, I’m no more fond of radical expressions of Islam, though I will say I don’t believe most expressions of Islam are radical. While Christianity has suffered the loss of its romanticized uniqueness and exclusivity under the microscope of modern scrutiny beginning primarily during the European Enlightenment (with Judaism soon following), faithfulness to core values of Islam as markers of truth remain strong while critical scholarship of Islam is fairly new and mostly unwelcomed.

While there is an understandable psychological fear of loss of culture, loss of identity, and the kind of pushback we witness in far-right conservative media on a daily basis here in the States, those of us who continue to be optimistic about interfaith dialogue have less to worry about.

I say this not because distinction is unimportant, but rather because I approach the question as a person who sees himself within the grip of time and from a place of historical relativity. And by relativity I mean humility – we simply don’t know it all. Our knowledge, our truths are relative in span of history.

Despite those who prize its transcendent value, it’s hard to debate the fact that Christianity has always been a religion that sees itself as a prophetic extension of another religion (Judaism) that explains some of its most important characteristics (doctrines) through the lens of Greek philosophy and neo-pagan thought. That’s not to say there is nothing original about Christianity, but far less than is often admitted by its adherents as it owes a lot of itself, its socialization, its ethical awareness, and its prophetic vitality to its neighbors.

Therefore, in seeing Christianity as a sort of syncretistic experience in antiquity, an individual involved in interfaith dialogue may not be as put off immediately by what we can learn from our neighbors if in fact one day we find Christianity to be a minority expression. If anything, we can see that Judaism lives on though it has been a minority most of its existence with sporadic periods of dominance, which were few and far between. Yet Judaism has managed to survive. It is as diverse in its expressions as Christianity is in its expressions. And this leads me to my second point; namely, that there is no one expression of Christianity for which we have to fight to protect against cultural collapse. With the amount of variety directed to major doctrines such as the virgin birth, ethics, resurrection, the way of salvation, the differences are not small or simply nuanced, but completely up for grabs. So when one thinks about the campaign to save Christianity from its cultural despisers, one wonders what Christianity he has in mind.

Merry Christmas!