Religion Stats, Part II

So, back to the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life Religious Landscape survey.

My first reaction to this was to want to know about my own location. And, guess what? the UCC makes up 0.5% of the entire population of the United States. And then beyond that, how many of those folks really have similar views to mine? Who knows?

But it started me thinking about being in a minority group and a majority group simultaneously. As a Christian, I'm part of the 78% majority religion. But as a liberal mainline Christian, I'm probably in a group that's closer to 8-10% of the population (I'm guessing - I just divided the mainline churches (18%) in half to get that number).

So there are some advantages to this - Christmas is a national holiday, after all. But also some disadvantages. If you read much by Christopher Hitchens, you'll see that he's decided he knows what all Christians are about (actually, all religious people), and if I disagree with the picture he paints, well, I'm not really a Christian. Here's a writing sample. This interview on Interfaith Voices is even better.

But you know what? Why shouldn't Hitchens confuse fundamentalists with everyone else? They're kind of the loudest and most dramatic part of any given religion. I mean - who really wants to read about word-smithing at somebody's national church meeting? It's much easier to see and understand the people who do things in black-and-white. Plus, as the survey seems to show, there are more evangelicals than other kinds of Christians in the US. Not that all evangelicals are fundamentalists. But it's a good-sized number. And they have a relatively large number of television shows.

I mean, sure, he's a writer and should probably do his research and try to understand his subject with some nuance. But as an entertainer and seller of books, it's more important that he play off shallow stereotypes. So, I think he's just managed to nail the shallow stereotypes. I seem to have drifted into sarcasm. Time to stop. My basic point: being in the minority (a boutique Christian?) means people tend to misinterpret and misunderstand what you're about.

Something I am worried about

So, some of you may know that back in June Barack Obama spoke to the UCC General Synod. Well, we got a letter from the IRS that the denomination is under investigation to see if our tax status was violated. Some things that suggest we did what we were supposed to do:

-- Obama was invited before he was a candidate

-- People who wanted to campaign for him weren't allowed into the civic center and had to stay outside. Similarly, we were told that this wasn't a campaign speech, and no signs were allowed inside.

Some things that are less clear:

-- During the speech, he made references to the campaign, and pledged to vote in universal health care

--On our website and in other publications, we mentioned that he was a candidate for office.

Here are the IRS' guidelines on inviting a candidate to speak at your non-profit organization. A relevant quote:

[T]the organization must ensure that:

• The individual speaks only in a non-candidate capacity,
  
  
• Neither the individual nor any representative of the organization makes any mention of his or her candidacy or the election, and
  
  
• No campaign activity occurs in connection with the candidate’s attendance

I really hope this works out well, because it would SUCK to lose our tax-exempt status. *crosses fingers*

A Picture of Religion in America

Heather sent me a link about this survey

Basically, it's one of the biggest and most in-depth surveys of religious affiliation in the US, possibly ever. Definitely in recent times. It makes it possible to have good estimates about how many people are affiliated with pretty small groups, as well as to differentiate between the many types of Baptists, who, it turns out, represent about a fifth of the US population.

A few things that stood out to me as particularly interesting:

--People are changing religions at a much faster rate than they used to.

--"Unaffiliated" has grown as a category, and now represents about 16% of the population

--There are more evangelical Protestants (26%) than Catholics (24%) and more Catholics than mainline protestants (18%), and then only slightly more mainliners than unaffiliated (16%).

--Only 51% of the country is Protestant, with that number slowly dropping.

I am planning to comment more on this, but thought I'd toss some facts out first. Don't want to make my post too long. :)

Monday Morning Preacher - John 3:16

I finished reading The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McClaren this week, and it was so wonderfully enjoyable. I always like the chance to get a review of what Jesus' message was, because it's so easy to get caught up in the "what should we do about this message" part. Sometimes things just need to be about God.

So this morning's gospel reading (John 3:1-17) was a story about a smart guy - a Judean teacher & authority - who sneaks out in the middle of the night to ask Jesus what he means by this idea of eternal life. You may be familiar with this verse of the story: "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life" John 3:16.

Let's look at that again in a modernized/different/fresher? translation: "This is how much God loved the world: he gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life." (The Message)

Here's what I see as the good news: this new life, this "whole and lasting life" is a gift from God. It's not something we can earn, purchase, find for ourselves, or otherwise develop/create or force.

I think the key to the passage is the idea of "believing in" God. We can believe in God in the sense of philosophically believing in God. God=first cause, or God=ominiscient + omnipotent + perfect. A lot of folks run into trouble with this approach, because the Bible wasn't written by Greek philosophers, and God doesn't always fit into mathematical/logical categories.

Or, we can believe in God the way we believe in another person. If you believe in somebody, you believe that they can accomplish what they say they will, even if there are setbacks. It's about trust and confidence. What would it mean to say, "I believe in you!" to God? It's much more personal, much less intellectual.

Of course, beyond this I can't give you the mechanics. How does trusting God lead us into a whole new way of life? How does it bring us into a post-domination, peaceable kingdom? That's the gift and the mystery of it. Sometimes things just need to be about God.

Class Differences for Super Tuesday

It doesn't seem like there's much commentary about this at my usual watering holes, but I was really interested in the unusual distribution of wins in various states. Why did Clinton dominate in Massachusetts, but not in Delaware? Something not getting much attention at my various news watering-holes is this question of class. People with less education and lower incomes tended to vote for Clinton over Obama. And vice-versa: people with higher incomes and more money voted for Obama. To me that difference, combined with the tendency of working-class folks to vote Republican in some states, rather than Democrat, explains many of Obama's wins in places like North Dakota. At least to me.

But I wonder, too, if Obama and Clinton's basic messages are heard very differently based on a person's social location. One of the things I like about Obama is that he is focused on building a movement of people committed to service and working together to improve the United States. Clinton tends to speak in more "patronage" types of terms: elect me and I'll solve you problems. Which is not appealing to someone with a sense of their own agency, but might sound better to somebody who hasn't felt empowered in the political realm, as working-class people often are not.

A thought.

Discovering the Kingdom of God

I've been thoroughly enjoying The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McClaren. He talks about the kingdom of God, which was Jesus' main topic of conversation. In other words, talking about what Jesus was talking about, rather than focusing in on Jesus so much. It's really good.

So, I've been thinking about the kingdom of God as something that we build as humans trying to do what God wants us to. But really, the kingdom of God is at least as much something to be discovered and accepted. Something to be noticed and enjoyed as much as it is something to be constructed with human hands. In fact, it's possible that by trying to construct it, we sometimes cover it up.