Prothero on Post Christian America

USA Today

Post-Christian? Not even close.

A high-profile ‘religious landscape’ survey is said to show that America is rapidly losing its faith in Christianity. One problem: It’s not so.

By Stephen Prothero

In the endless debate over whether the United States is a Christian nation, the "ayes" no longer seem to have it.

The "ayes" might have the 1892 Supreme Court ruling describing the United States as a "Christian nation," but the "nays" have the Treaty of Tripoli of 1797, which affirmed that "the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."

Now comes President Obama, who in January in his inaugural address spoke of this country as "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers." On April 6 in Turkey, Obama added that the United States "does not consider itself a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation" but "a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

One week later, in a mournful black-and-red cover reminiscent of Time magazine's 1966 "Is God Dead?" cover, Newsweek proclaimed "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." Setting off this alarm was the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), released in March by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. This survey of more than 50,000 American adults contains all sorts of interesting tidbits about the rapid growth of Islam in America, and the relative strength of new religious movements such as Wicca. It tells us that Pentecostals are more likely to be divorced than the average American, and that Mormons are far more likely to be married. But almost all the news coverage this survey has garnered, both at home and abroad, speaks of the gains of the religiously unattached (or "nones" as they are often called) at the expense of Christianity.

Prior ARIS surveys were conducted in 1990 and 2001, and according to the co-authors of this report — Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture — the trend line for Christians looks disturbingly like the Dow Jones of recent memory. From 1990 to 2008, the portion of American adults who self-identify as Christians has dropped 10 percentage points (from 86% to 76%), while the portion of those who report no religious affiliation has almost doubled — from 8% to 15%. The "nones," it seems, are routing the nuns.

But are they?

Rhetoric vs. analysis

What makes this secularization angle plausible is the fact that it aligns quite well with the desires of atheists and evangelicals alike. The so-called new atheists want to see Christianity on the retreat because to them, religion is poisonous idiocy. But born-again Christians like the faith-on-the-run story, too, because it makes their centuries-old call to re-Christianize the country only more urgent.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham begins his cover story with a series of quotations from R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who offers the same sad story of Christian declension that American Christians have been telling since roughly the moment the Pilgrims first clambered over Plymouth Rock. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered," Mohler says. "The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture."

Unfortunately, many who have written on the new ARIS survey have mistaken such timeless rhetoric for timely analysis. The fact of the matter is that only a small portion of the "nones" is truly secular. This information isn't in the ARIS report, but when I called Keysar in an effort to dig deeper into the beliefs and behaviors of the religiously unattached, she told me that when asked about God, 23% of the "nones" said they believed in a higher power and 21% pledged their allegiance to a personal God. A parallel survey released in 2006 by Baylor University found that almost two-thirds (63%) of Americans who claim no religious affiliation believe in God, and another third (36%) said they prayed at least occasionally. Finally, a 2008 Pew Forum study found that 41% of the religiously unaffiliated nonetheless describe religion as either very important or somewhat important in their lives. "Nones" are by no means non-believers.
What the rise of the "nones" shows us is not how American Christianity is declining but how it is changing. The data tell us that Christians are increasingly likely to describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious, that they are increasingly wary of labels and institutions, and that they identify their faith less and less with "organized religion" and more and more with the personal power of Jesus himself.

What the data do not tell us is that the United States is becoming "post-Christian." If you meet a random American walking down the street, the odds are only one in 62 that he or she will self-identify as atheist or agnostic. And even if we accept the ARIS survey as gospel, the United States today has more Christians than any other country in human history. The current U.S. population is more Christian than Israel is Jewish and Utah is Mormon. Meanwhile, Christianity remains, for good or for ill, a vital political force, not just on the right but also on the left, and the Christian Bible remains the scripture of American politics, invoked thousands of times a year on the floor of the U.S. Congress.

In the classroom

Over the past two decades, I have taught the "Christian America" debate to hundreds of students in my Religious Studies courses. When we finish our discussion, I call the question. My Christian students almost invariably describe the United States as a multicultural nation of religions, but my Jewish students tell me you have to be blind (or Christian) not to see that this is a Christian country. Here Christmas, not Passover, is a national holiday, and the only question about our presidents' religious affiliation seems to be from which Christian denomination they will come.

Mark Silk, who runs Trinity College's Program on Public Values, which released the latest ARIS report, agrees that the news media were napping when they spun secularization straw out of the gold in this report. For him, the rise of the "nones" is old news. From 1990 to 2001, the portion of those who said "none" when asked, "What is your religion, if any?" jumped from 8.2% to 14.1%. Over the past seven years, that figure basically flatlined, rising less than a percentage point to 15.0%.

The real news in this data, Silk says, is a shift in the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism from the Northeast to the Southwest, and in the process from whites to Hispanics. The other big story, he told me, is the continued displacement of mainline Protestants by born-again Christians, who now constitute 34% of the U.S. population. The "non-denominational Christian" category that populates U.S. megachurches has exploded from under 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to in excess of 8 million today.

When I remarked that this hardly looks like a picture of a post-Christian country, Silk, who edits a newsletter called "Religion and the News," agreed, but warned me not to be too hopeful about diverting this story midstream. "You can tell the truth," he said, "just don't expect anybody to pay attention."

Stephen Prothero is the chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University and the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't.

First the news from Kingwood: ElenaClaire has been released today. Her first stop was at IHOP where she is right now with her Mom and Kristin Geistkemper, who drove Alicia over this morning. Treatments and therapies will continue on an outpatient basis.

Now from Davis and Elk Grove, California. Mom's surgery went very well. However she is quite weak and not real responsive. She is not eating or drinking much. Her alertness level seems only about 50%. If she does not "snap out of it", this will probably directly lead to a bad outcome.

Dad, however, is doing very well and seems strong and sharp physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He continues to inspire all of us with his tender devotion and service to Mom which has been in evidence all of our lives. He said he admitted with shame that this was actually a relief, because of the burden he has been carrying for the past months, and we assured him that this is no cause for shame. He is potentially facing the greatest challenge and loss of his life but is stepping up to the plate with courage and determination. At 85 years old, he is still setting the bar for what it means to follow Christ faithfully. "The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance". Ps 16:6

In all of this we have seen extraordinary demonstrations of God's goodness. Expressions of love and support from friends, circumstances falling into perfect alignment regarding travel and my presence when needed Tuesday morning to handle a medical need for Miles when Alicia was incommunicado at the hospital (what if I had made it onto that plane the night before and was not available to be there for Miles?), my absence on Wednesday morning which made it so natural for Pastor Al to accompany Alicia to a family conference at the hospital where his presence was so significant and helpful. 2 Cor 1:5 has proven itself profoundly true this week:
"Just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

The time with Tom and Karin and their spouses is so rich. In some ways I sense that we are all wearing training wheels, learning in the earliest stages how to "ride life" without Mom - and eventually, without Dad. It's sad, of course, but greater than the sadness is the confidence of God's presence.

Continuing prayers are greatly appreciated.

Rick - at Tom's house in Elk Grove