From a report in the SF Chronicle about a new study of religion in America (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/23/BATE11AKBJ.DTL):
(Begin excerpt) Americans remain heavily religious, but their views rarely conform to dogma, according to a massive new survey released this morning.
Seventy percent of religious adherents in the United States believe multiple religions can lead a person to salvation, while 68 percent say there is more than one way to interpret the teachings of their religion.
Those views are at the centerpiece of a survey of 36,000 people released today by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The survey - unprecedented in its combination of survey pool and breadth of questions - reveals that religious beliefs and practices in America defy doctrine. (End excerpt)
Interesting observations of the character of American religious practice. As I talked to brothers before I said shahada they frequently spoke of the 135,000 prophets that Allah sent, comments that I took to imply that Islam did not invalidate the presence of god in other religions and their teachings, only that Islam and its prophet Mohammed were the last prophet with the final teachings on the proper path through life.
I myself was raised to be familiar with protestant Christianity, but practiced Buddhism throughout my 20s. Nothing I have come across in Islam has invalidated some of the profound wisdom I found in Buddhism, such as the observation that the world around us is often a construct of our minds--our feelings, notions, prejudices, hunches, traumas and theories that we cobble together to form our understanding of reality-- which is usually quite different from actual reality.
Anyway, the article goes on:
(Begin excerpt) "Religion in America is 3,000 miles wide, but it's only 3 inches deep," said Prof. D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist and religion demographer at Rice University. "The issue is not that Americans don't believe in anything. It's that they believe in practically everything. It's possible for Americans to hold together contradictory beliefs at the same time."
The survey found that there are Catholics who meditate, while Lindsay said other surveys have found Protestants who pray to the Virgin Mary.
These findings take on greater significance, in part, given that religion is a defining characteristic of living in the United States - an unusually religious nation.
Some 92 percent of Americans believe in God. Over 83 percent claim affiliation to a specific Christian denomination, such as Church of God in Christ, or to a non-Christian religion, such as Buddhism. (Another 6 percent say they are religious, but have no specific affiliation.)
Those trends are substantially higher than what is found in most developed, capitalist or industrial nations. Scholars say what the survey reveals is the great diversity of American religions, as well as the diversity of thought within them. (End excerpt)
As Salamu Alaykum
Post new comment