Dateline: April 22, 1999
Part 1: Introduction & Spirituality
Where is religion in America going, and what will it look like in the coming millennium? This sort of question preoccupies many people, theist and atheist alike, and it is very much worth exploring. Experts fall all over themselves in an attempt to predict what will happen with religion in the coming decades, and prophets really are on every street corner. But rather than crystal balls or channeling Cro Magnon warriors, the best method is perhaps to take a close look at current trends in religion and make projections as to how they might develop over time. I'm not really sure how appropriate these predictions will be for other countries, but I'd be very, very interested in hearing about this from readers outside of the United States.
Religion in America is remarkably stable, and has been for many years. Despite all the doomsday moaning from the religious right over how secular our society has become, that is only true about basic American political institutions - and sometimes only superficially so. Even as everything else change around us, the basic religious and theistic beliefs of Americans change very little, and even then only slowly. The core of religion progresses only hesitatingly. The promise of secularization which was anticipated by reformers and humanists in the past century has not come to pass. Religion did not die and superstition has not retreated. At best, it has found new forms in paranormal cults - but it remains ever present. Even worse, exceptionally conservative religious movements have flourished around the world, offering their own promise of horrors.
An excellent book which just these issues is Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium by Richard Cimino and Don Lattin. I can easily recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about current trends in American religion and where they might go. This article will be a quick presentation of some of their ideas along with my own commentary.
There are three principle categories which we should keep in mind when looking at religion: The nature of individual spirituality/beliefs, the nature of religious institutions, and the interaction between religion and wider society. The first category you'll find below while the other two are located in the second section of this article.
Spirituality & Religion
The first thing which we must keep in mind is that "spirituality" and "religion" are distinct issues and will probably grow further apart in the future. It used to be that people didn't think that they could have any kind of spiritual life or awareness outside of a very specific theological denomination and church structure, but this is no longer the case. Instead of institutional tradition and the mediation of a wider, historical community, people are coming to decisions about gods and "Spirit" solely or primarily through unmediated personal experience.
This, unfortunately, leads to a drastic reduction in the intellectual content of religious/spiritual beliefs for many. However much one might disagree with the conclusions of traditional theology, one must give it credit for attempting a rigorous intellectual defense of dogma through logic and reason. Personal experience, however, knows no such bounds - anything goes, and logical critiques need not even be recognized. Whatever is true only has to be true for the individual, and as this phenomenon grows, disagreements will only grow along with it.
This of course isn't exactly new and radical - more than one commentator has seen in this echoes of the ancient Gnostic movement which was once condemned and eradicated as a heresy in the early years of Christianity (Christianity has had a much wider variety of beliefs than is commonly recognized). Gnosticism has been revived in a number of ways in America, and this resurgency fuels the rejection of traditional church structures. Contributing to this is a growing number of people who are looking Eastward for assistance in learning spiritual "truths." Eastern ideas often don't require the same dogmatic allegiance to one theology in they way that Western religions like Christianity and Islam do.
This also allows people to combine religious ideas like a recipe and thus create their own unique "religion," blending ingredients from Buddhism, Christianity, and more. This hybridization may create interesting Buddhist/Gnostic combinations, but may also create very strange cults.
Changing Spiritualities
The nature of people's spirituality is in a state of increasing flux as well. One change is a "secular" sort of spirituality - the type found in a wide variety of ostensibly secular movements but which people report as giving them "spiritual" meaning in their lives. Political activism ranks high in this group, as do sport and "self-help" movements. Gender has also been playing an increasing role - as seen in its best example, the Promise Keepers. They have put the male gender at the center of their spiritual message and thereby attracted a huge following. Their popularity may be waning now, but we surely haven't seen the end of such efforts. Women, too, have their own female-oriented efforts, as witnessed in the oft mentioned "Goddess" movement, where people assert without sound foundation that human society was once perfect and peaceful when people worshipped goddesses instead of gods.
| Quote of the week: Not one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of mind to be an atheist. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) |
Spirituality is growing in the workplace, too. People are no longer content to express their religious or spiritual beliefs on their own time, and have decided that their company should be co-opted to help them by providing seminars, time, and more in an effort to promote spiritual warm fuzzies among employees. It is uncertain how long it will be before companies are asked to also aid their employee's political activism and hobbies like stamp collecting, but there's no reason why those should be excluded.
One of the biggest and perhaps most important trends to watch is the interaction between religion/spirituality and both science and healthcare. The influence of religion in those two fields may bring profound change in the way naturalistic investigations are made about our world, and that in turn will decide what sort of scientific and medical progress is made. Cimino and Lattin seem certain that there will be "peace" between science and religion in the coming millennium. I disagree, and see no prospect for any improvement unless one or the other abandons some fundamental assumptions. The favorably cite Ken Wilbur in their opinion, but my experience with his writings has left me far from impressed. Religions make supernaturalistic assumptions which are unacceptable in basic scientific investigations - unless those are abandoned, religion and science cannot be truly reconciled.
Healthcare is another very important field in which religion and spirituality are making claims; unfortunately that is often to the detriment of medicine. All sorts of studies purporting to find links between prayer and good health are widely touted in the popular media, but you'll be hard pressed to find the same media attention when those studies are found to be flawed. Too many people have become disenchanted or simply bored with the slow yet steady pace of traditional medical research and are determined to find new, comforting ways to "cure" themselves. Some insist on relying only on prayer, whereas others go farther and become convinced that wellness or illness are merely states of mind which can be decided when their Spirit asserts dominion over Flesh. At no point does any of this bode very well for the prospects of a healthy America in the future.
Don't miss the other section:
Part 2: Church Institutions & Politics.
Get weekly updates about what's new on the site and news from around the world:
|
|
|
|
|
by topic & by date |
|
Make your opinions be heard on the Bulletin Board or Chat Room!
|
|
