Bringing Christian faith into the open in China
By Wang Shanshan and Hu Yongqi in Beijing, Lu Junting in Shanghai and Wu Yiyao in Zhejiang (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-25 07:52
Yu Jianrong, a researcher with the CASS, said many church properties were closed down during the "cultural revolution". But it was during this 10 years of turmoil that religion began to spread rapidly, with many house churches springing up in Wenzhou, Zhejiang.
"It has to do with the nature of religion. The more pressure there is on a religion, the more prosperous it can be," he said, adding that more Christians than ever before are now willing to talk openly about their beliefs in public. "I have seen many village houses in Henan province and in other places that have couplets about God pasted on their doors. I would not have imagined people being so open decades ago."
A 75-year-old Christian in Beijing surnamed Wang, who was baptized as a baby, told China Daily: "There was a time when we had to pray at home, secretly and silently, because we feared we would be punished. But we can now enjoy religious freedom, and more and more people are free to speak out about their faith."
The CASS report on the number of Christians, which has been presented to the central government, was the first ever to feature those who attend house churches, said Yu.
The previous official figure was just 16 million Christians, which included only those people who attend or are affiliated with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of Protestant Churches in China, the State-approved church, according to the official website of the Chinese Protestant Church.
Set up in 1954, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement - self-support, self-governance and self-propagation - was closed for 13 years before its restoration by the government in 1979.
Affiliated churches must generate their own funds. However, local governments are starting to lend more support, said parishioners.
Dai Yafang, 56, who works at Xitang Protestant Church with her husband, said the Jiashan county authorities sold the land from the new construction despite another company offering more than double the asking price.
"The land transfer fee was 180,000 yuan and a company offered to pay 600,000 yuan for it, but the government still sold the land to the church," she said.
The new church is also sited in a "prestigious" location, said 50-year-old Xitang resident Ling Yuming. "It used to be the people's square in town where all the meetings and events were held."
He added: "When the church was closed, people used to gather in the home of an elderly woman surnamed Tang. There were so many people crowded in a little room that I couldn't even see Tang as she read from the Bible. We all knew that was a Protestant gathering but no one talked about it. Nowadays people are much more willing to talk about religious beliefs. It is a part of our identity."
However, despite the increased freedom, other experts said that even today some churches are reluctant to hold promotions in public to raise money and instead rely on private donations.
The CASS study found the greatest concentration of house churches in three areas: the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian, the Huaihe River reaches of Anhui province, Henan in Central China, and Yunnan province in the southwest.
"There are also many Christians in the provinces of Shaanxi, Hebei and Shandong. The numbers in Shandong have risen sharply because of the work of missionaries arriving from South Korea," he said, adding that the overall boom in Christianity came during two periods: between 1979 and 1985, and from the mid-1990s to now.
"We cannot give the exact reasons for the fast growth. It may have to do with the transformation of the society. But the latest trend is that more and more intellectuals in cities are joining house churches," he said.
In Beijing, last year saw more than 2,000 baptized at Xuanwumen Catholic Church in Beijing, an increase of about 15 percent on 2007, said church officials.
The 1,000-capacity Xuanwumen was even struggling to meet demand, according to Xiao Jianqiu. "We get more than 2,000 believers here on Christmas Eve," said the volunteer in her 50s, who added that the church is having to install large-screen televisions so more people can see the service.
Ying Mulan, vice-president of the Beijing Catholicism Committee, explained that younger generations were among the largest group taking up Christianity because "religious ideas contribute to social development, such as doing good for others".
A volunteer at the Shanghai Community Church, which stands in the grand French Concession and is the metropolis' biggest church, said its weekly youth group meetings now regularly attract more than 800 people, a sharp rise on 2002 when as few as 20 would attend.
On Wednesday, about 1,000 young parishioners packed out the church, one of the many closed during the "cultural revolution," for a Christmas carol concert. Among them was graphic designer Huang Wenjing, 24, who was baptized in 2007.
"At the beginning my parents thought I had gone crazy and burned my Bible and stole my computer. But I prayed for them to behave better, and eventually they started to respect my belief," she said. "I'm happy and proud to be a Christian.
"It's an honor to say it loudly that I'm a child of God. Discrimination and criticism is in the past, far away from us. When you stand out, you will find out actually there are so many brothers and sisters around you. We are a big family in Shanghai."
Huang's colleague, Wang Yanzhou, who also converted to the faith, said: "At first I laughed at her (Huang), because she always said things that sounded awkward. But she didn't feel embarrassed. She told all the colleagues about her religion proudly and always looked happy."
Jin Meidi, a preacher in her 60s, began working at the Moore Memorial Church in Shanghai in 1995 when only 20 people used to turn up for her Bible study group. Now there are 120, she said, two-thirds of whom are university students or new graduates.
"Young people have a high rate of acceptance of Christianity. Twenty years ago, all group members were elderly and migrant workers," said Jin, who converted to Christianity in 1985.
She has run home prayer gatherings for elderly people from more than two decades, but it took a while to win the support of local residents' committees.
"In the early years they (officials) didn't understand our purpose, but after years of charity work and caring for orphans, they were touched and have become very supportive over the past 10 years," she said.
The preacher said that she was a lot more confident displaying her faith in public and explained: "Every time I do good things - offering my seat to an old person on a bus, for example - and someone says thank you, I always tell them we should thank God. People often say 'thank God' very naturally and smile.
"We definitely enjoy a high degree of freedom for our religion now and our social status has been lifted these past decades. We receive respect from others."
Monday, December 28, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
God talk & graduations
God talk & graduations
USA Today May 18, 2009
'What secularists sometimes forget is that, for many believers, experiencing momentous events like graduation without gratitude and witness to God is as distasteful as it is for an atheist to be subjected to hard-edged proselytizing.'
By Tom Krattenmaker
Judging from the way school officials turned off her microphone, it was as though the valedictorian had laced her commencement address with the kind of profanity that gets television networks in trouble with the FCC. What prompted the unceremonious pulling of the plug during Brittany McComb's speech at the graduation ceremony in Henderson, Nev.? She started talking about the virtues of her Christian faith.
The 2006 case, which McComb's attorneys are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, is worth considering again this season, not just because of the thousands of high school graduation ceremonies taking place across the country, but also because it shows that we still have a long way to go to resolve what's in and what's out when it comes to religious expression in the public square.
Few would argue that a public high school graduation ceremony is an appropriate venue for a “stand up and accept Jesus!” altar call. What we might generally agree on, too, is that it's complicated to draw the line on matters of religious freedom and fairness. With the stakes high and emotions hot, one can understand how a beleaguered school official might throw up his hands and demand that religion just be kept out of it.
Yet, if an open marketplace of ideas and beliefs is our aim in religiously diverse America, and I believe it ought to be, the installation of no-God-allowed secularism doesn't pass muster. In reflecting on the journey leading up to commencement and an honored role at the microphone, how can a deep-believing evangelical student not talk about Jesus?
Mathew Staver is dean of the law school at Liberty University and founder of Liberty Counsel, which represents Christian litigants in freedom-of-religion and free-speech cases (although not McComb's). Staver explained in an interview that the legal lay of the land is complicated in the arena of religious expression at commencements and other public school events, a patchwork of often-conflicting, often-unclear legal rulings and widely varying applications by principals across the land.
The constitutional dos and don'ts are not widely understood, Staver says. “In many cases, well-meaning school administrators conclude that it's the safe route to just eliminate religious viewpoints when, in fact, that is more likely the unconstitutional route. The best course of action for schools is to remain neutral, neither forcing students to pray, nor censoring them because they chose to pray or express a religious viewpoint.”
In the Nevada case, the trouble began when the school insisted that McComb and her co-valedictorians vet their speeches before the big event. In remarks highlighting the importance of faith in her life, McComb had included language that, to school officials, went too far. As reported by the Christian Broadcasting Network, McComb was instructed to delete references to Christ dying for humankind's sins, and her promise to the audience “that if you choose to fill yourself with God's love rather than the things society tells us will satisfy us, you will find success, you will find your self-worth.”
Not exactly what the less religious people signed up for when they made plans to attend the Foothill High ceremony. Despite being warned to strike the offending references, McComb went ahead with her faith pitch nonetheless, prompting a quick shutdown of the sound system when she launched into the supposedly deleted content. McComb remained at the microphone for another minute and continued the speech without amplification, while some members of the audience jeered the sound system shutdown.
The Nevada valedictorian probably did go too far. But I, for one, would not begrudge her the right at least to reflect on what her faith meant to her through the trials and tribulations of high school.
Where do we draw the line? Probably at the place where a speaker, a speaker in the privileged position of representing her entire class before a captive audience, promotes her particular belief as superior to others, and puts non- and other-believers in the undeserved position of being told their own creeds and philosophies are deficient. (One suspects that Brittany McComb and her supporters would not have appreciated a Muslim valedictorian making the case for Mohammed's teachings and promising listeners fulfillment if only they'd embrace Islam.)
Conservative religious news media outlets such as the Christian Broadcasting Network grab stories like McComb's and hold them up as examples of the persecution of Christians. While these foul calls can be as hyperbolic as they are one-sided, some truth can be found beneath the rhetoric. In many quarters in present-day America, we have lurched too far toward behaving as though expressions of religion must be scrubbed from public venues. Cases in point: efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union and others to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to dismantle the Mount Soledad war-memorial cross sitting on government land near San Diego since the 1950s. And more recently: a decision by school officials in Billings, Mont., to have a valedictorian strip from her speech a line about not letting fear “keep me from sharing Christ and his joy with those around me.”
Yes, it can be uncomfortable for some to hear a fellow citizen emphatically voicing what-faith-has-meant-to-me sentiments in a public setting, especially when it comes in the doctrine-heavy language used in the Nevadavaledictorian's speech. (One line in the silenced speech, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network, read, “God's love is so great that he gave his only son up to an excruciating death on a cross so his blood would cover all our shortcomings and our relationship with him could be restored.)
But what secularists sometimes forget is that, for many believers, experiencing momentous events like graduation without gratitude and witness to God is as distasteful as it is for an atheist to be subjected to hard-edged proselytizing.
There's something a little strange about our reflexive recoiling from the mere mention of Jesus in settings like high school graduation. Whatever Americans might think of Christians and Christianity, yes, there's a partly deserved image problem, almost no one has a problem with Jesus. The point comes through vividly in Dan Kimball's 2007 book They Like Jesus But Not the Church, which explores how young Americans, in particular, tend to have a negative idea about organized Christianity yet express near-universal openness to spirituality and fascination with Jesus.
Like so many things, it boils down to good sense, wise judgment, an eye toward effectiveness, respect for others, traits and practices that Christians call discernment. Believers of whatever stripe ought to put this discernment to prayerful use in navigating the tricky waters of what to say, and what not to say, to captive audiences at events such as public school graduations.
But, please, let's not pull the plug on Christian valedictorians or anyone else who would have the temerity to use the J-word in public. “Jesus,” after all, is not a dirty word.
Tom Krattenmaker, a writer based in Portland, Ore., specializing in religion in public life, is a member of the USA TODAY's board of contributors. His book Onward Christian Athletes is scheduled for release in September.
USA Today May 18, 2009
'What secularists sometimes forget is that, for many believers, experiencing momentous events like graduation without gratitude and witness to God is as distasteful as it is for an atheist to be subjected to hard-edged proselytizing.'
By Tom Krattenmaker
Judging from the way school officials turned off her microphone, it was as though the valedictorian had laced her commencement address with the kind of profanity that gets television networks in trouble with the FCC. What prompted the unceremonious pulling of the plug during Brittany McComb's speech at the graduation ceremony in Henderson, Nev.? She started talking about the virtues of her Christian faith.
The 2006 case, which McComb's attorneys are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, is worth considering again this season, not just because of the thousands of high school graduation ceremonies taking place across the country, but also because it shows that we still have a long way to go to resolve what's in and what's out when it comes to religious expression in the public square.
Few would argue that a public high school graduation ceremony is an appropriate venue for a “stand up and accept Jesus!” altar call. What we might generally agree on, too, is that it's complicated to draw the line on matters of religious freedom and fairness. With the stakes high and emotions hot, one can understand how a beleaguered school official might throw up his hands and demand that religion just be kept out of it.
Yet, if an open marketplace of ideas and beliefs is our aim in religiously diverse America, and I believe it ought to be, the installation of no-God-allowed secularism doesn't pass muster. In reflecting on the journey leading up to commencement and an honored role at the microphone, how can a deep-believing evangelical student not talk about Jesus?
Mathew Staver is dean of the law school at Liberty University and founder of Liberty Counsel, which represents Christian litigants in freedom-of-religion and free-speech cases (although not McComb's). Staver explained in an interview that the legal lay of the land is complicated in the arena of religious expression at commencements and other public school events, a patchwork of often-conflicting, often-unclear legal rulings and widely varying applications by principals across the land.
The constitutional dos and don'ts are not widely understood, Staver says. “In many cases, well-meaning school administrators conclude that it's the safe route to just eliminate religious viewpoints when, in fact, that is more likely the unconstitutional route. The best course of action for schools is to remain neutral, neither forcing students to pray, nor censoring them because they chose to pray or express a religious viewpoint.”
In the Nevada case, the trouble began when the school insisted that McComb and her co-valedictorians vet their speeches before the big event. In remarks highlighting the importance of faith in her life, McComb had included language that, to school officials, went too far. As reported by the Christian Broadcasting Network, McComb was instructed to delete references to Christ dying for humankind's sins, and her promise to the audience “that if you choose to fill yourself with God's love rather than the things society tells us will satisfy us, you will find success, you will find your self-worth.”
Not exactly what the less religious people signed up for when they made plans to attend the Foothill High ceremony. Despite being warned to strike the offending references, McComb went ahead with her faith pitch nonetheless, prompting a quick shutdown of the sound system when she launched into the supposedly deleted content. McComb remained at the microphone for another minute and continued the speech without amplification, while some members of the audience jeered the sound system shutdown.
The Nevada valedictorian probably did go too far. But I, for one, would not begrudge her the right at least to reflect on what her faith meant to her through the trials and tribulations of high school.
Where do we draw the line? Probably at the place where a speaker, a speaker in the privileged position of representing her entire class before a captive audience, promotes her particular belief as superior to others, and puts non- and other-believers in the undeserved position of being told their own creeds and philosophies are deficient. (One suspects that Brittany McComb and her supporters would not have appreciated a Muslim valedictorian making the case for Mohammed's teachings and promising listeners fulfillment if only they'd embrace Islam.)
Conservative religious news media outlets such as the Christian Broadcasting Network grab stories like McComb's and hold them up as examples of the persecution of Christians. While these foul calls can be as hyperbolic as they are one-sided, some truth can be found beneath the rhetoric. In many quarters in present-day America, we have lurched too far toward behaving as though expressions of religion must be scrubbed from public venues. Cases in point: efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union and others to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to dismantle the Mount Soledad war-memorial cross sitting on government land near San Diego since the 1950s. And more recently: a decision by school officials in Billings, Mont., to have a valedictorian strip from her speech a line about not letting fear “keep me from sharing Christ and his joy with those around me.”
Yes, it can be uncomfortable for some to hear a fellow citizen emphatically voicing what-faith-has-meant-to-me sentiments in a public setting, especially when it comes in the doctrine-heavy language used in the Nevadavaledictorian's speech. (One line in the silenced speech, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network, read, “God's love is so great that he gave his only son up to an excruciating death on a cross so his blood would cover all our shortcomings and our relationship with him could be restored.)
But what secularists sometimes forget is that, for many believers, experiencing momentous events like graduation without gratitude and witness to God is as distasteful as it is for an atheist to be subjected to hard-edged proselytizing.
There's something a little strange about our reflexive recoiling from the mere mention of Jesus in settings like high school graduation. Whatever Americans might think of Christians and Christianity, yes, there's a partly deserved image problem, almost no one has a problem with Jesus. The point comes through vividly in Dan Kimball's 2007 book They Like Jesus But Not the Church, which explores how young Americans, in particular, tend to have a negative idea about organized Christianity yet express near-universal openness to spirituality and fascination with Jesus.
Like so many things, it boils down to good sense, wise judgment, an eye toward effectiveness, respect for others, traits and practices that Christians call discernment. Believers of whatever stripe ought to put this discernment to prayerful use in navigating the tricky waters of what to say, and what not to say, to captive audiences at events such as public school graduations.
But, please, let's not pull the plug on Christian valedictorians or anyone else who would have the temerity to use the J-word in public. “Jesus,” after all, is not a dirty word.
Tom Krattenmaker, a writer based in Portland, Ore., specializing in religion in public life, is a member of the USA TODAY's board of contributors. His book Onward Christian Athletes is scheduled for release in September.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Study finds even more U.S. religion switching
Study finds even more U.S. religion switching
By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA TODAY
More than half of all Americans have changed religions at least once, according to what researchers say is the most in-depth analysis to date of religious switching. And that may be “a conservative estimate,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Pew's survey, released Monday, is based on re-contacting 2,800 people from its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 people, released last year. Pew estimated at the time that about 44% of Americans have changed religions. It now says between 47% and 59% have, if you count the millions who once switched but have returned to their childhood faith.
Key findings:
•The reasons people give for changing their religion — or leaving altogether — differ widely: 71% of Catholics and nearly 60% of Protestants who switched didn't think their spiritual needs were being met, liked another faith more or changed their religious or moral beliefs.
•Most switched early, committing to one faith by age 36.
•Catholicism has suffered the greatest loss in numbers: 10% of U.S. adults have quit the church, while 2.6% have joined. Two in three who left say they left the church because they “stopped believing” Catholic teachings. The sex abuse scandal was a factor for fewer than three in 10.
•Life circumstances, not doctrinal differences, prompt most Protestants who switch denominations (Baptist to Methodist, for example). Moving or marrying someone of a different tradition are the most-cited reasons.
•Many who quit going to church say they see religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, churches focus too much on rules or their leaders focus too much on power and money.
•Among the 16% now unaffiliated with any religion, most are former Protestants and Catholics; about 70% “just gradually drifted away.”
•About 9% of those who left their childhood faith returned.
•Religious education or youth group participation seemed to make no dent, although people who say they participated frequently in worship services or Mass were less likely to switch.
John Green, a Pew senior fellow, sees no simple answer for retaining members in “a competitive religious marketplace.” The findings “suggest that one thing that might be needed to recruit and keep members is vibrant and vital congregations — a tough thing to create.”
The survey, conducted Oct. 3-Nov 7, focused on Catholics, Protestants and the unaffiliated. There were too few converts to or from other religions to analyze, researchers say.
Lugo says the findings present opportunities for churches, which have seen “a decrease in brand loyalty”— especially among “spiritual but not religious” Americans. “These are folks that are, in some sense, 'catchable.' “
By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA TODAY
More than half of all Americans have changed religions at least once, according to what researchers say is the most in-depth analysis to date of religious switching. And that may be “a conservative estimate,” says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Pew's survey, released Monday, is based on re-contacting 2,800 people from its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 people, released last year. Pew estimated at the time that about 44% of Americans have changed religions. It now says between 47% and 59% have, if you count the millions who once switched but have returned to their childhood faith.
Key findings:
•The reasons people give for changing their religion — or leaving altogether — differ widely: 71% of Catholics and nearly 60% of Protestants who switched didn't think their spiritual needs were being met, liked another faith more or changed their religious or moral beliefs.
•Most switched early, committing to one faith by age 36.
•Catholicism has suffered the greatest loss in numbers: 10% of U.S. adults have quit the church, while 2.6% have joined. Two in three who left say they left the church because they “stopped believing” Catholic teachings. The sex abuse scandal was a factor for fewer than three in 10.
•Life circumstances, not doctrinal differences, prompt most Protestants who switch denominations (Baptist to Methodist, for example). Moving or marrying someone of a different tradition are the most-cited reasons.
•Many who quit going to church say they see religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, churches focus too much on rules or their leaders focus too much on power and money.
•Among the 16% now unaffiliated with any religion, most are former Protestants and Catholics; about 70% “just gradually drifted away.”
•About 9% of those who left their childhood faith returned.
•Religious education or youth group participation seemed to make no dent, although people who say they participated frequently in worship services or Mass were less likely to switch.
John Green, a Pew senior fellow, sees no simple answer for retaining members in “a competitive religious marketplace.” The findings “suggest that one thing that might be needed to recruit and keep members is vibrant and vital congregations — a tough thing to create.”
The survey, conducted Oct. 3-Nov 7, focused on Catholics, Protestants and the unaffiliated. There were too few converts to or from other religions to analyze, researchers say.
Lugo says the findings present opportunities for churches, which have seen “a decrease in brand loyalty”— especially among “spiritual but not religious” Americans. “These are folks that are, in some sense, 'catchable.' “
Monday, April 27, 2009
Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often
Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often
Study: More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives
By Richard Allen Greene
CNN
(CNN) -- Ingrid Case was a devoted church-goer as a child, not only attending Sunday school, but also serving as an acolyte at her Episcopalian church in Greeley, Colorado.
More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives, according to a new survey.
"Basically, it's the priest's assistant," she explained. "You carry a cross in front of them, get the things they need to perform the service, scurrying around doing what they need."
But after college, Case drifted away. She didn't feel like she fit in socially at the Episcopalian church in Princeton, New Jersey, and found herself uncomfortable with some of its theology.
"I began to see there were some things I wasn't able to get on board with fully. I don't like the traditional Episcopalian focus on the afterlife," she said.
Today she's a Quaker.
She got involved with the Society of Friends, as the denomination is formally known, through the man who later became her husband, Nat Case. He wasn't raised a Quaker either, she said, though he went to a Quaker-run boarding school as a child.
Her shift in religion was gradual, said Case, 41, a freelance writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"It wasn't so much 'You people stink and I am out of here,' as 'I like this better and this is what I want to do.' "
Case isn't alone. More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives, a huge new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found. And there is no discernible pattern to the change, just "a free for all," one of the lead researchers told CNN.
"You're seeing the free market at work," said Gregory Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. "If people are dissatisfied, they will leave. And if they see something they like better, they will join it."
Many people switch because they move to a new community, and others because they marry someone of a different faith, he said.
Some don't like their ministers or pastors; some like the pastor at another church better.
And many people list more than one reason for changing, Smith said.
"The reasons people change religions are as diverse as the religious landscape itself," he told CNN by phone.
Some factors that might be expected to drive people away from religion -- such as sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, or a belief that science "disproves" religion -- actually play a very small role, the study suggests.
"I've been struck by the very large number across all the different groups who say they just gradually drifted away. Not all of this is the product of carefully considered, conscious decision-making that happens at a specific point in time," Smith said.
Case left the Episcopal Church at a time of huge turmoil within the denomination over whether women could be priests, she remembered, but that wasn't a factor in her decision.
"There was a gradual sense of, 'Hey, that pair of shoes fits better,' " she said.
The number of people who have changed religion is much higher than previously thought, the new report suggests. A Pew Forum study released last year concluded that just over one in four Americans had switched.
Even that lower number was considered "striking," the Pew Forum said, and the latest research suggests it was a serious underestimate.
More than four in 10 American adults are no longer members of the religion they were brought up in, while about one in 10 changed religion, then went back to the one they left, the study found. Just under five in 10 -- 47 percent -- have never changed faith.
Some have switched more than once, and a small number have changed three times or more, according to the study.
The survey supported a study released last month in that it found about 16 percent of Americans are not affiliated with any religion. The American Religious Identification Survey, from Trinity College in Connecticut, found the number to be about 15 percent.
But Smith warned against labeling those people "secular."
"Upwards of one-third of newly unaffiliated people say they just haven't found the right religion yet," Smith said.
And many people who had no religion as children later join one, he said.
"More than half the people who are raised unaffiliated are now affiliated," he said. "More than half [of those people] say they joined their current faith in part because they felt called by God to do so."
"Just because a people is part of a particular group at this point in time, or a part of no religion, doesn't mean they are going to stay that way forever," said Smith.
Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College, cautioned against assuming the Pew study was uncovering a new trend.
"The sense that there is a huge amount of flux where there was not before is not accurate," he told CNN by phone. "In the 19th century there was a huge amount of switching around and the establishment of new denominations."
Smith admitted the Pew Forum study could not show much about the past.
"There have been studies that have been done before, but it's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison," he said.
That said, the fact that most people who switch religions do so before they are 24, combined with the finding that older people as well as younger people have changed, suggests to Smith that the trend has been going on for some time, he said.
"If I'm 65 and I changed religion at 24, I changed 40 years ago," he pointed out. "It's not a new phenomenon."
"Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.," is based on 2,867 new telephone interviews with people who participated in the Pew Forum's "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," which was released last year.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/27/changing.religion.study/index.html
Study: More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives
By Richard Allen Greene
CNN
(CNN) -- Ingrid Case was a devoted church-goer as a child, not only attending Sunday school, but also serving as an acolyte at her Episcopalian church in Greeley, Colorado.
More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives, according to a new survey.
"Basically, it's the priest's assistant," she explained. "You carry a cross in front of them, get the things they need to perform the service, scurrying around doing what they need."
But after college, Case drifted away. She didn't feel like she fit in socially at the Episcopalian church in Princeton, New Jersey, and found herself uncomfortable with some of its theology.
"I began to see there were some things I wasn't able to get on board with fully. I don't like the traditional Episcopalian focus on the afterlife," she said.
Today she's a Quaker.
She got involved with the Society of Friends, as the denomination is formally known, through the man who later became her husband, Nat Case. He wasn't raised a Quaker either, she said, though he went to a Quaker-run boarding school as a child.
Her shift in religion was gradual, said Case, 41, a freelance writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"It wasn't so much 'You people stink and I am out of here,' as 'I like this better and this is what I want to do.' "
Case isn't alone. More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives, a huge new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found. And there is no discernible pattern to the change, just "a free for all," one of the lead researchers told CNN.
"You're seeing the free market at work," said Gregory Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. "If people are dissatisfied, they will leave. And if they see something they like better, they will join it."
Many people switch because they move to a new community, and others because they marry someone of a different faith, he said.
Some don't like their ministers or pastors; some like the pastor at another church better.
And many people list more than one reason for changing, Smith said.
"The reasons people change religions are as diverse as the religious landscape itself," he told CNN by phone.
Some factors that might be expected to drive people away from religion -- such as sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, or a belief that science "disproves" religion -- actually play a very small role, the study suggests.
"I've been struck by the very large number across all the different groups who say they just gradually drifted away. Not all of this is the product of carefully considered, conscious decision-making that happens at a specific point in time," Smith said.
Case left the Episcopal Church at a time of huge turmoil within the denomination over whether women could be priests, she remembered, but that wasn't a factor in her decision.
"There was a gradual sense of, 'Hey, that pair of shoes fits better,' " she said.
The number of people who have changed religion is much higher than previously thought, the new report suggests. A Pew Forum study released last year concluded that just over one in four Americans had switched.
Even that lower number was considered "striking," the Pew Forum said, and the latest research suggests it was a serious underestimate.
More than four in 10 American adults are no longer members of the religion they were brought up in, while about one in 10 changed religion, then went back to the one they left, the study found. Just under five in 10 -- 47 percent -- have never changed faith.
Some have switched more than once, and a small number have changed three times or more, according to the study.
The survey supported a study released last month in that it found about 16 percent of Americans are not affiliated with any religion. The American Religious Identification Survey, from Trinity College in Connecticut, found the number to be about 15 percent.
But Smith warned against labeling those people "secular."
"Upwards of one-third of newly unaffiliated people say they just haven't found the right religion yet," Smith said.
And many people who had no religion as children later join one, he said.
"More than half the people who are raised unaffiliated are now affiliated," he said. "More than half [of those people] say they joined their current faith in part because they felt called by God to do so."
"Just because a people is part of a particular group at this point in time, or a part of no religion, doesn't mean they are going to stay that way forever," said Smith.
Mark Silk, a professor of religion in public life at Trinity College, cautioned against assuming the Pew study was uncovering a new trend.
"The sense that there is a huge amount of flux where there was not before is not accurate," he told CNN by phone. "In the 19th century there was a huge amount of switching around and the establishment of new denominations."
Smith admitted the Pew Forum study could not show much about the past.
"There have been studies that have been done before, but it's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison," he said.
That said, the fact that most people who switch religions do so before they are 24, combined with the finding that older people as well as younger people have changed, suggests to Smith that the trend has been going on for some time, he said.
"If I'm 65 and I changed religion at 24, I changed 40 years ago," he pointed out. "It's not a new phenomenon."
"Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.," is based on 2,867 new telephone interviews with people who participated in the Pew Forum's "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," which was released last year.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/27/changing.religion.study/index.html
Post-Christian? Not even close
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?
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.
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.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090427/column27_st.art.htm
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?
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.
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.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20090427/column27_st.art.htm
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Malaysian Court Grants Custody to Hindu Mother
APRIL 26, 2009, 12:17 A.M. ET Malaysian Court Grants Custody to Hindu Mother
Associated Press
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124063849691155933.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia --A Malaysian Hindu woman who is fighting her husband's conversion of their three youngsters to Islam has regained custody of the children – a day after the government decided it would no longer allow disputed conversions of minors, a lawyer said Saturday.
A high court in northern Perak state granted Indira Ghandhi custody of her children, aged between one and 12, on Friday, her lawyer M. Kulasegaran said.
Ms. Ghandhi's estranged husband, a recent Muslim convert, converted them to Islam and then got an Islamic court to give him custody earlier this month.
The case caused a renewed outcry among Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other minorities, who complain their religious rights are under threat as courts rule in favor of Muslims, who make up 60% of the population.
This led new Prime Minister Najib Razak's administration Thursday to announce it would bar the conversion of children without both parents' consent. Amendments are expected to be made to the law, but no details were made available.
Malaysia Relaxes Race PoliciesBesides custody, Ghandhi also obtained an order to bar her husband, K. Pathmanathan, from entering her home and taking the children, Mr. Kulasegaran said. He said the court would hear both sides' arguments over permanent custody on May 12.
Ms. Ghandhi, a 34-year-old ethnic Indian kindergarten teacher, also plans to seek a court declaration to invalidate the children's conversion.
"From what the mother has told me, she wants the children to be Hindus until they are 18," Mr. Kulasegaran, who is also an opposition lawmaker, said. "The Cabinet decision is just a directive. .. But I'm sure it will help."
In the past, non-Muslim parents have often failed to prevent their estranged spouses from converting their children to Islam. In the most high-profile case in 2007, a Hindu woman failed to persuade the civil court to bar her husband, who had embraced Islam, from converting their sons.
Many of these cases also end up in Islamic courts, which typically rule in favor of Muslims.
Malaysia has a two tier court system for family and civil matters — secular courts for non-Muslims and Islamic courts for Muslims. But it is unclear which court has jurisdiction in interfaith disputes, and when Islamic courts get the last word, non-Muslims feel they cannot get a fair hearing.
Copyright © 2009 Associated Press
Associated Press
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124063849691155933.html
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia --A Malaysian Hindu woman who is fighting her husband's conversion of their three youngsters to Islam has regained custody of the children – a day after the government decided it would no longer allow disputed conversions of minors, a lawyer said Saturday.
A high court in northern Perak state granted Indira Ghandhi custody of her children, aged between one and 12, on Friday, her lawyer M. Kulasegaran said.
Ms. Ghandhi's estranged husband, a recent Muslim convert, converted them to Islam and then got an Islamic court to give him custody earlier this month.
The case caused a renewed outcry among Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other minorities, who complain their religious rights are under threat as courts rule in favor of Muslims, who make up 60% of the population.
This led new Prime Minister Najib Razak's administration Thursday to announce it would bar the conversion of children without both parents' consent. Amendments are expected to be made to the law, but no details were made available.
Malaysia Relaxes Race PoliciesBesides custody, Ghandhi also obtained an order to bar her husband, K. Pathmanathan, from entering her home and taking the children, Mr. Kulasegaran said. He said the court would hear both sides' arguments over permanent custody on May 12.
Ms. Ghandhi, a 34-year-old ethnic Indian kindergarten teacher, also plans to seek a court declaration to invalidate the children's conversion.
"From what the mother has told me, she wants the children to be Hindus until they are 18," Mr. Kulasegaran, who is also an opposition lawmaker, said. "The Cabinet decision is just a directive. .. But I'm sure it will help."
In the past, non-Muslim parents have often failed to prevent their estranged spouses from converting their children to Islam. In the most high-profile case in 2007, a Hindu woman failed to persuade the civil court to bar her husband, who had embraced Islam, from converting their sons.
Many of these cases also end up in Islamic courts, which typically rule in favor of Muslims.
Malaysia has a two tier court system for family and civil matters — secular courts for non-Muslims and Islamic courts for Muslims. But it is unclear which court has jurisdiction in interfaith disputes, and when Islamic courts get the last word, non-Muslims feel they cannot get a fair hearing.
Copyright © 2009 Associated Press
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