Cheer up, things could be worse. Our official religion might be some version of feminist "re-imagining" religion, given the fact that women outnumber men in the general population. Or it could be de facto Hinduism; see the article "We're all Hindus now," following the featured article from The Christian Century. But the fact is that Unitarianism has become America's "official" religion, or perhaps more accurately, not only Unitarianism but a combination of Unitarianism plus Theosophy plus the Baha'i Faith plus generic New Age religion plus still other religions of similar nature that are based on interfaith values as part of their own theological worldviews. A good question is: "exactly what it the alternative in an empire of many peoples who adhere to many faiths ?" Perhaps the Baptists miss the point even though in this case -a legal dispute discussed in the article- it is hard not to take their side in the debate. Why shouldn't a community that is, say, 90% Christian, organize its public life, to the extent that religion is part of it all, around the dominant faith of that community ? This is my position, anyway, and it applies as I see it, whatever the faith in question may be, such as Lutheranism in various towns in Minnesota, Baptist faith in much of the South, Catholic faith in parts of California, etc, including Buddhism in parts of Hawaii or Judaism in areas in New York or in metro Miami. However, there is a larger question : What about urban areas where there is no dominant religion ? And what about national observances which are intended to speak to all US citizens? The conservative critique of ecumenism is valid, combining religions socially is phony, it is an exercise in meaninglessness except for Unitarians and like-minded others. And it is terribly dishonest, laboring under the pretense that there are no crucial differences among religions and that it is somehow an "evil" to voice criticisms of other faiths. Speaking personally, that kind of ecumenism is rubbish. However, other kinds of ecumenism are anything but pointless, like the on-going meetings of the member groups that are part of the World Parliament of Religions. As well, there is an alternative to kumbaya gatherings, namely, taking turns in the public square, maybe apportioned by approximate local population tallies. That is, in one city the mix might be such that Methodists usually hold the podium, in another city it might be at-large Evangelicals, or Mormons, and in a few cities it might be Buddhists ( maybe Boulder, CO) or Neo-Pagans / Earth religions for places like Madison, Wisconsin. Clearly, in any case, there needs to be some kind of thought-through public policy for this issue. Billy ================================= The Christian Century Religion v. religions Aug 29, 2013 by _Matt Hedstrom_ (http://www.christiancentury.org/contributor/matt-hedstrom) When scholars of religion are feeling provocative, they like to point out that there is no such thing as “religion”—only “religions.” Like language, religion cannot be merely an abstraction; it must always be expressed in a particular way. When one is acting religiously, one is inevitably doing religion in a specific, culturally determined manner, as a Lutheran or Zen Buddhist or Reform Jew. An upcoming Supreme Court case about prayer at local government meetings brings this point to mind. The case involves the Town of Greece, New York, which has since 1999 invited a local minister to _open its monthly meeting with a prayer_ (http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/05/court-to-rule-on-government-prayer/) . In 2008 two residents—one Jewish and one atheist—sued, arguing that such prayers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. (The fact that Christians had been invited to offer the vast majority of such prayers did not help the Town’s case.) The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year in favor of the plaintiffs, and the case now heads to the Supreme Court. The Obama Administration and the Congress have, remarkably, each filed briefs _supporting the Town_ (http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/08/u-s-backs-government-prayer/) . So has the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the ERLC brief gets at the question of Religion v. Religions. It _claims_ (http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=40838) that the Second Circuit’s requirement that any further legislative prayer in Greece adopt a “perspective that is substantially neutral amongst creeds” is impossible. Such a prayer, the Baptists contend, would amount to state-sponsored Unitarianism. In other words, all religion is a religion of one sort or another. The Baptists have simply given a name to the proposed government-issued religion. “ We shouldn’t have a state-sponsored Baptist church, I agree,” said ERLC President Russell D. Moore, “but we shouldn’t have a state-sponsored Unitarian church either, and that’s what some are attempting.” Peanut-gallery critics might quip that contemporary Unitarianism would more likely include an interpretive dance than a prayer, but the question remains: is all religion a religion? Do the supposedly neutral prayers and invocations, and even moments of silence, that mark many state-sponsored functions in the United States amount to an establishment of religious liberalism? It’s a question with significant historical resonances. As Stephen Prothero recently reminded me, many evangelicals and fundamentalists actually supported—for this very reason—the landmark 1962 Supreme Court ruling in Engel v. Vitale, which banned school-sponsored prayer. Fundamentalist leader Carl McIntire made this point clearly: “Prayer itself without the name of Jesus Christ”—whom the _prayer in question_ (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0370_0421_ZO.html) did not name—“was not non-denominational prayer—it was simply a pagan prayer.” McIntire continued: “No Government agency or power in the United States can be used to establish a religion.” Prayer without Jesus represented a religious orientation, one McIntire found objectionable. The pejorative terms used by conservative critics may have changed—“pagan” has been softened to “Unitarian”—but the argument remains: there is no religion-in-general. Whether called paganism or Unitarianism or, as scholars often prefer, ceremonial deism, the religion of American public life—the religion McIntire despised and the Second Circuit advocates—is a religion too, these critics contend. They have a good point. The roots of American religion-in-general are found within a religious tradition: religious liberalism. In its various forms, American religious liberalism stems from the ambition to adapt faith traditions to the conditions of modern life, whether that means to advancements in science and biblical criticism or to growing social diversity. One common tactic of this accommodation has been to strip religion down to its core. Friedrich Schleiermacher located this core in religious emotions; William James looked to personal religious experience. One thing liberals have generally agreed on is that traditional dogma was not the answer. In a famous 1922 sermon, Harry Emerson Fosdick blasted fundamentalists for their obsession with “the tiddlywinks and peccadillos of religion.” The proposal of the Southern Baptists and the Obama Administration is to let the local clergy pray, each in his or her own specific way—yet the track record shows the limits of this come-one, come-all civic tolerance. Christianity predominates. But the Second Circuit’s proposal—that the Town of Greece establish something in the lineage of Schleiermacher and James and Fosdick—seems no better. More than 200 years ago, Baptist leaders and Thomas Jefferson worked together to lay the legal foundations of religious freedom in the new United States. Though Jefferson famously _claimed that one day Unitarianism would become the dominant religion in America_ (http://www.beliefnet.com/reshttp://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/58/Letter_from_Thomas_Jefferson_to_Dr_Benjam in_Waterhouse_1.htmlourcelib/docs/58/Letter_from_Thomas_Jefferson_to_Dr_Benj amin_Waterhouse_1.html) , historians have generally recognized that the Baptists got the better of the deal. That matter is now before the Court. ======================================== Newsweek We Are All Hindus Now Lisa Miller August 14, 2009 America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity. The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"— including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."
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