Because science has riches to offer our faith, sometimes as a challenge, but even more as a resource, these posts often address topics in science and religion. This time I’m addressing the complexity of understanding that latter term.
Why? I read two articles this week that made it really difficult to stick with stereotypes and their (mis)conceptions about religion in American. They also touch on topics of particular relevance in light of the opening of an impeachment inquiry.
The first posed the question, “Who’s an evangelical and who gets to decide?”
It noted that Beth Moore, the fabulously popular evangelical speaker, and Southern Baptist Convention leader Russell Moore, and even (I added “even” since he so often seems a walking stereotype of conservative evangelicalism) John Piper the notable pastor and author—all “white evangelical” leaders—have expressed significant concerns about President Trump. Not everyone is Jerry Falwell, Jr.—a fact I'm quite thankful for.
But even more, it demonstrated how… well, I’ll just quote it,
The second was not actually an article, but a rather extensive report by the Pew Research Center with a somewhat boring title, “The Religious Typology,” but explosive implications—by which I mean, if we take this seriously, our stereotypical ideas about American religion will be exploded.
Pew's new religious typology breaks Americans into seven categories with much more captivating titles like Diversely Devout (traditionally religious, but open to reincarnation and psychics), Relaxed Religious (religion important to them, but not engaged in traditional practice), and Spiritually Awake (skew more toward New Age and untraditional religious practice). About 43% of Americans are in these three—spiritually open, but not entirely religious identified.
Since I can’t leave politics this week, the 12% Pew found to be God and Country—these fit most closely with the white evangelicals that support Trump. That’s like 1 in 8 Americans. These are the engaged Trump supporters. Not all evangelicals are full-throated in their support of the Republican Party and our President? Case closed? Not quite—but minimally some new insights.
All this reinforces what I discovered when I was writing Negotiating Science and Religion in America,
The first posed the question, “Who’s an evangelical and who gets to decide?”
It noted that Beth Moore, the fabulously popular evangelical speaker, and Southern Baptist Convention leader Russell Moore, and even (I added “even” since he so often seems a walking stereotype of conservative evangelicalism) John Piper the notable pastor and author—all “white evangelical” leaders—have expressed significant concerns about President Trump. Not everyone is Jerry Falwell, Jr.—a fact I'm quite thankful for.
But even more, it demonstrated how… well, I’ll just quote it,
“Nonwhite evangelicals, especially African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos, were less enthusiastic about Trump. Polls often exclude such nonwhite evangelicals by design, as stories about ‘evangelicals and politics’ typically only look at “self-identifying evangelical white Republicans and politics.” Article, "Who's an evangelical and who gets to decide"?What seemed like a simple association—"evangelical” implies "Trump supporter"—became much nuanced, and to my mind, exceedingly more interesting.
The second was not actually an article, but a rather extensive report by the Pew Research Center with a somewhat boring title, “The Religious Typology,” but explosive implications—by which I mean, if we take this seriously, our stereotypical ideas about American religion will be exploded.
Pew's new religious typology breaks Americans into seven categories with much more captivating titles like Diversely Devout (traditionally religious, but open to reincarnation and psychics), Relaxed Religious (religion important to them, but not engaged in traditional practice), and Spiritually Awake (skew more toward New Age and untraditional religious practice). About 43% of Americans are in these three—spiritually open, but not entirely religious identified.
Since I can’t leave politics this week, the 12% Pew found to be God and Country—these fit most closely with the white evangelicals that support Trump. That’s like 1 in 8 Americans. These are the engaged Trump supporters. Not all evangelicals are full-throated in their support of the Republican Party and our President? Case closed? Not quite—but minimally some new insights.
All this reinforces what I discovered when I was writing Negotiating Science and Religion in America,
“'One day I woke up and wondered: maybe today I should be a Christian, or would I rather be a Buddhist, or am I just a Star Trek freak?'” And so Leigh Eric Schmidt begins his 2012 book on the American individualized spiritualty, Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality in which he demonstrates that, while plenty of contemporary examples exist, so do precedents in our country’s history, and also charts (as Wade Clark Roof describes it inside its cover) the 'lineage from Emerson to Oprah.' Already in the nineteenth century, Philip Schaff described America as 'the classic land of sects,' and John Weiss offered this declaration, which summarizes so much: 'America is an opportunity to make a Religion out of sacredness of the individual.'
The American cultural tradition of religious pluralism, which chooses among various inputs for spirituality, is longstanding and venerable. The past directs our present. Americans have always held copious strands of religious threads in our hands, which we weave together in fascinating ways. An excerpt from my upcoming book Negotiating Science and Religion in America
At times of high political drama, or even when we just want to understand this unusual country, it’s entirely complicated to grasp American religious life—and probably better not to lean on stereotypes and (mis)conceptions.
