Sunday, May 17, 2009

Horizons of Faith

Courtney Martin writes at The American Prospect a piece subtitled, “The religious right's era of unquestioning Christianity is over.” Two things, perhaps three if her own experience is counted, seem to form the basis of that assumption for her, one being that the number of people who claim no particular religious affiliation has grown to 16% of the people surveyed, an all-time high.

She doesn’t cite the number of people who claim to be evangelicals, which would seem to me to be a necessary part of her thesis; claiming that their “era is over.” If that number has also climbed to an all-time high then she has quite a problem. She doesn’t cite the number of any other religious claims or affiliations. The only fact she cites is that one little item, the number of unaffiliated in a single survey, and that leaves her “study” rather seriously incomplete.

She goes on to say that,

It wasn't divine intervention that ousted George W. Bush from office. It was millions of Americans -- some Christians, some Jews, some Muslims, some confused -- who wanted an ethical, not necessarily a religious, president.

Well, actually, it was term limits. Bush had served two terms and was not running for a third. He probably would not have done so if he could and was hugely unpopular, but that was for reasons that had little to do with his born-again Christianity and, to repeat, he was ousted by term limits and not by her supposed religious revolution.

Barack Obama made significant gains among Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic Protestants, and other minority Catholics and Protestants.

Well perhaps so, but what does that have to do with the religious right? And one should note that he made those gains in no small part by worshipping at the altar of Rick Warren, and by making all of the right moves to placate the religious right. He knew that without a portion of their vote he could not win, and he paraded his religiosity in a manner sufficiently pious to gain it.

As a teacher, it is rather appalling that she would base such sweeping conclusions on a sample consisting of her parents, herself, and one piece of statistical data. I sincerely hope that she is giving her students a better foundation in scientific method than that.

As to the era of the religious right being “over,” I can only say that I see news and cable televisions which are still filled with a plethora of Christianist advocates who rather than seeking to expand the horizon of their own faith and knowledge, seek to shrink the horizon of the faith and knowledge of those who listen to them.

No comments:

Post a Comment