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Books may sell, but Americans still voice religious conviction

June 17, 2007 12:35 am

HENRICO--Thomas Jefferson did it 200 years ago. Karl Marx did it 150 years ago. John Dewey did it 75 years ago.

They all heralded the triumph of reason and the downfall of faith.

Now the popularity of a recent spate of best-selling books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins--criticizing religion and defending atheism--might seem to augur a similar outcome.

The predictions of Jefferson, Marx, and Dewey were wrong as applied to the United States in the past. Predicting the decline of religion based on the popularity of these new books is wrong as applied to the United States in the future.

More than 95 percent of Americans report believing in God or some form of Supreme Being, according to a recent Pew Forum poll. This percentage has remained virtually unchanged for the last 60 years, or ever since pollsters started measuring religious faith.

Indeed, Americans are embracing religions once spurned, but their skepticism toward atheism remains. Almost all Americans tell pollsters they'll vote for a Jew or Muslim for president, but in a recent Gallup poll only 45 percent say they'd consider voting for an atheist.

Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins are tapping into temporary disgust over how the Bush administration has applied religion to politics--but it would be foolish to bet this slight turn to secularism will become a widespread or long-term phenomenon.

Proclaiming belief in God has become woven into the fabric of our society. For better or worse, it's as American as apple pie and watching football.

But even if predicting the end of faith in America is far from right, it's not completely wrong, either. Professing religion is one thing, but taking it seriously is another. Religion in America, as religious scholar Robert Booth Fowler observes, runs "a mile wide but an inch deep."

"Moralistic, therapeutic deism" is what sociologists Christian Smith and Melissa Denton found when they recently conducted a nationwide survey of the religious views of American teenagers. That is, most teenagers ask not what they can do for their religion, but what their religion can do for them.

Boston University professor Stephen Prothero attributes this attitude largely to religious ignorance--which, he argues in his recent book, "Religious Illiteracy," is at an all-time high. Not knowing much about their own religion or any other, many Americans equate religion with moral restrictions, particularly about sexual activity that they would favor even if they weren't religious.

In short: The "religion problem" in America today is not that we're too religious, as Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins claim, but that we're not religious enough.

If this is the real problem with American religion, then how do we fix it? Here's a simple suggestion to start: Read and learn about the Bible. Secularists were outraged when a Colorado jury recently defended its decision to apply the death penalty by invoking the command in Deuteronomy that "life shall go for life."

If the jury had bothered to pay attention to the whole Bible, Prothero notes, they would have realized that Jesus directly repudiates this command in the Sermon on the Mount: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'; but I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Secularists may be unrealistic to expect Americans will stop using faith to justify political decisions--but when Americans invoke religion in politics, they should at least get it right.

But reading the Bible is not enough. Scholars have long noted the crucial role America's tradition of religious freedom has played in sustaining faith. In Europe, where the government historically told people what to believe, most people responded by turning away from religion.

The First Amendment has always left Americans free to choose their own faith--and Americans have usually responded by exploring their religious options and creating many new ones.

In times past, this exploration was largely confined to different forms of Christianity. A recent surge in immigration from Asia and Africa, however, has brought new religions to our shores. We would be well-advised to take advantage of this new diversity by learning about these religions, reading their sacred books, and listening and talking to their adherents.

This doesn't mean we should all surrender our beliefs and partake in a United Colors of Benetton approach to religion. Exploration need not lead to relativism. But American religion has always been strongest when it engages with new ideas.

This engagement should extend to at least examining the critiques of religion made by Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins. Religious beliefs which don't challenge themselves, that great champion of free speech John Stuart Mill reminds us, soon become dead dogma.

If we don't heed Mill's advice, we might not become a land of atheists, but we might become something far worse--a land where religion has become uninformed and irrelevant.