Ten days ago, The Pew Forum released a report
entitled, Canada's Changing Religious Landscape. It has been tracking our religious landscape
for years, documenting a dramatic rise in the unaffiliated. A similar, but even faster growing, trend is
underway in our northern neighbor. The
"nones" whom I call transcenders
now account for about one in four Canadians compared with one in five here.
As in the US, participation in religious services is
down (27%), but more so than here (46%).
These attendance numbers rely on self-reporting not headcounts, so they
may be overstated reflecting that people like to think they're going to church
regularly. In Canada, more young people
also live without religion than do their parents and grandparents. That said, one of the interesting findings in
this report is that between 1971 and today, the number of Canadian transcenders
65 and older has actually grown threefold (4% to 12%), which is actually a
larger percentage increase than for any other cohort. Yes 12% senior non-religious is only half of
the combined (all ages) total 24%, but it is still a meaningful number. It may not definitively negate the notion that
the older we get the more religious,
but it makes one wonder if the attitudinal gulf between generations may narrowing
in the years ahead and at an accelerated pace.
All research must be taken with some caution. Results are highly dependent on who the respondents
were, what they were asked (wording counts) and how the study was carried out —
there is difference, for example, between telephone and face-to-face interviews. Pew's report relied heavily on telephone
interviews undertaken by the Canadian
arm of the highly respected General
Social Survey. The two countries' numbers are not direct comparisons
since the dates covered differ. The
latest Canadian count of transcenders is as of 2011; the latest US numbers are
from 2012. This in itself is not
necessarily significant, but is an indication of the varied interpretive
challenges we face in reading research results.
It isn't merely a matter of how to read research;
it's also of who reads it. You and I
can encounter the exact same numbers and draw somewhat different conclusions
based upon our own bias or interests. A
few days after releasing the Canadian study, Pew reported on another entitled Growth of the Nonreligious: Many Say
Trend is Bad for American Society.
What they found was the 48% of overall respondents said that the trend
was "bad" while only 11% thought it good. No doubt 48% is "many" but if you
add the 39% of Americans who said it didn't matter, then a larger (combined) number
(50%) didn't think it was bad. Let's
call it 50-50. The point is, headlining
the people who think it bad as "many" colors the perception — it's
true, but perhaps not necessarily as balanced as the body copy that follows would
suggest. In fact, it reports the even split. We think of the media as the prime source of
misleading (eye catching) headlines, but let's not think they are alone in that,
or that their motives are sinister.
It is not surprising that citizens in our
"religious country" think the current trend away from religion is not
a good thing. Needless to say, active
churchgoers feel more strongly, especially among the more orthodox faiths. Unfortunately, this is a singular study, so
we have no way of knowing if attitudes are changing, something we might expect
considering the "growth of the non-religious". Even so, among the numbers that I found most
interesting is that, while 74% of churchgoing "white" Catholics
thought the growth of transcenders is a bad thing, only 39% of Hispanic Catholics felt that way.
This attitudinal difference between
"white" and Hispanic members of the same faith may
signal the potential impact of changing demographics in a country that is rapidly
becoming more diversified. And of course
the role of changing demographics in the political landscape is of central
importance. That we are finally seeing
some action on Immigration reform reflects the growing significance of
Hispanics in the electorate, a group that is touted as the fastest growing in
the land. But, as pointed out in earlier
posts, transcenders are growing even faster and still outnumber Latinos. Little is said about that demographic and how
it will play in the years to come.
Little is said, but that doesn't mean transcenders
aren't noticed or that their growing numbers haven't produced a reaction. Much of what moves the Tea Party ideology is
to combat what they see as diminished religious values. They definitely think the growth of the non-religious
is a very bad thing, but also understand that in the face of rapidly changing
demographics theirs may ultimately be a losing battle. This explains their hyper-aggressive, almost frantic, enactment
of anti-marriage equality and anti-abortion legislation in those states whose
governments they now control (Texas for some time, North Carolina only in the
last year). Governors and legislators
may take cover by invoking state's rights or fiscal conservatism, but these
laws are all religiously based, and it's a religion of a certain orthodox
kind. The clock is ticking on their way
of life (in some cases a way already
passed). Their only hope is that, once
on the books, these laws may be hard to overturn. There actions are have a terrible negative
impact on LGBTs, women and indeed on all of us, but these fringe zealots are on
the wrong side of history. Their
religion card just doesn't play the way it once did, their theocratic ways are under fire.
To be sure, the political divisions in this country
are rooted in different approaches to economics and even to a clash between
federal and state's rights. But for certain
religious orthodox the struggle is just as much between religion and secularism. The vast majority of mainstream religious
don't agree, but for these people God's governance and "traditional"
(think marriage) ways based on divinely revealed law are on the line. And that brings me to Egypt. Much conventional and digital ink has spent against
the proposition that the principle struggle engulfing the Muslim world is
between Sunni and Shia. There is much
truth to that. But an equal, and in some
ways more far reaching, struggle is between those who believe in a religious verses secular
state.
I am not alone is being torn between what looks like a
setback for democracy in Egypt while recognizing that Mohamed Morsi's rule
strayed far from the democratic way. He may
not be a cleric, but it would be fair to say he is more of a theocrat
(Sharia Law, etc.) than a democrat. By the
way, the same can be said about many of those who now hold power in the states
I mentioned, though they would vigorously deny it. The Morsi government's demise can be
attributed to a number of factors including economic decline and its sheer
incompetence. In some respects, his
failure can be attributed to the fact that it is easier to criticize than to
govern, doubly so if you have been on the outside for so long. Oppositions like the Muslim Brotherhood that
have been denied opportunities to govern at any level for decades simply lack the
human infrastructure and experience to do so.
But it was ultimately Morsi's autocratic and undemocratic ways that did
him in. He came to power because Egyptians
had just deposed one dictator; they didn't want another.
Seasoned observers like Tom
Friedman and Roger
Cohen have suggested that Morsi's downfall fits a pattern of growing
resistance to religious rather than secular rule in Muslim countries. The recent demonstrations against Turkish Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reflect a pushback against his efforts to move away
from years of secular governance. The
Egyptian situation is still in flux and making predictions about the outcome
would be premature. We also don't know
how Turkey will turn out and whether the more moderate elected president in
Iran will have any impact on its theocratic regime (though that seems unlikely).
We Americans love our democracy and sometimes forget that others may not share
our enthusiasm. Unlike George W. Bush, I
don't think a wish for democracy is innate to our species, much less democracy
as we define it. Too many of our fellow
human beings have opted for something else.
Consider Putin's Russia as an example of that.
With regard to the Muslim world, we should remember
that it is largely dominated by the religious orthodox. Orthodoxy of this kind isn't democratic, just
the opposite. It fosters top down
leadership by an elite and often by a singular autocratic leader. That's true with the Ayatollah in Iran, the
Wahhabi monarch in Saudi Arabia and, yes, the Pope in Rome. The pope may not be a dictator in the
political sense, but once in place is an absolute ruler with extraordinary
powers. Pope Francis just elevated two
of his predecessors to sainthood effectively making them super human and potentially
the object of prayer. And he did so by
fiat, in the case of John XXIII bypassing one of the requirements. Absolute rulers can do such things.
The growth of transcenders is unnerving orthodox
religionists in the United States. In a
place where so many "secular" governments have been despotic —Iran, Egypt,
Syria or Iraq — the suppressed religious have often led the revolutions. Now in power, some of their populations seem
to be feeling buyer's remorse, albeit not necessarily in rejecting religion
from their own lives. Whether the growth
of transcenders in the West will be echoed in the East is unknown
(and in the short term unlikely) but whether religious governance can prevail
in the world of the Internet where what's happening here is quickly known there
and visa-versa is an intriguing question.
Stay tuned.
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