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What do American believers believe?
A study (online version) conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York reveals (no surprise here) that America's religious landscape continues to shift. USA Today reports that according to the findings, immigration, interfaith marriage, and conversion have increasingly changed the meaning of religious identity.

About one in six adults say they have switched religions at least once. Barry Kosmin, one of two lead investigators in the study, told USA Today that many view religion as a recreational choice; Changing denominations or faiths is like switching from skiing to snowboarding.

The first American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) was conducted in 1990. At the time, it found—from interviews with 113,723 adults—two large trends in American religion: solo spirituality and church-shopping consumerism. The current study—based on interviews with 50,281 people— reveals these trends have only gotten stronger.

Because of this, the number of people who said they are Catholic or Protestant has slipped. The percentage of those identifying themselves with Protestant or other non-Catholic Christian denominations is down 8 percent from the 1990 study; those saying they're Catholic is down nearly 2 percent.

Where are they going?

Some are leaving faith altogether. Twenty-three percent of those who said they now have no religion say they once did. Some don't associate with a religion, but consider themselves believers.

Others have chosen the solo spirituality path. While 81 percent claim a religious identity, the survey reports that only 54 percent said anyone in their home is affiliated with a house of worship.

The numbers of adherents to non-Christian faiths are also on the rise. Many of those surveyed identified themselves with religions such as Druid, Santeria, and Wicca, which has seen a 1,575 percent jump since 1990.

According to USA Today, a great deal of growth has been in Christian groups with "vague umbrella labels." According to the survey, evangelical/born again and ''non-denominational'' churches tend to draw four in 10 current members from converts.

'"People don't want to be bogged down in church politics," pastor Chris Bowen, of Georgia's Living Faith Tabernacle Church told USA Today. "We are coming out from underneath all those limitations. We are just here to uphold the Word of God."

A Bumbling God
Quirky contemporary interpretations of the Bible and its stories often get rave reviews, primarily for their originality. Thus any book by scholar-writers Karen Armstrong, Dom Crossan, or Jack Miles seems to be destined for best-sellerdom. But originality in interpretation (especially originality that flouts the evidence or violates the text) is not what makes a book about the Good Book a good book. Last Sunday, Michael Wood's New York Timesreview of Jack Miles's Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God boldly called the author's bluff.

Wood questions whether Miles can really deliver what he promised: a literary reading of God as a character without turning theological. Miles's take on God as "a sleeping pragmatist who wakes one day to realize that the old promise won't work" (Wood's paraphrase) and "needs a way to fail" (Miles's phrase) is truly not about God the character but about the character of God. Thus, it is very theological.

Wood agrees with Miles that the idea that God created man in his own image is an "unmistakable invitation to make some sense of God in human terms." But Miles's unwillingness to leave any mystery to God creates a weird psychology that "tilts toward the dizzying anachronistic jokes of Woody Allen or Mel Brooks."

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December (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45