{"id":7101,"date":"2004-10-29T09:09:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-29T16:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/10\/29\/articles-of-faith.html"},"modified":"2004-10-29T09:09:00","modified_gmt":"2004-10-29T16:09:00","slug":"articles_of_fai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/10\/29\/articles_of_fai.html","title":{"rendered":"Articles of faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article via GeekMom<\/a> on how the “squeaky wheels” of the religious right are improperly shaping the view of religious folk in this country — in part because of how surveys of religion improperly lump together different threads of religious thought<\/a>, and in part because of how the media even simplifies things further.<\/p>\n

In dividing respondents into three categories besides denomination?”traditionalist,” “centrist,” and “modernist”?the survey still plays into the unsubstantiated popular perception that the most <\/em>religious people are those with a literalist understanding of scripture (in the case of evangelicals) or a high view of the “tradition” of papal authority (in the case of Roman Catholics). These are the traditionalists. Similarly, the “modernists” in the Green survey?those who answered “yes” to the propositions that religion should be adapted to modern circumstances and that all world religions contain the truth, come out looking merely less observant than their traditional co-religionists. So, when the survey shows “traditionalists” of all denominations having more conservative political views and the “modernists” more progressive ones, we cannot escape from the impression that the most faithful persons among all denominations are politically conservative, rather than concluding that conservative political views seem to coincide with a very specific sort of religiosity.<\/p>\n

Where, for example, would the political views of a member of Evangelicals for Social Actions show up in such a survey? Though she might agree that tradition is worth preserving and that scripture is highly authoritative, she would not qualify as an evangelical “traditionalist.” Why? Because rather than focusing her energies on the single passage from Paul’s Letter to the Romans used by antigay members of the religious right, she might instead take seriously the over 2,000 biblical verses relating to poverty and spend her time developing micro-enterprise lending programs in poor countries or advocating increased foreign aid. But she might not qualify as a “modernist” since she could easily disagree that all world religions contained the same truth. This person, like other religious conservatives with socially progressive views, falls below the radar.<\/p>\n

Interesting stuff, and challenging for more mainstream Christian denominations to take a more public stand on matters of both spiritual and social importance (to the extent that social issues in fact have a spiritual component).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article via GeekMom on how the “squeaky wheels” of the religious right are improperly shaping the view of religious folk in this country — in part because of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134582,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/07\/colorado-less-denominational-unaffiliated.html","url_meta":{"origin":7101,"position":0},"title":"Colorado is less denominational, more “unaffiliated”","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Sep-17 2:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting breakdown of Colorado data pulled from the recent Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey of religiosity in the United States. Some 33% of folk in the state and in Denver report no religious affiliation, Denver being the 4th highest rate there after Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco (the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/unnamed-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":42062,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/19\/americans-exaggerate-how-often-they-attend-church.html","url_meta":{"origin":7101,"position":1},"title":"Americans exaggerate how often they attend church","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 19-May-14 7:33am","format":false,"excerpt":"A new study indicates a significant difference between how frequently people say they attend depending on whether they are being surveyed on the phone or online, concluding that social expectations even with a stranger on the telephone will cause people to report they are attending church more frequently than they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51036,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/12\/americas-religious-face-is-changing-like-it-or-not.html","url_meta":{"origin":7101,"position":2},"title":"America's religious face is changing, like it or not","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 12-May-15 10:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"Pew Research Center's most recent major survey of religion in America has some remarkable results. In just the last several years, Christianity as a whole in the US has declined as a percent of the population. Most of that loss has been among Catholic and mainline Protestant churches, who now\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132426,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/23\/religious-freedom-for-atheists-too.html","url_meta":{"origin":7101,"position":3},"title":"Religious Freedom for Atheists, Too","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 23-Dec-16 11:10am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm glad to see this 1998 US religious freedom law noted to include atheists and agnostics as well. '\"The freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs and the right not to profess or practice any religion.\"'Some folk like to play semantics and suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12682,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/02\/26\/faith_snapshot.html","url_meta":{"origin":7101,"position":4},"title":"Faith snapshot","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 26-Feb-08 10:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0Les points to a new, massive Pew Research report on the state of religion in the US. Bottom line: it's a diverse picture, and getting moreso over time. 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