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So many of us have experienced hurt or insult at the hands of organized religion. Stories of abuse by clergy even worsen the confidence level of woman who have been often disregarded and/or set aside by organized (and patriarchal) institutions. Beyond imperfection, organized religions have seemed to orchestrate problems. I don't need to recount any. All of us can come up with our own list. Add to that the anti-intellectual nature of many far right fundamentalist groups (across all religions) and it makes many people mistrust and depart organized gathering places of religious intent.
A recent survey by Trinity College indicates that 15 % of Americans identify as having no affiliated religion, or as atheists or agnostics -- up from 8% in 1990.
...many of the 750,000 additional American adults who each year identify as having "no religion" are reacting to...the "triumphalism and judg mentalism of the Christian right."
A full quarter of those identifying as "no religion" in the Trinity College report are former Catholics, many of whom were turned off by the church sex abuse scandals of the past decade. That helps explain why the Northeast now rivals the Mountain states and the Pacific Northwest—whose frontier beginnings established rugged individualist traditions that resisted organized religions—as the most secular parts of the country. "Despite the population growth, New England has lost 1 million Catholics" in the last decade..."
Other religious traditions feeding the "no religion" boom are Judaism and Asian religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. While people who leave mainline Protestant churches often find new spiritual homes in evangelical or nondenominational megachurches, the Trinity survey shows that former Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus are much more likely to abandon religion altogether. Nearly half of "no religion" Americans come from Irish, Jewish, or Asian backgrounds.
But does that mean that one leaves faith behind, because the institution could not communicate belief-in-action in a satisfactory way? I have heard over and over that some people have left their belief behind them because a minister or priest or rabbi did something absurd, or because a church did not do something that it should have. And I keep saying, "The organization is not the faith. The box is not the contents."
Oh, we poor broken creatures. It seems every time we20try to make an organization around a principle, we corrupt the principle. Look at democratic institutions, education, medicine. Yet we do not say, "I am giving up on democracy because the Senate is corrupt." Nor do we say, "Educational institutions are not doing well. Down with education." And we surely do not say,"Doctors have not always followed the Hippocratic Oath, so I am not going to get any more medical care."
I am not critiquing atheists. They have their position, and that is fine. It is a big world with lots of room for diverse opinion. If you are an atheist reading this, you probably won't find much in it for you except my good wishes. I am not trying to convert you.
I am suggesting, however, that faith is bigger than the containers that try to hold it. And I am saying that it is OK to believe in God without having to tie ones self to a host of dogmas that do not make sense to you. I know this may sound odd to some of you, but I have met people who, because they left a particular church, feel that they also have to leave their faith behind -- essentially in leaving they "buy" the tale of the church/synagogue that God lives only there. If they leave the structure, they leave the Deity.
This makes me very sad.
A friend once said to me, "I can't go back to believing in God -- in such a horrible judgmental figure who is so angry all the time."
Well, of course not. That figure was a projection of a very particular group. God is bigger than our projections. And kinder.
I think I am in a perpetual lover's quarrel with the church. The churches and synagogues and mosques and shrines and temples of the world have kept the story of faith alive. They have been gathering places for people who felt shut out. They have furthered education.
In fact a recent study in Canada indicated that suicide risk was lower among regular worshippers than among those who "considered themselves spiritual" but did not attend worship.They have saved lives, spiritually and physically.
It would be unfair to write this and not mention the many churches and synagogues, temples and places of worship that have
