Actual Blog Post*: What Does It Mean to Be "Religious" in America?

With regard to religion, my cousin and dear friend is a devoutly skeptical and endlessly curious, a combination I hold in high esteem. He posted this article, entitled "Religious Diversity May Be Making America Less Religious," by Daniel Cox for fivethirtyeight.com.

I found this article extremely interesting. Upon reflection, the question that emerged for me was what it means to be "religious." This article points me toward a potential change in what it means to be religious. Is "religious" about belief, as Protestants tend to think? Is it about practice, as Catholic and (more clearly) Buddhist traditions suggest? I think in the US, "religious" has actually tended to mean something else.

"Religious" in this country has for a long time meant Christian, obviously, but that means it also has meant "part of the dominant culture" due to Christian cultural hegemony. I am from a small town where I have clearly seen church used as a way up the social ladder, and some churches continue to function as local centers of power, influence, and respectability. This is part of what I hear when this author says "religious," and insofar as religious diversity is challenging this structure, I say thanks be to God!

Religion has always been a way to preserve culture, especially for people in migration or in times of social turbulence. My undergrad course on "African Cultures in Latin America" was really a study of how Africans syncretized their native religious practices with those of the groups they encountered - mostly colonizing European Christians. Disallowed from passing on language and traditions directly, African-descended people found ways to subvert the religion of their oppressors by using it as cover to incorporate the traditions of their people. The historical relationship between Candomblé and Roman Catholicism in Brazil is one example of this phenomenon, where many Orishas came to be associated with Catholic saints with shared or complementary attributes.

The Lutheran traditions in the US are another excellent example. Lutheran churches here were created to preserve northern European cultures as much as they were to follow Jesus. Language, ethnic foods and customs, pride in the homeland -  religious tradition was the most efficient and effective context in which to maintain ethnic identity, and remains so today for many groups. This extends far beyond Lutheranism, of course, but I believe the reason Lutheran denominations are officially the whitest in the U.S. is that they were founded as northern European ethnic enclaves. As those ethic groups fitfully transitioned from, say Danish-American to more generic white American, the churches continued to function as preservers of cultural identity. Thus American Lutheran churches today tend to function as bastions of whiteness, because their original purpose has simply translated to a new cultural identity.

All of which is to say that as a religious professional, I think religious diversity is likely to be extremely healthy for "the Church" in the long run. Maybe the cultural and social power of "religious" will continue to shift away from hegemony and ladder-climbing and more toward something like being "faithful," whatever that means. Religion has always been used by some as a tool to manipulate the masses, and hopefully the weakening of religious hegemony means the weakening of the ability of those in power to use religion as a means to consolidating and retaining that power. If all this looks like a weakening of "religion" overall, I'll take it. because I know that religion can be something much better than this.

*This approximation of an actual blog post (my first in years, give or take some re-posted church newsletter articles) is adapted from a Facebook comment, which is everything you need to know about my capacity as a "blogger." 

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Relatedly, this morning also yielded the latest Pew Research Center report on religion in America. This edition focuses on how people choose a new church or house of worship, and contains a wealth of information for those of us interested in the relationship of Americans and church.