Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation

Chapter 1: Introduction

1 Chapter 1 Introduction Religion,it seems, is everywhere in the news. Whether abroad in various war zones like Afghanistan or Iraq or in persistent crisis situations such as between the Israelis and Palestinians, religion plays a central organizing role in the events taking place there. At home, religion plays a role in seemingly everything from presidential elections to immigration (we’re now seeing T-shirts and bumper stickers that ask, “Who would Jesus deport?”), to such issues as gay marriage, abortion, and the teaching of intelligent design as science in public schools. America, most polls show, is one of the most religious nations in the world, with upward of 90 percent of the population claiming to believe in God, and anywhere from about 20 to 40 percent of the population, depending on the poll and its methodology, claiming to regularly attend religious services. Further, religion in America has undergone a public revival of sorts since the 1980s, from the rise of the Moral Majority and the religious right to more recent efforts at federal funding for faith-based social welfare programs. This suggests that religion has taken a much more pronounced role in the everyday life of American society that is likely more extensive than most people realize, and perhaps a greater role than many people would desire. However, despite the role that religion plays in the personal lives of individual Americans and increasingly in the public sphere, there continues to be both a lack of understanding about the importance of religion and a lack of knowledge about the particular beliefs of different religious groups, and how these Chap-01.qxd 11/13/07 8:48 AM Page 1 F i n d i n g F a i t h 2 may motivate their actions in culture and society. Boston University religious studies professor Stephen Prothero has recently written a best-selling book about the average American citizen’s stunning lack of knowledge about religion in general, and even about basic tenets of their own religious faith (2007). Prothero frames this as both a domestic civic problem and as a problem for international relations. As a domestic problem, he argues, it is virtually impossible to understand much of American history without understanding the role of religion and the particular beliefs that motivated such historic movements as abolitionism , women’s rights, and civil rights. He argues further that in order to participate as a knowledgeable citizen in current debates about, for example, abortion, family values, intelligent design, and the like, it is necessary to understand the religious perspectives of those on each side of these issues. As a problem for international relations, he argues that we are doomed to misunderstand major international conflicts unless we understand the ancient differences between, for example, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. University of Southern California religion and media scholar and journalist Diane Winston has similarly pointed out that in the press, reporters often miss the significant role that religion plays in a particular story that may seem otherwise unrelated to religion. Winston argues that this isn’t necessarily because journalists are hostile or suspicious toward religion, but that they fail to really understand how important religion is in the various stories they pursue. Winston argues that journalists “need to ‘get’ religion; not just its sociopolitical significance but also its ideas and beliefs—if they want to faithfully cover today’s world” (2004; see also Beckerman 2004 for a similar argument). On the other hand, other recent best-selling books that are much more hostile to religion have essentially called for a less tolerant view toward religion, at least in public life, and suggest that if religion were eradicated, the world would be a much better Chap-01.qxd 11/13/07 8:48 AM Page 2 place as a result. Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in a book with the less-than-subtle title The God Delusion (2006), has argued that the belief in God is essentially a “misfiring” of human mental processes that has no survival value in the evolutionary process. It is essentially a genetic— or his term, memetic—mistake, albeit for Dawkins a particularly costly one, in that in his view any good that religion has done throughout history is far outweighed by the evil and violence it has sponsored and motivated. Similarly, Sam Harris (2005; 2006) has written two recent books in which he suggests that if...