Salam Arabic Fellowship: Americans: Undecided About God?

Salam Arabic Fellowship: Americans: Undecided About God?: December 10, 2011 Americans: Undecided About God? By ERIC WEINER THE holidays are upon us again — it sounds vaguely aggressive, as if th...

Americans: Undecided About God?

December 10, 2011
Americans: Undecided About God?
By ERIC WEINER
THE holidays are upon us again — it sounds vaguely aggressive, as if the holidays were some sort of mugger, or overly enthusiastic lover — and so it’s time to stick a thermometer deep in our souls and take our spiritual temperature (between trips to the mall, of course).

For some of us, the season affords an opportunity to reconnect with our religious heritage. For others, myself included, it’s a time to shake our heads over the sad state of our national conversation about God, and wish there were another way.

For a nation of talkers and self-confessors, we are terrible when it comes to talking about God. The discourse has been co-opted by the True Believers, on one hand, and Angry Atheists on the other. What about the rest of us?

The rest of us, it turns out, constitute the nation’s fastest-growing religious demographic. We are the Nones, the roughly 12 percent of people who say they have no religious affiliation at all. The percentage is even higher among young people; at least a quarter are Nones.

Apparently, a growing number of Americans are running from organized religion, but by no means running from God. On average 93 percent of those surveyed say they believe in God or a higher power; this holds true for most Nones — just 7 percent of whom describe themselves as atheists, according to a survey by Trinity College.

Nones are the undecided of the religious world. We drift spiritually and dabble in everything from Sufism to Kabbalah to, yes, Catholicism and Judaism.

Why the rise of the Nones? David Campbell and Robert Putnam, of the University of Notre Dame and the Harvard Kennedy School, respectively, think politics is to blame. Their idea is that we’ve mixed politics and religion so completely that many simply opt out of both; apparently they are reluctant to claim a religious affiliation because they don’t want the political one that comes along with it.

We are more religiously polarized than ever. In my secular, urban and urbane world, God is rarely spoken of, except in mocking, derisive tones. It is acceptable to cite the latest academic study on, say, happiness or, even better, whip out a brain scan, but God? He is for suckers, and Republicans.

I used to be that way, too, until a health scare and the onset of middle age created a crisis of faith, and I ventured to the other side. I quickly discovered that I didn’t fit there, either. I am not a True Believer. I am a rationalist. I believe the Enlightenment was a very good thing, and don’t wish to return to an age of raw superstition.

We Nones may not believe in God, but we hope to one day. We have a dog in this hunt.

Nones don’t get hung up on whether a religion is “true” or not, and instead subscribe to William James’s maxim that “truth is what works.” If a certain spiritual practice makes us better people — more loving, less angry — then it is necessarily good, and by extension “true.” (We believe that G. K. Chesterton got it right when he said: “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”)

By that measure, there is very little “good religion” out there. Put bluntly: God is not a lot of fun these days. Many of us don’t view religion so generously. All we see is an angry God. He is constantly judging and smiting, and so are his followers. No wonder so many Americans are enamored of the Dalai Lama. He laughs, often and well.

Precious few of our religious leaders laugh. They shout. God is not an exclamation point, though. He is, at his best, a semicolon, connecting people, and generating what Aldous Huxley called “human grace.” Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of this.

Religion and politics, though often spoken about in the same breath, are, of course, fundamentally different. Politics is, by definition, a public activity. Though religion contains large public components, it is at core a personal affair. It is the relationship we have with ourselves or, as the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, “What the individual does with his solitariness.” There lies the problem: how to talk about the private nature of religion publicly.

What is the solution? The answer, I think, lies in the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that has long defined America, including religious America.

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

Eric Weiner is the author, most recently, of “Man Seeks God: My Flirtations with the Divine.”

Live Love

Live Love
I was in the middle of writing my sermon when a refugee family called, asking for mattresses. They said that they were sleeping on the floor...in this cold..I had to drive out to St. John Lutheran Church in Lombard, get the mattresses from the storage room, and then deliver them in Wheaton. Who could let a family sleep on the floor in this cold!! Matthew 25: 42

Live Love

Live Love
I was in the middle of writing my sermon when a refugee family called, asking for mattresses. They said that they were sleeping on the floor...in this cold..I had to drive out to St. John Lutheran Church in Lombard, get the mattresses from the storage room, and then deliver them in Wheaton. Who could let a family sleep on the floor in this cold!! Matthew 25: 42

Live Love

I was in the middle of writing my sermon when a refugee family called, asking for mattresses. They said that they were sleeping on the floor...in this cold..I had to drive out to St. John Lutheran Church in Lombard, get the mattresses from the storage room, and then deliver them in Wheaton. Who could let a family sleep on the floor in this cold!! Matthew 25: 42

What we learned from the Assad interview - By David Kenner | The Middle East Channel

What we learned from the Assad interview - By David Kenner | The Middle East Channel

The Harvest is Ripe

The Harvest Is Ripe

Hussein, 20, an Iraqi refugee, was baptized last August. Last month, he shared with the church his conversion experience. Hussein said that he experienced real Christian love when an American Christian family invited all his family members (7) upon their arrival to America to a Thanksgiving dinner. Attending Salam for more than three years, Jesus Christ spoke to his heart and Hussein found in Him peace and power to overcome sin.

Muneer, 25, Iranian, who has been attending Salam for a year, was baptized early October.
Nasser, 29, another Iranian, arrived to Chicagoland a month ago. Even though he was called to faith in Christ in Turkey where he first sought refuge, he had nobody who could disciple him there, because of the language barrier.
It was a very emotional scene when Nasser first arrived at Salam, knelt down at the Altar and prayed to Jesus. This is something he had been yearning for since he left Turkey. We have been providing discipleship and support for this young man who has no family and no friends but Jesus, who has been using Salam to feed him.
Nasser was baptized on October 27th.

Salam thanks you for your partnership in God's mission, and we pray that our work for Christ's Kingdom will give more fruits.

In Christ,
Rev. Hicham Chehab
Missionary, Pastor