Journeying On

There was an interesting article in the LA Times today about religion in America.  Check it out.   Some quotes and stats of interest follow.  The article itself was based on a study by the Pew Forum.  It is rather extensive and revealing. 

“The presumption of a Protestant framework for understanding the American character is now a thing of the past,” said Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

According to the study, 78.4% of Americans are Christians, about 5% belong to other faith traditions and 16.1% are unaffiliated with any particular religion.

Secular unaffiliated Americans account for 6.3% of the population; religious unaffiliated, 5.8%; atheists, 1.4% and agnostics, 2.4%.

At 1.7% of the population, Jews make up the largest group of any other religion. Buddhists are 0.7% of the population; Muslims 0.6%; and Hindus and New Age followers, both 0.4%

The study noted that Protestantism is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely grouped around three “fairly distinct” religious traditions — evangelical Protestant churches (26.3%), mainline Protestants (18.1%) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9%)

and, final paragraph of article:

“Americans are ready, willing and able to change their religious affiliation,” said Gregory Smith, a research fellow who worked on the study. “That the United States is a dynamic marketplace when it comes to religion isn’t that surprising. But to see the hard numbers, to see just how common an occurrence religious change was, was quite striking to me and to other researchers.”

I love our country and am grateful for the freedoms it provides us – especially religious.  Diversity is one of the things we embrace in a democratic society.  However, the buckshot of religion that exits the barrel of diversity sure makes the clarion call of Jesus more difficult to decifer amidst all the voices vying for people’s souls.  And what was the clarion call of the God-man Jesus Christ?  It was simply:  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14.6 (ESV)  

While these may sound like incredibly narrow-minded words, they were spoken by Jesus Christ, and based on the entirety of His life, either He was right about this or He was an incredible fraud.  Obviously, there are many who believe He was a fraud, and that is their prerogative.  The study done by the Pew Forum bears this out.  But if He was truly God in the flesh - then the works He did, and the words He said, and the life He lived make it awfully difficult to ignore the fact that those narrow words (John 14.6) are not as confining as they first appear, but in reality are the most liberating and freeing words we could ever believe.