Though I am writing this article from a Christian point of view I
believe the observations are true of any particular religion or belief system.
Make adjustments as necessary for you.
Most Americans claim they are Christian; 83% by a recent ABC poll,
78.4% by the Pew Foundation. 4.7% are Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim etc. And 16.1%
are unaffiliated; 1.6% atheist, 2.4% agnostic. 12.1% nothing in particular. A
further breakdown shows 51.3% are Protestant, 23.9% Roman Catholic and small
percentages of Mormon, Jehovah Witnesses, and Orthodox. Evangelicals have the
largest slice of protestant, 26.3% and Mainline churches have dropped to 18.1%.
(I would add Roman Catholic to the Mainline group.)
More than enough data to show most folk say they are Christian or
something. This is the group of people I call “believers” in this article. They
believe in a deity whether they are affiliated with an organized religion or
not, they believe. In my tradition, Presbyterian we define Christians very
simply: one who believes in Jesus Christ and Lord and Savior. That’s it. We all
have specific ideas, theologies, to debate about, but most simply we just
believe in Jesus/God.
With that said a Gallup poll reports that 40% of the population
attends church on a somewhat regular basis. Other studies such as a 2005 study
in The Journal for Scientific Study of
Religion by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler report that
the actual number of people attending church each week is more like 17.7%; this
is based on what churches report in attendance. In other word when asked we are
less that truthful about our actual practices. There are lots of people who
claim affiliation with a denomination but do not actually belong to that
denomination. There is a disconnect here which I find thought provoking.
This leads me to my next thought; the difference between believers and practitioners of religion.
Believing in God or Jesus and practicing the teachings of God or more
specifically Jesus appear to me is a much different thing. I can’t find any
data here but my educated guess after years of serving churches is that most
members of a church, let alone those who claim religious affiliation or belief
are biblically illiterate. They may know some biblical stories but may ignore
their teaching or morals. They may profess belief but they do not follow the
teachings of religion in their daily living.
Jesus simply summarized the Christian practice as loving God with
our total being and loving others as much as we love ourselves. That should
pretty much prove my point there. People may indeed love God but more than
other things, probably not. If you observe human behavior we put a lot things
ahead of God such as family, job, country, money, security, sports, etc. It is
where we spend our time and money and effort. Even for those who give up an
hour a week to worship God, may pretty well ignore God the rest of the week.
Jesus often gets pretty specific in what it means to be a
practitioner of belief. His parables point these principles out well and the
sermon on the mount/plain also are quite clear. Take the beatitudes part of
that sermon: being poor of spirit, mourning, meekness, thirsting for
righteousness, merciful, purity of heart, peacemaking, suffering persecution
for beliefs… Do most folk even know what they mean? Jesus says we will be happy
if we do those things. I think he is right, but most people do not practice those things. Turning the other
cheek seems sissy like to most folk, being neighborly and wanting to take care
of others flies in the face of being number one, we prefer completion to
cooperation, and the common good – forget it.
We know the great practitioners of faith whether they are Christian
or not. We see and are inspired by the lives of Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi,
Abraham Lincoln, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela; people of tremendous vision
faith and practice. But they are few and far between. I am not saying that you
have to be a great leader of people to be a practitioner of faith, there are
many who are great practitioners who get no press at all, but they are still
uncommon.
My point is simple. In our world we give lip service to belief, but
we follow other rules that the rules of the great religions in our daily living
and even regard those rules as impractical and stand in the way of our goals in
life. My guess is most of us know that.
Now to a final group almost as a footnote to this article. This is
the group I call by an old fashioned term, pietists.
Even my word processor doesn’t even recognize the term. It has been defined as
a movement in the Lutheran Church in 17th century Germany as folk
who stressed piety over religious formality and orthodoxy. That is a good idea,
but the more popular version is those folk who put on a good show of religion
but that’s about it.
Jesus put it well when he portrayed the Pharisee (the religious
legalists of his day) who prayed, “Thank God I am not like those ordinary folk;
the low lived robbers, nasty folk and tax collectors. I’m a good dude, I don’t
cheat, I don’t commit adultery, I don’t sin.” Are you kidding me he was a self
deluded spiritual snob and Jesus called him as such preferring those who
clearly admitted their sins and asked for forgiveness.
My guess is those pious jerks are about in equal numbers in and out
of organized religion. I don’t expect it to be any different. Lots of folk like
to talk about hypocrites in churches as though there weren’t an equal amount of
hypocrites outside the church. The church may be the visible embodiment of the
body of Christ, but it is also a human institution filled with folk who screw
up, sin just like folk in every other part of life.
None of us should be about the business of pointing fingers, though
that is what I am doing in part, in this article. Instead we should be trying
to practice our beliefs whether they are religious or humanistic. We should be
working for the common good and taking care of all our neighbors. In doing that
we show our love of God and our thankfulness to God and God’s creation.
amen.
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