The Trajectory of Human History: Ever-Expanding Cooperation and Compassion
Human consciousness emerged within a world of powerful and mysterious forces beyond our comprehension and control. As modes of communication evolved—from gestures and oral speech to writing and mathematics, to print, to science, to computers—so has our understanding of what is real and what is important. An inspiring consequence of seeing the full sweep of history is discovering that human circles of care and compassion have expanded over time.
Early on, owing to genetic guidance honed in a pre-linguistic world, and then supplemented by knowledge that could be accumulated, retained, and shared only to the extent that spoken language would allow, our abilities to cooperate with one another were limited and localized. Anyone outside the tribe was suspect, and probably an enemy. As technologies of communication evolved, our ancestors entered interdependent relationships in ever-widening circles from villages, chiefdoms, and early nations to today’s global markets and international organizations. Finally, the emergence of the World Wide Web has made possible collaborations no longer stifled by geographic distances and political boundaries. Throughout this evolution of human communities and networks, an inner transformation has also been taking place. At each stage our circles of care, compassion, and commitment have grown and our lists of enemies have diminished. Our next step will be to learn to organize and govern ourselves globally, and to enjoy a mutually enhancing relationship with the larger body of Life of which we are part.
Aligning Self-Interest with the Well-being of the Whole
“Three thousand million years ago, cooperation extended only between molecular processes that were separated by about a millionth of a meter, the scale of early cells. Now, cooperation extends between human organisms that are separated by up to twelve million meters, the scale of the planet. The same evolutionary forces that drove the expansion of cooperative organization in the past can be expected to continue to do so in the future.” —JOHN STEWART
The evolution of human consciousness is driven by how information is stored and transmitted. A mutually reinforcing relationship tracks human social complexity with increasingly sophisticated “technologies of the word.” The human brain, as best we can tell, has not changed structurally in any significant way since Homo sapiens first evolved. Yet people do not think the same today as they did a hundred generations ago. Why? Because our brains are now immersed in a swirling world of information flows and interactions that span the globe.
With each advance in data representation and communication, worldviews shift and societies reorganize. For societies at each new level of complexity and size to thrive, they must find ways to align the natural self-interest of individuals and groups of individuals with the wellbeing of the social whole, and to keep cheaters in check. The impact of the parts, for good or ill, must be mirrored back to the parts in congruent and consequential ways. If a part benefits the whole, the part must benefit in some way; if a part harms the whole, it must be disadvantaged in some way. These kinds of social structures, incentives, and disincentives drive the synergistic alignment of interest between part and whole. It is in this way (and only in this way) that complexity can continue along, what I like to call, “the trajectory of emergent creativity.” A helpful overview of how this natural process of escalating complexity is thought to have unfolded, both in the pre-human world and throughout human history, is John Stewart’s Evolution’s Arrow: The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity (also available as pdf on his website).
Summarized below is how complexity evolved in the human realm.
Biblical Christianity Is Bankrupt
PDF version here.
"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, "This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said—grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed"? Instead they say, "No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way." — Carl Sagan
Biblical Christianity is bankrupt. I use ‘bankrupt’ in the exact sense of the term. A business that goes bankrupt still has value and is capable of producing useful goods or services. It still has an inventory and trained professionals in its employ. Until the day insolvency is declared, it also usually has a façade—a bright and upbeat demeanor by which its clients and the community at large assume it to be relatively healthy. The only thing wrong is that a bankrupt business is no longer able to accomplish its purpose: to be successful. It is precisely in this sense that I suggest Bible-centered faith is bankrupt.
Yes, Christianity still has tens of thousands of churches reflecting an enormous range of theological diversity—and, yes, some are still thriving. Christianity has rituals and practices that many still find meaningful, along with organizations and ministries doing good and important work in the world. The Church is not bankrupt because it has run out of things to say or do. Rather, it is bankrupt because the otherworldly product it has sold for centuries now lacks wide appeal. Christianity now lags behind our most advanced secular methods and tools for providing salvation in this life. As well, by failing to update its “map of reality” to correspond with our best evidential understanding of 'how things are' and 'which things matter' today (as discerned through empirical science, historical research, and cross-cultural experience), Bible-centered faith can no longer provide the two essential services all religions must provide in order to survive.
The root ‘religare’ means to link together. Evolutionarily robust religions over the tens of thousands of years of human existence have been those that, as philosopher of religion Loyal Rue observes, nurture “personal wholeness” at the individual level and “social coherence” at the community level. To do so, they must operate with as accurate a map as possible of what’s real (how things are) and what’s important (which things matter).
Biblical Christianity that does not integrate our best evidential understanding of the universe and human nature is doomed precisely because it is wedded to unchanging scripture. It suffers from what I call “idolatry of the written word.” No longer does it link together what young people learn in church and what they learn in their science and history classes at school—and on the Discovery and History channels at home. As well, biblical Christianity’s strongest lifeline for claiming continued relevance is seriously frayed—although only those who track scientific advances in neurobiology, infant psychology, and the social instincts of apes and monkeys may be aware of this perilous condition.
What is that frayed lifeline? It is the intertwined strands of two crucial religious functions: first, the matter of where we acquire our moral compass, and second, how we come into right relationship with reality, or “get right with God,” when we have fallen from the path. As to the former, we moderns come to the Bible with a culturally evolved moral compass by which we carefully pick and choose which passages to preach and study and teach our children. We do not get our morality from the Bible.
The reason we do not consult the book of Exodus when dealing with a disrespectful teenage son, or the book of Leviticus for parenting advice when a daughter loses her virginity, or the book of Numbers for how to handle Sabbath breakers, or the books of Deuteronomy or Revelation when needing guidance regarding family members who choose a different faith, is because murder is no longer considered a moral option.
As popular science blogger PZ Myers claims, “There is no surer way to make an atheist than to get them to actually read scripture.” This is especially true of the Internet generations in America—those whose parents and church leaders can no longer shield them from other-than-biblical views and understandings of the world.
The result: Young people are leaving church by the millions and Christianity in America is in steady decline. Absent some radical shift in how we raise our children in Christian environments, we can expect America in the 21st century to follow the faith-falling trajectory pioneered by Europe, Canada, and Australia in the 20th century. To cite just two examples: Evangelical icon Josh McDowell, who has worked for Campus Crusade for Christ since 1964, reports that 94% of high school graduates leave the faith within two years. The Southern Baptists estimate that 88% of their kids leave the church after high school. (See here, here, and here.)
My Exchange with Albert Mohler
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I are engaged in a public debate sparked by my recent sermons, podcasts, and blogposts expressing gratitude for the New Atheists. Here’s the progression:
July 17, 2010: Press Release: Michael Dowd to Christian Church: New Atheists Are God's Prophets
July 19, 2010: OneNewsNow.com: ‘Evolutionary evangelist’ gives heresy a bad name
July 29, 2010: My blogpost: Giving Heresy a Bad Name!
August 8, 2010: My sermon text: Thank God for the New Atheists!
Aug 10, 2010: Mohler’s blogpost: Thank God for the New Atheists?
In reading Dr. Mohler’s latest, I was impressed by his integrity and demonstrably Christ-ian spirit. He generously quoted me throughout and fairly represented my position. What more could I ask from a debate partner? Hence my zeal for continuing the conversation with this reply on why I view biblical Christianity as bankrupt.
In what follows I will address the main point Dr. Mohler makes in his critique of my enthusiasm for the New Atheists:
Give Michael Dowd credit for reminding us where the rejection of biblical Christianity inevitably leads.
I will also respond to his assertions that I reject (a) the supernatural, (b) a personal God, (c) the authority of scripture, and (d) a biblical view of sin and salvation. In the process I will outline the contours of an “evolutionary Christianity” and “Christian naturalism,” and further clarify what I mean by “biblical Christianity is bankrupt.”
Giving Heresy a Bad Name!
Right-wing OneNewsNow.com journalist Russ Jones, reporting on my recent sermons and writings on the subject of "Thank God for the New Atheists!", posted a short article titled, "'Evolutionary evangelist' gives heresy a bad name."
Jones quotes Dr. Albert Mohler, Jr, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS), in Louisville, Kentucky, as saying, "What we have here is just an abject overthrow of the Christian faith by one who poses as a Christian minister, claiming that we should celebrate these atheists as prophets." The article continues:
Getting REAL About God, Guidance, & Good News
I've been asked a number of times lately, by friends and reporters alike, what exactly I mean when I exclaim "Thank God for the New Atheists!" Here's my quickie response...
I thank God for the New Atheists not because I want everyone to be like them, or to think like them, nor because I consider them perfect vessels of divine wisdom. Rather, I'm grateful to them because of how they are prodding religion and humanity to mature in several essential ways—ways I discuss briefly on this 3 minute YouTube clip, and more thoroughly in this 20 minute sermon.)
But I am also profoundly grateful to the New Atheists for forcing religious people (like me!) to get real about God, guidance, and good news. For example, here's something few church leaders have even begun to confront:
Young people are leaving the church by the millions (see here, here, and here). I believe this is happening in large part because the Internet is exposing literalist interpretations of the Bible and traditional views of Christianity as promoting a terrorist view of God, a pitiful sense of guidance, and good news that borders on sadistic.
Fortunately, none of this is true. But, paradoxically, it's the New Atheists who, by their attacks on superstitious religiosity, are helping all of us realize this.
Young people are right to reject a terrorist view of God!
The main moral lesson one gets from a straightforward reading of the Old Testament is “Obey the Lord or die.” In the New Testament, it’s “Believe in Jesus or fry.” Yet both of those would count as “terrorism” according to our own government’s definition of term. The US Department of Defense defines terrorism as: “Violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate others in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.”
Now we all know that God can’t possible be a terrorist. Yet that’s precisely what a literal reading of the Bible forces us to conclude. If you doubt this is true, listen to Parts 1 and 2 (Old Testament & New Testament) of Mike Earl's acclaimed "Bible Stories Your Parents Never Taught You." I promise you'll never think about "holy scripture" in the same way again! You will also understand why outspoken atheist science blogger PZ Myers (whose blog Pharyngula is read by 50,000+ people a day) says, “There’s no surer way to make an atheist than to get them to actually read scripture.”
In contrast, an evolutionary God can be as vast, as real, and as all embracing as our creative Cosmos and no more inclined than the Universe to take sides in matters of war, weather, or geological turmoil.
Young people are right to reject a pitiful view of guidance!
Imagining that God’s best, most dependable, and most inspiring guidance would have come through the dreams and intuitions of shepherds and fisherman a couple of thousand years ago is dissing the divine in the most horrific of ways. Ours is a time of space telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers, and the worldwide web. It is also a time of smart bombs, collapsing economies, and exploding oil platforms. This is not a time for parsing the lessons given to a few goatherds, tentmakers, and camel drivers.
Imagine a teenage girl with serious psychological, social, and addiction problems—and then you discovered that her father, who still lives with her, hadn’t spoken to her since she was a toddler. You’d blame the father for how screwed up the girl's life is, right? Of course, we all would!
What kind of God would offer His best guidance back when people believed the world was flat and word processing meant recording your insights on animal skins and preserving them in clay pots? Is it really any wonder that young people view this as a pitiful view of guidance?
Young people are right to reject "good news" that borders on sadistic!
I have never yet met a Christian, Muslim, or Jew who can look me in the eyes and honestly say that they believe an eternity with no challenges or difficulties yet with conscious awareness of the everlasting torment of others, including some they knew and loved, would be heavenly. We all know that would be hell. "Good news" cannot be the promise of fire insurance that comes with a balcony seat to witness the eternal torture of others.
The New Atheists, I believe, are forcing Christians to realize that:
- A. God is a personification, not a person—and supernatural is unnatural is uninspiring.
- B. Facts are God's native tongue—and historical, scientific, and cross-cultural evidence are the main ways God is speaking to humanity today.
- C. The only individual or collective "good news" that merits the label "gospel" today is good news for humanity as a whole and, indeed, for the larger body of life of which we are part and upon which we depend (see here, here, and below).
Darwin Didn't Kill God, He REALized God
Darwin didn’t kill God. To the contrary, he and Alfred Russel Wallace offered the first glimpse of the real creator behind and beyond the world’s myriad mythic portrayals of the divine.
The concepts of theism and atheism came into use long before we had an evidential understanding of how the world, in fact, came into being, and before we learned that the Universe itself is creative. Given what we now know about big history (the 14-billion-year epic of evolution), the theist-atheist dichotomy no longer makes sense. Both presuppose a trivial, unnatural God and a Cosmos that is not itself divinely creative. Thus, I am neither a theist, nor an atheist; I'm an evidentialist, an emergentist—a religious naturalist. (In my book I introduce the bridge-building term "creatheist", which can be pronounced "cree-uh-theist" or "cree-atheist").
An evidential approach starts with the fact that our brains are hardwired for relationships. An emergentist approach arises from the recognition that we evolved—and so have our ways of thinking and speaking about reality. Not only are we programmed for empathy and compassion toward those we identify as our "in-group", we also attribute agency to non-animate, non-conscious realities all the time. (Think of Tom Hanks and "Wilson," the soccer ball, in the movie Cast Away.) It’s what our brains do naturally, instinctually. People in every culture have relationalized or personified their world—especially those forces and aspects of their world that were obviously more powerful than they were. We know of no culture in the world that has not personified reality as a whole or certain significant aspects of reality.
"God" is a personification, not a person. If we miss this, we miss everything.
(Given the fact that most religious people do not realize this, however, the New Atheists can hardly be faulted for failing to appreciate it as well.)
Evidence from a wide range of disciplines, from cognitive neuroscience to anthropology to cross-cultural study of the world’s myths and religions, all support the claim that God is a divine personification, not a person. More, there is no counter-evidence. (This fact alone makes sense of the hundreds of competing stories around the world with respect to what God supposedly said or did.) "God" is a mythic name for Reality in all it's sublime fullness. Any so-called God that is imagined as less than this (it's impossible to be more than this) is unworthy of our devotion and deserves to be mocked, as the New Atheists do so brilliantly. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Contrary to the picture painted in the Bible and Qur'an, God is not a supernatural terrorist ("Do/believe as I say or you will be tortured forever.") Whenever any story, any culture, or any scriptural passage claims "God said this" or "God did that," what follows is always, necessarily, an interpretation. It's an interpretation of what some person or group of people thought or felt or sensed or wished reality was saying or doing, and almost always as justification after the fact or to make a theological point. Such subjectively meaningful claims are never objective, measurable truth. In other words, had CNN or ABC News been there to record the moment of "divine revelation," there would have been nothing out of the ordinary (nothing miraculous) to report on the evening news—nothing other than what was coming out of someone's mouth, or pen, or whatever folks wrote with back then. If we fail to grasp this, not only will we trivialize the divine but, more tragically still, we will surely miss what God (reality) is saying and doing today.
Ours is a time of space telescopes, electron microscopes, supercomputers, and the worldwide web. It is also a time of smart bombs, collapsing economies, and exploding oil platforms. This is not a time for parsing the lessons given to a few goatherds, tentmakers, and camel drivers.
In the 21st century, our most dependable guidance are facts interpreted meaningfully. Historical, scientific, and cross-cultural evidence is the main way that reality (God) is communicating to humanity today. Recognizing and celebrating this will transform religion and culture. Failing to do so will lead to our demise.
We're all in this together. So let's roll up our sleeves and get to it. There's lots of good work to be done!
________________________
ALSO SEE:
The Salvation of Religion: From Beliefs to Knowledge
Religion Is About Right Relationship With Reality, Not the Supernatural
Evolutionary Spirituality: Coming Home to Reality
God Is a Divine Personification, Not a Person
Thank God for the New Atheists
Supernatural Is Unnatural Is Uninspiring (When You Think About It) - blog post
Supernatural Is Unnatural Is Uninspiring (When You Think About It) - podcast
"What Reality in Human Experience Do We Point to with the Word, 'God'?", a pdf of a short essay by evolutionary theologian and bioregionalist, Gene Marshall. This chapter from one of Gene's books is foundational to an evidential understanding of the divine. (The pdf shows up sideways, so you'll need to open it with Adobe Reader and, under the "View" menu, rotate it clockwise. Otherwise you'll need to print it out. It's only 10 pages and well worth it!)
Imprinting Is NOT Indoctrination
My wife Connie Barlow, an acclaimed science writer, just wrote and posted on our Great Story website what is to-date the most provocative—indeed, prophetic—essay of her life. The title: "Imprinting Is Not Indoctrination: An invitation to parents and religious educators to present a coherent cosmology to our children". Composed as a critique of Dale McGowan's invited lecture at the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists nationwide (in June), Connie calls for a reassessment of the way kids in religiously moderate and liberal families and institutions are taught "religion". Our postmodern celebration of diversity and advocacy of free choice actually means we deny our children a basic human requirement: "a coherent cosmology (creation story / worldview) through which to enjoy and securely navigate the years of childhood wonder, learning, and innocence."
If you have children or grandchildren, or simply care about educating young people religiously in light of humanity's most up-to-date and inspiring understandings of how things are and which things matter, I cannot recommend this 9-page draft essay too highly! Because it is so provocative (especially the appendix), Connie welcomes feedback, comments, and suggestions for improvement.
May a fresh and exciting new conversation about how to best educate our children religiously commence!
With Liberty and Connectivity For All - Robert Wright
NOTE: Following up on his "Buliding One Big Brain" NY Times Opinionator blog post of last week, which I reposted here with an introduction and links to other books on the subject, Robert Wright further explores the implications of an emerging planetary superorganism comprised of nature, humanity, and technology. (For those interested in this subject, I highly recommend Wright's book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny and Joel deRosnay's, The Symbiotic Man: A New Understanding of the Organization of Life and a Vision of the Future.)
July 13, 2010
NY Times Opinionator Blog Post - original link here
With Liberty and Connectivity for All
By ROBERT WRIGHT
When you write a column suggesting that maybe the Internet is weaving the human race into a giant superorganism, you naturally wonder whether readers will think you’re crazy. So last week, having written that column, I checked out the comments section. “Yes,” wrote someone from Minnesota known as Greenpa, “the superorganism is quite real. As I’ve been saying for 40 years, to anyone I thought would not instantly run for the men in white with the big butterfly nets.”
Thanks for the reassurance, Greenpa. Happily, few commenters issued a call for butterfly nets. Indeed, some took the column seriously enough to get spooked by it. Thinking of us as mere cells whose needs are trumped by the survival imperatives of a global techno-organism “gives me shivers,” said the commenter DA06488.
Many others, far from thinking I’d gone off the deep end, encouraged me to venture beyond the shallows. Several recommended that I read the mystical Catholic theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who in the mid-20th century built a theology around the superorganism idea. He saw the emergence of a global brain (the “noosphere”) as part of God’s plan to lead humanity toward “Point Omega” — which, as best as I can make out from Teilhard’s dense, poetic writing, will be a kind of worldwide organic love blob. (Count me in!)
One commenter — the theologian Philip Hefner, who once wrote a pithy little book on Teilhard — suggested that a Teilhardian view could allay the fears of the DA06488s of the world, showing that we cells needn’t be enslaved or diminished by the superorganism. Teilhard, wrote Hefner, “saw that the evolution toward the interconnected brain is one pole of the dialectic, while the enhancement of the ‘cell’ is a co-equal pole… . One needs to have a metaphysic (or theology) that recognizes both elements of this dialectic. Perhaps you can write your next piece on this balancing of the two poles.”
Well, it’s been a slow news week, so why not? I mean, I can’t come up with a whole theology. But I can highlight a sense in which the emerging superorganism challenges us cells to reach greater moral and spiritual heights — and, in the process, to preserve our hard-earned freedom, thus leaving DA06488 little cause to get the shivers.
Teilhard’s milieu made him sensitive to the shivers problem. Back when he was writing, the superorganism metaphor was lovingly invoked by fascists, totalitarians and other undesirables, so he was attuned to its creepy vibes — in particular, the sense that to be a cell is to be enslaved by the powers that be. He insisted there was no cause for worry so long as people drew on their spiritual resources: “There need be no fear of enslavement or atrophy in a world so richly charged with charity.” Or, as he more aphoristically put it: “To say ‘love’ is to say ‘liberty.’”
Maybe we have something to say about the exact shape the superorganism takes, and how comfortable an abode it is.
I can’t honestly say I know what he meant by that. But there’s an interpretation of it that makes sense to me, whether or not it’s the kind of sense he had in mind. Indeed, as mushily optimistic as his equation of love and liberty sounds, I think that, recast in more modest form, it’s eminently defensible and crucially important. Here’s the way I’d put it: The less hatred there is, the more freedom there will be.
Evidence: The Decline of Christianity in America
NOTE: Davidson Loehr, who recently contributed a guest post, titled, Secular Religion, and I have been in communication re the decline of traditional religion and rise of secularism in America, as revealed by these USA Today charts and graphs. What follows was written by Davidson. It's an excellent summary of some of the data on this unmistakable trend. Also see the sermon of James A. Haught's that I posted a week ago, titled, America's Religious Decline & Secular Boom, as well as the late Michael Spencer's insider piece (Spencer was an evangelical) in the Christian Science Monitar titled, The Coming Evangelical Collapse (or his expanded version on the Internet Monk website).
Only about 18% of Americans attend any church regularly – 82% don’t.
From 2000 to 2005, overall church attendance declined in all fifty states. Even when broken down into subsets of “mainline,” “Catholic” and “Evangelical,” declines overwhelmed the infrequent small gains.
Growth or decline in percentage of population attending a church on any given weekend from 2000-2005[1]
State All Christian Churches Mainline Catholic Evangelical
1. Alabama -0.6% -3.3% +9.0% -0.9%
2. Alaska -7.9% -16.9% -13.7% -3.8%
3. Arizona -7.3% -17.6% -14.4% +1.5%
4. Arkansas -0.6% -7.1% +9.6% -0.4%
5. California -5.3% -13.2% -7.0% -1.8%
6. Colorado -3.3% -13.5% -9.2% +3.9%
7. Connecticut -13.4% -14.8% -17.4% +0.4%
8. Delaware -2.8% -6.4% +1.2% -4.1%
9. Florida -8.6% -13.8% -19.5% -2.5%
10. Georgia -4.8% -10.3% -8.8% -3.1%
11. Hawaii -0.0% -10.2% +0.3% +2.8%
12. Idaho -5.4% -16.9% -8.2% -0.5%
13. Illinois -7.2% -10.4% -11.4% -1.2%
14. Indiana -4.3% -10.3% -12.2% +1.6%
15. Iowa -6.1% -10.0% -10.6% +2.7%
16. Kansas -3.4% -8.5% -10.1% +3.8%
17. Kentucky -1.7% -4.0% -10.8% +1.2%
18. Louisiana -5.8% -6.0% -12.1% -0.6%
19. Maine -11.9% -10.6% -19.2% +0.2%
20. Maryland -4.5% -9.7% -9.5% +0.9%
21. Massachusetts -13.7% -9.7% -19.7% +4.8%
22. Michigan -5.4% -9.3% -9.3% -0.6%
23. Minnesota -6.1% -10.4% -11.8% +4.7%
24. Mississippi -3.3% -9.9% -0.5% -2.3%
25. Missouri -4.8% -8.3% -13.2% +0.1%
26. Montana -3.7% -15.3% -2.3% +0.9%
27. Nebraska -6.1% -10.3% -4.9% -4.1%
28. Nevada -2.6% -21.8% -4.2% +4.5%
29. New Hampshire -17.5% -17.4% -22.9% +1.1%
30. New Jersey -10.9% -7.8% -17.2% +2.3%
31. New Mexico -11.4% -17.1% -13.2% -8.0%
32. New York -10.7% -10.5% -17.1% +1.5%
33. North Carolina -3.8% -8.1% +9.4% -4.0%
34. North Dakota -6.6% -10.1% -6.3% -1.8%
35. Ohio -6.1% -10.1% -12.3% +1.4%
36. Oklahoma -0.2% -8.6% -1.7% +1.7%
37. Oregon -9.5% -14.1% -23.6% -2.9%
38. Pennsylvania -7.4% -10.5% -12.4% +3.4%
39. Rhode Island -14.1% -9.8% -17.1% +9.4%
40. South Carolina -2.5% -7.4% +1.2% -1.4%
41. South Dakota -10.3% -10.7% -20.4% -0.1%
42. Tennessee -1.9% -5.6% -5.0% -0.9%
43. Texas -5.6% -12.1% -8.3% -2.6%
44. Utah -3.1% -19.8% -0.5% +3.8%
45. Vermont -9.8% -8.9% -15.8% +12.7%
46. Virginia -3.0% -10.2% -3.4% +0.3%
47. Washington -3.4% -14.7% -6.3% +1.6%
48. West Virginia -7.9% -11.0% -27.9% +0.9%
49. Wisconsin -13.3% -8.4% -22.6% -1.1%
50. Wyoming -8.5% -19.3% -8.2% -3.3%
No religion in America has kept up with population growth for the past hundred years. And while about 25% of Americans are routinely reported to be Catholics, far fewer actually attend church regularly. Besides, American Catholics now account for only about 7% of Catholics in the world: Roman Catholicism has become primarily a Third World religion, which will bring out its more conservative theological strains.
Christine Wicker (a former evangelical) reports that Evangelical Christianity in America -- supposedly Christianity’s cutting edge -- is dying. She says the idea that evangelicals are taking over America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history, a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religious leaders, who understand how the media work and exploit them brilliantly.[2]
The facts are that about a thousand evangelicals walk away from their churches every day and most don’t come back.[3] As a whole, American Christians lose six thousand members a day – more than two million a year,[4] while the U.S. population increases by 1.2% -- currently 3.3 million people a year. The real figures are that fewer than seven percent of the country are really evangelicals – only about one in fourteen, not one out of four as they have claimed. Southern Baptist growth isn’t keeping up with population growth, and it hasn’t for years.[5] Baptisms are going down in every age group except children under five. And in the critical group of young adults ages eighteen to thirty-four, Southern Baptist baptisms fell 40 percent, from 100,000 in 1980 to 60,000 in 2005.[6] During these 25 years, the U.S. population grew from about 226,545,805[7] to 296,000,000,[8] a growth of over 30%. The Baptists would have had to baptize over 130,000 in 2005 just to stay even with population growth; they baptized fewer than half that number.
The fastest growing faith groups in the country are atheists and nonbelievers. In just the eleven years from 1990 to 2001, they more than doubled, from 14 million to 29 million, from 8% of the country to 14 percent. There are more than twice as many nonbelievers and atheists as there are evangelicals.[9] Since it’s hard to believe everyone would have the nerve to tell a pollster they were an atheist or nonbeliever, the real figures are almost certainly higher. You don’t read this in the media because there are no savvy or powerful groups pushing the story.
When asked to rate eleven groups in terms of respect, non-Christians rated evangelicals tenth. Only prostitutes ranked lower. In an almost comic side note, Wicker wonders how the prostitutes feel about that.
"God" in 400 words or less - by Bruce Sanguin
NOTE: Bruce Sanguin is a dear friend and colleague. He serves Canadian Memorial United Church of Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he leads his congregation in a progressive form of Christianity in their mission of "exploring the Christian tradition through an evolutionary model." Rev. Sanguin meshes his evolutionary perspective with Integral Spirituality (following Ken Wilber) and with Spiral Dynamics (following Don Beck). His three books are: Summoning the Whirlwind: Unconventional Sermons for a Relevant Christian Faith (2006); Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos: An Ecological Christianity (2007) and; The Emerging Church: A Model for Change and a Map for Renewal (2008). He is the coauthor of a curriculum, "Experiencing Ecological Christianity" (2008). I recently interviewed Bruce for my Evolutionary Faith podcast series. It was excellent! Check it out here. He was asked by his denominational magazine, The Observer, to write up his understanding of God in 400 words or less. What follows is his response.
In the song Lord of the Starfields Bruce Cockburn’s prays to his God: “O Love that fires the sun, keep me burning”. After 13.7 billion years, the love that fired the universe into being is still firing through an evolutionary process infused by the radiance of the divine. There was a time when I imagined myself over here looking out upon the universe outside of me. Today, this objective relationship to the cosmos is supplemented by a more mystical appreciation of a uni-verse.
I am also the presence of the universe in human form – the conscious face of evolution. When I choose to live as a manifestation of this fire, I feel most alive. My big self is as large as a cosmos and still expanding. This I call my soul.
The two fundamental characteristics of God are creativity and love. These can be distinguished, but not separated. Each is folded into the other. Divine creativity is expressed primarily in, through, and as the evolutionary history of the universe. The evolving cosmos, including life on our planet, is the incarnation of God’s deep creative desire for love to find its fullest expression. The story of evolution, then, is itself a sacred text, revealing God’s heart and intention. This implies a non-coercive bias to the evolutionary trajectory of the cosmos – toward an increase in love.
My core spiritual practice as a Christian is to situate myself in the same stream of divine/cosmic yearning that animated and took flesh in Jesus of Nazareth- and to do so until I become one with this impulse. When I am in this yearning, this blessed unrest to be the incarnational presence of God’s love and creativity, I experience the joy of deep purpose.
This is Christian discipleship, then, to be a student of the process by which the divine yearning allures us to incarnate this desire in the affairs of our life. To be in this divine desire is to be anointed (christified) with the same vocational arousal that animated Jesus of Nazareth. It is to undergo a fundamental identity shift, through the realization that we are occasions of the divine creativity and love coursing through the cosmos imbued with the purpose of birthing the “new thing” God is doing. Anointed and called to be the new thing that is eternally springing forth from the heart of God, we proclaim and enact the Kin-dom of God.
Thank God for the New Atheists!
I've been thinking, writing, and speaking quite a bit lately about my gratitude for the New Atheists. I see them as playing an indispensible role in helping the religions of the world evolve so that each can bless humanity and the larger body of life, now and into the future. Prophets historically were those who issued a word of warning to their people: "Come into right relationship with Reality—or perish!" Right relationship with reality today requires our species to grow from belief-based to evidence-based guidance and inspiration. To be clear, I thank God for the New Atheists not because I want everyone to be like them or think like them, nor because I consider them perfect vessels of divine wishom. Rather, I'm grateful to them because of how they are helping religious people (like me!) get real about God, guidance, and good news, and also because of how they are prodding religion and humanity to mature in two absolutely essential ways. (For those interested, I discuss these two ways briefly on this 3 minute YouTube clip, and more thoroughly in this 20 minute sermon.)
Re how I see the New Atheists playing a vital role in the evolution of religion, the resources I particularly recommend are the following text of my sermon on the subject, two online audio recordings (which bookend my nine month cancer saga), and a video of my sermon delivered on August 1, 2010 in Oklahoma City:
SERMON TEXT: Thank God for the New Atheists! (I deliver my sermons extemporaneously, so this is a template, not a word-for-word transcript. I suggest reading this sermon first, before expriencing any of the other resources that follow.)
PODCAST: "The New Atheists As God's Prophets" [September 6, 2009] - 25 minute podcast that I recorded just two hours after I learned that I had an especially aggressive form of cancer. I asked myself, 'If I have only one message left to deliver to the world, what would it be?' The answer that came: "Show people how the New Atheists are God's prophets."
SERMON AUDIO: "The New Atheists As God's Prophets?!" [June 6, 2010] - 20 minute recording of a sermon I delivered at People's Church in Ludington, Michigan, just days before learning that my cancer was in remission (after 6 rounds of R-CHOP chemotherapy last fall and having my spleen with large tumor attached surgically removed in February).
SERMON VIDEO: The New Atheists Are God's Prophets: [delivered 8-1-10 at Mayflower UCC in Okhlahoma City, OK]
________________________________________________________________________
For those wishing to explore this subject beyond the sermon text and audio/video resources above...
-------------- SERMONS --------------
Three of My Best Sermons [descriptions and audio links to my May 30, June 6, and June 13 sermons]
Evolutionize Your Life: Heaven Is Coming Home to Reality [June 13, 2010]
-------------- PODCASTS --------------
Supernatural Is Unnatural Is Uninspiring (When You Think About It) [June 8, 2010]
Idolatry of the Written Word [April 26, 2010]
------------- BLOG POSTS -------------
Getting REAL About God, Guidance, & Good News
The New Atheists Are God's Prophets (cross-posted on RichardDawkins.net, with lively discussion, here) [June 4, 2010]
Religion Is About Right Relationship with Reality, Not the Supernatural [May 31, 2010]
Supernatural Is Unnatural Is Uninspiring (When You Think About It) [June 7, 2010]
God Is a Divine Personification, Not a Person [May 28, 2010]
Idolatry of the Written Word [April 24, 2010]
Atheists Promote Bible Reading?! [January 27, 2010]
The Salvation of Religion: From Beliefs to Knowledge [January 28, 2010]
------------- INTERVIEW -------------
The New Atheists as Divine Prophets - interviewed by Mike Jarsulic on "The Infidel Guy" podcast
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