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The Court's Phobia of Religion
| Article
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10941 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1993 |
7,065 Words |
| Author
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Russel Hittinger
Russell Hittinger is associate professor in the school of
philosophy at the Catholic University of America in
Washington, D.C., and adjunct research fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute. |
Literary scholar Harold Bloom asserts that "no Western nation is as religion-soaked as ours, where nine out of ten of us love God and are loved by him in return." According to one compilation, Bloom's assertion is not sheer hyperbole. George Gallup, Jr., reports that 86 percent of Americans view religion as an important part of their lives, and of that number, only 3 percent believe that they are unloved by God.
But fewer than one-half of those Americans who profess being divinely beloved take the trouble to go to church on a regular basis--about 40 percent, according to Gallup. As the New York Times recently reported in a statistical portrait of the "typical American," the average American is a 32-year-old Protestant woman of German ancestry who believes in the existence of the devil (but not ghosts or witches) and in the Genesis account of human origins rather than evolutionary theory. She did not attend church during the last week, however. According to other studies, a clear majority of Americans favor voluntary prayer in public schools but do not themselves regularly engage in public worship. Moreover, almost exactly the same numbers of Americans agree that there ought to be a high "wall of separation" between church and state as believe that government ought to support religion, provided that it does so evenhandedly.
We are dealing with a nation of nearly 250 million people. Polling date give only a fuzzy picture of the state of religion in America. At best, the numbers indicate that despite the secularization of culture, religious beliefs and practices stubbornly persist at relatively high levels, especially in comparison with western European countries. Although most Americans feel beloved by God, it is unclear whether their theological conceptions are orthodox or heterodox. That there is less commitment to regular public worship than to personal belief might mean that American religious sensibilities are very subjective and privatized, or it might mean that denominational affiliations are volatile--which shouldn't surprise anyone, given the fact that Americans move, on average, about every three years. This past decade, millions of Americans apparently were satisfied to be the congregants of television churches.
With respect to the relationship between religion and government, it is hardly surprising that Americans seem to want both a high "wall of separation" and governmental promotion. They want government to assist everything from the creation of income to the protection of endangered animal species--except, of course, when such state aid goes against their particular interest. Moreover, we might suppose that
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