Text Ticker: God is not Dead
Matt Sutton at RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY has a welcome reply to Jon Meacham’s Newsweek cover story on “the decline and fall of Christian America.”
In 1966, Time magazine made waves by proclaiming that “God is Dead.” Now Newsweek is trying to do the same thing. Last week’s cover story is entitled “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” by editor Jon Meacham. The story is based on the American Religious Identification Survey (which we have blogged about below). “This is not to say that the Christian God is dead,” Meacham writes, “but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.” As much as I appreciate Meacham’s interest in religion and the fact that he sells a helluva lot more books than me, his articles never seem to be as original or as profound as he thinks they are. While numbers of adherents are changing, I am not yet convinced that religious conservatives are losing their ability to mobilize their troops or to raise the money they need to influence the political process—especially since the survey shows that the mainline denominations are faltering, not evangelical churches. In fact, we might read the survey the other way. While Christianity is becoming more polarized itself, conservatives are becoming increasingly dominate.
Sutton is, like me, a UCSB religious studies alum, which may explain this particularly Californian reflection:
I have long wondered what makes any non-human entity Christian. Is there a Christian hamburger? My vote would have to be for In-N-Out burgers (monster style) since they put Bible verses on the bottoms of their Coke cups.
