Religious Confusion

One friend on Facebook has linked to this article – I’m surprised more haven’t (I have a somewhat diverse group of Facebook friends!).  

It’s eye-catching, attention-grabbing, and completely misleading.  Particularly the little verbal asides (“look how widespread Islam is”) that further mislead everything.

Perspective?  73% of Americans identify themselves as Christian of one form or another (including movements that many Christians don’t consider Biblically-Christian, such as Mormons).  How about all those Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews?  Collectively they make up 4% of the adult US population (all of this according to Wikipedia).  There are three times more people who are not religious or undecided than there are Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Jews – combined.  

What does this mean?  In the mainstream media you’d understandably assume that a good half of our population or more is non-Christian.  Yet the reality is far from it.  Mainstream media does a good job at making Christians feel as if they are the minority, as if they are isolated and vulnerable and there aren’t many like-minded folks out there.  While we can debate (easily and for a long time!) how like-minded Christians may or may not be in our country,the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of US adults consider themselves Christian.  

We aren’t alone.  You aren’t alone.