American: Christian Nation?

America the Christian Nation—a claim often made and often debated.  Whether it should be or not is a subject for another day.  What being a “Christian nation” means is also for another day.  Today, I want to look at the findings of a recent Parade Magazine poll on American religious beliefs and practices.  It is my opinion that the findings of that poll put to the thesis that Americans are a religious people and because of the culture influence of Christianity in America, American religion is expressed in what are, broadly speaking, Christian language and concepts.  However, that does not mean that the majority of Americans are practicing Christianity.

Consider the positive statistics: 69% claimed to believe in God.  77% claim to pray outside of religious services.  51% say they pray daily.  This would suggest that the majority of Americans are religious.  However, when you consider that only 15% of those who pray are motivated by a belief that God expects it while 67% are motivated by prayer bringing comfort and hope, you have to ask whether God is the focus of the praying or whether self-interests are the objectives?  Certainly, those of us who pray receive a great deal of comfort and hope from prayer.  Likewise, one should not pray out of a legalistic obligation to commune with God.  Yet, my observation is that much of what goes on in American religion, including the church, is centered on the self rather than on the God we serve.  Much of what I hear from many preachers is self-help with references to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible salted in periodically.  Remove the religious references and it is really just another version of any motivational speaker.

When asked about participation in organized religion, 70% said they did not participate at all or participated only sporadically.  50% rarely or never attend religious services.  30% claim to attend services once a week.  Christine Wicker, the author of the article presenting the poll findings, points out that academic researchers who do actual head counts believe only about one-half of those who make such a claim are attending weekly.  If so, only about 15% of Americans attend religious services weekly.  As I reflect on this, it is my speculation that given some adjustment for regular attendees who are out each Sunday due to illness, work, travel, etc., it might well be that on a given Sunday morning, only 10-12% of Americans are in church.  Some parts of the country will have higher or lower averages due to regional cultural patterns I suspect.

I know that some argue that organized religion and true faith are not the same thing.  Indeed, I agree with that.  However, when it comes to quantifying religious practice, organized religion is much easier to measure that faith.  Yet, from the Christian standpoint, the biblical imperative is to “not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.”  Therefore, when some 85% of Americans are doing just that, the only two conclusions I can see is that either 1) the majority of Americans are not practicing Christianity and/or 2) a good number of Christians are openly disobeying a directive of scripture.  Regardless of one’s definition of a “Christian nation,” it is hard for me to apply that designation to a country where eight out of every ten are routinely not in church for worship. Add to this observation that 27% of Americans do not practice a religion at all, 5% say they are atheists and 7% claim agnosticism. 

The real crux of the matter might be revealed in two other statistics from the poll.  59% of Americans say all religions are valid.  Only 24% say religion is the most important thing in their lives.  This clearly indicates that America, for all the claims by some that it is a “Christian nation,” is a nation of people who do not accept the claim of Jesus to the “…the way, the truth, and the light—no one comes to the Father except through me.”  In addition, the demands of total obedience to the Kingdom of God with Christ as Lord of our lives are not part of the America equation.

In light of this, perhaps we need to stop claiming America is a “Christian nation” and to begin seeing America for what it really is: a mission field.

The findings of this poll were published in the Christine Wicker article “How Spiritual Are We?”  Parade October 4, 2009, pp. 4-5.  It is available online at http://www.parade.com/news/2009/10/04-how-spiritual-are-we.html