78.4%

This just in from the wire, 78.4% of Americans profess they are Christian. After an exhaustive and comprehensive study of more than 35,000 people a study aptly named the Pew Report has been released that focuses on the status and trends of religion in America. I first noticed the report as it came across the wire, but decided to actually hit the Pew Forum and poke around the results myself. The site is actually quite interesting, and if you are truly curious, you can get pretty granular on reviewing the results. For instance, something I found interesting was the map. It surprised me that Texas had only 31-40% of its citizens claiming to be affiliated with the evangelical protestant tradtition. I’ve lived in Texas more than once and I mean it when I say, in Texas it is God, football and cheerleading in that order, and yet it has less than than half of the population attending an evangelical church? Perhaps it reflects the trend of immigrants (illegal or legal) into Texas. The report stated that twice the amount of immigrants were aligned with the Roman Catholic Church. Since our neighbors to the South are very steeped in the Catholicism it would explain that. As fierce as the competition is between Texas and Oklahoma (think UT and OU) maybe it will spur evangelicals to get busy in Texas (Oklahoma has 51-100% of its citizens affiliated with an evangelical church)? However, that’s not the focus of my post here though.

The main numbers that interested me were the ones that covered the overall scope of those in America who called themselves “Christian”.

-Evangelical Protestant Churches = 26.3%

-Mainline Protestant Churches = 18.1%

-Catholic = 23.9%

-Historically Black Churches = 6.9%

Checking my math skills (and using the computer’s built in calculator) that adds up to just over 75% of the population professing they are Christians. This is indeed interesting to me because if that is/was true it seems that we would have a better moral alignment in our society these days. This is a frustrating post for me, because as a human I have opinions, cynicism and a sinful nature that desires to spew forth (and I continually battle with), but as a Christian I am reminded I need to approach these thoughts with gentleness and love. Here’s the thing though…how is it that a country that has such a high percentage of its citizens claiming to profess Christianity continually allow the 16.1% of unaffiliated individuals dictate the direction and moral values of this country?

Perhaps what’s not reflected here is something I blogged about earlier. Perhaps it is because folks are confusing themselves with being alligned with a religion instead of being a Christian. If you listen closely you’ll often here people talk about going to church on Sunday but there is no utterance of any part of their spiritual belief after 1230 Sunday afternoon (or 1200 midnight if you are Catholic). Now that’s not being shortsighted. I understand there are people who are very dedicated and open about being Christian. But they are always the minority. It has been said that in a church 20% of the people do the giving and working while the other 80% just attend on Sunday morning. So I wonder…is this 78.4 (rounded to 80) accurately reflecting the morals, calling, and faith works of this nation? I would venture to answer no.

If it was we would have:

-Prayer in school

-Abortion illegal

-Lesser amounts of government and corporate corruption (think Enron and such)

-Lower crime rates

The list could go on. But I’m out of time for writing today. Claiming to be Christian should reflect our values in who we vote for and what our government does and how the laws are written. Those who argue about separation of Church and State are generally ignorant of the history and reasons for our Founding Fathers composing that into the architecture of our Constitution. It wasn’t to protect the government from the church…but visa versa. It was the King of England who nationalized the church and then could impose his will onto the people. It was designed to protect the people from having the government dictate what they will believe. We have perverted that notion to the point now we are willing to claim we are a Christian nation, but will not put into action our beliefs. Perhaps these men say it best:

It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible. ~ George Washington

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ~George Washington

“ The duties of men are summarily comprised in the Ten Commandments, consisting of two tables; one comprehending the duties which we owe immediately to God-the other, the duties we owe to our fellow men.” “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed…No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.” [Source: 1828, in the preface to his American Dictionary of the English Language] ~Noah Webster

“ He who made all men hath made the truths necessary to human happiness obvious to all… Our forefathers opened the Bible to all.” [ "American Independence," August 1, 1776. Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia] ~Samual Adams

If 78.4% of the country is claiming to be Christian then 78.4 percent of our actions taken by the government should reflect that as well.

Just my thoughts.

~Kryptikos

Isaiah 9:6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”