R. Bennett Furlow

Ross Douthat has an interesting article in this months The Atlantic entitled Crises of Faith. Primarily the article discusses the slight rise in secularism in the U.S. while comparing it to the increase of religion in the public square in Europe. There is one point he makes that echoes something I have been thinking about for some time. To quote Douthat:

The secularism that has come of age in the Bush era, by contrast, seems to have a greater mass appeal. What’s more, where the earlier secularism tended to cultivate a self-conscious neutrality toward religion, the new secularism is defined by an unabashed hostility toward traditional faith—or at least toward any attempt to mix such faith with politics.

In a paper in the American Sociological Review, Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer announced the startling fact that the percentage of Americans who said they had “no religious preference” had doubled in less than 10 years, rising from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population. This unexpected spike wasn’t the result of growing atheism, Hout and Fischer argued; rather, more Americans were distancing themselves from organized religion as “a symbolic statement” against the religious right.

It appears that religion has become a dirty word and, in large part, this is due to the Bush administration and its policies. So many people are angry with the president and link him to religion that peoples negative feelings toward him are rubbing off on faith in general. I have no problem with secularism. I also have no problem with faith. I actually see most religions as generally positive ( yes I am aware that religion can be used for any number of evil purposes as well, I just happen to feel there is more good to come from religion than bad).

My point is that it is truly unfortunate that Bush is such a polarizing figure and that the religious right in America is so unaccepting of others that they have tainted the idea of faith as a whole.