Redefining Religion in America

By MARY ROURKE

June 21, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

With almost no fanfare, the United States is experiencing its most dramatic religious transformation in this century. What has been a nation steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition is fast becoming the most spiritually diverse country in the world.

“More religions are being practiced in the United States than anyplace else,” said Paul Griffiths, professor of philosophy of religions at the University of Chicago. At least 200 denominations coexist here, and the number continues to grow.

The impact promises to be as far-reaching as the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-1800s. Brought about by immigration, geographic mobility, intermarriage and a growing disenchantment with some of our oldest religious institutions, this shift is redefining the nation.

The United States is now home to almost 4 million Muslims, five times as many as there were in 1970. Close to half of them are African-Americans. At this rate, by 2000, Islam is likely to outpace Judaism, which has leveled off at 5.5 million members.

Two million Americans identify themselves as Buddhists, a tenfold increase since 1970.

Hindus have grown from 100,000 to 950,000 in the same period, Sikhs from 1,000 to 220,000.

“Cultural pluralism is changing America’s religious life,” said Diana Eck, a professor of world religions at Harvard University. “It is making our spiritual tradition much richer and broader.”

While the United States remains predominantly Christian--85% of Americans claim this faith--the same forces that have broadened the nation’s religious base are remaking many of Christianity’s institutions.

Only about half of Americans now die in the denomination they were born in. More than three-quarters claim a religious identity but have little to do with any organized religion.

During the last quarter of the 20th century, the country’s fastest growing religious communities have been Pentecostal, Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Once the churches that served the rural South or the remote West, they are now outstripping such mainstream Protestant congregations as the Presbyterians, Episcopalians and United Methodists, whose numbers continue to drop.

Losses for the United Methodist and the Presbyterian U.S.A. church would be even greater if not for the recent addition of Asian immigrants. Korean Americans now account for close to 1% of the Methodist and nearly 2% of the Presbyterian U.S.A. church.

With 60 million adherents, Roman Catholicism remains the country’s largest denomination, but there, too, expansion has been largely dependent on immigration. Latinos make up more than 30% of the membership. At the same time, the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s second-largest denomination with 16-million members, has seen its ethnic congregations, particularly Asian and Latino, grow by more than 50%. They make up about 3 million members of the church.

None of this accounts for the most startling challenge to America’s oldest religious structures: the rise of the nondenominational megachurch. In 1970, there were 10. Now, there are close to 400, with California home to 79, more than any other state.

“The old-line churches, by that I mean Presbyterian, Episcopal and Congregational, won’t disappear soon,” said Wade Clark Roof, a religion professor at UC Santa Barbara. “But their position of dominance won’t hold. The old line is becoming the sideline. The direction is away from history and doctrine, toward a generic form of religion.”

The ‘Quest Generation’

Melissa Latt is an Episcopalian who converted to Judaism when she married and sometimes participates in a Native American drumming circle for women. At Christmas she and her husband decorate a tree. They celebrate Passover but not Easter. Friday evenings they light the Shabbat candles before dinner.

“I don’t really follow the faith,” Latt said. “It’s the traditions that are important.” Now in her mid-30s, she sees herself as a spiritual “hunter” who has trouble with the bureaucracy she associates with churches and synagogues. “I think there is no one religion,” she said. “Spirituality comes from the heart.”

With so many new elements influencing the nation’s spiritual life, a growing segment of Americans have started to custom-blend their own faith. Although the numbers remain small, these home-grown innovations are exerting a disproportionate influence on American religion.

Combining Jewish and Native American traditions may be unusual, but other mixtures are far more common. There are, for instance, millions of mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics who regularly attend Pentecostal-style services.

Roof, one of the first to identify this trend, refers to spiritual explorers like Latt as members of the “Quest Generation.” They are, he says, more interested in experience than dogmas. “The gap is huge and growing between the religious hierarchy and the popular ways people have of believing and practicing. The boundaries aren’t quite there the way they used to be.”

The unconventional ways of these modern seekers have put them at the center of a fierce debate--one that cuts to the core of the country’s religious identity. Do they represent a passing curiosity or a sea change? Is there anything more to the quest than spiritual narcissism? Should traditional religions adapt, or resist?

“It used to be that people died in whatever religion they were born into,” said Martin Marty, a historian of American religion at the University of Chicago. “Today, you’re much freer to shop.” Defecting from one church to another once carried the emotional baggage of abandoning home; now, such loyalty carries far less weight. Marty likens America’s religious life to a spiritual marketplace.

Other scholars think such imagery belittles a profound shift. “I strongly object to the shopping metaphor,” said Harvard’s Diana Eck. “We are becoming a nation shaped by more than one tradition.”

Rodger Kamenetz embodies the new religious hybrid. His 1995 memoir, “The Jew in the Lotus,” made him the leading voice for those who combine Buddhism and Judaism. (So many now do that they have inspired the ironic moniker JUBU.) Kamenetz, who directs the Jewish studies program at Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, trekked to the Himalayas in 1990 to further his study of Buddhism. He still observes Jewish holidays but he does not belong to a synagogue or claim any denomination.

“People who have faith don’t necessarily have a lot of beliefs,” he said. “If religious traditions are paths to God, the question becomes, ‘Is this tradition leading me closer’ ”?

Hybrid religion, though, offends many because it ignores fundamental contradictions between one belief system and another. After all, Judaism embraces a single God; Buddhism embraces none. Christianity teaches one life, death and resurrection; Hinduism teaches reincarnation.

“What is at stake is the identity of a religious denomination,” said Lanier Burns, chairman of the department of theology at Dallas Theological Seminary in Texas. “Christ is the center of Christianity. When you cease to have a Christ center you are not Christian. You make your choices and you have to live with the consequences.”

The debate goes far beyond scholarly circles. Within Judaism, a strong backlash has already broken out. So many Jews are concerned about preserving their identity that Orthodoxy is attracting many people under 35.

For the 10% to 15% of American Jews who are Orthodox, marriage outside their denomination is discouraged, even to Reform or Conservative Jews.

By some estimates, those who identify strongly with the faith they were born into, but do not belong to any church or synagogue, make up the fastest-growing religious group in the country.

Demographers refer to them as the “unaffiliated,” a term also used for registered voters who do not join any political party. According to a recent Gallup poll, 96% of Americans believe in God and 98% pray regularly, but only 29% attend a religious service every week.

“The unaffiliated represent a huge number of people,” Marty said. “They may be very tenacious about their denomination and fight like crazy over it, but they see church as only one means of gathering people of like mind into a community.”

In the midst of this religious revival, perhaps in reaction, atheism is thriving. Close to 1 million Americans now say they do not believe in God. That is nearly five times what it was 30 years ago.

While the meaning of the word remains the same, the guidelines are changing. Atheism’s old standard bearers--Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Frederick Nietzsche--claimed that God is dead, or never existed. Now many nonbelievers hold to a third choice: God is suspect.

Touring with his book, “God: A Biography,” scholar Jack Miles found that some people see atheism as part of faith, religion, or both. They represent another form of hybrid--the atheists in the pews. Their logic, Miles explains, goes like this: “If I may doubt the practice of medicine from the operating table, if I may doubt the political system from the voting booth, if I may doubt the institution of marriage from the conjugal bed, why may I not doubt religion from the pew?”

Growth of Megachurches

On weekends, Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside attracts up to 20,000 churchgoers. The low-slung brown stucco building looks like a small-town auditorium. Clear glass and modern music have replaced stained glass windows, pipe organs and monumental crosses. Elvis and Oprah find their way into the sermons. The pastor rides a Harley-Davidson.

The evening service has the informality of parents night at the local school. From the velvety benches, the congregation takes it all in with their arms around one another, comfortable as if they were in their own living room.

No invention poses a greater challenge to mainstream Protestant religion than the nondenominational megachurch. During the past 30 years, approximately 600,000 left their Protestant church for a megachurch, according to David Roozen, director of the Center for Social and Religious Research in Hartford, Conn.

Among the earliest churches, Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa was founded in 1965 and attracted refugees from the counterculture. Living collectively in “Jesus houses,” the reformed hippies who flocked to Calvary were looking for help to get off drugs and fit into middle-class society, while still maintaining what USC religion professor Donald Miller calls “their direct encounter with the sacred.”

“Religion is a word they hate,” said Miller of typical megachurch members. “They like ‘spirituality,’ because it represents something the culture has sucked out of them.” Miller studied five such communities in Southern California for his book, “Reinventing American Protestantism.”

Borrowing directly from marketing, most megachurches target their audience: Hippies in the ‘60s, yuppies in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Generation X-ers in the ‘90s. The audience might vary but the rules are the same: Avoid a central governing body, blur the lines between ministers and members, slice away elaborate doctrines, profess unbending “traditional” values and package it all for a consumer-oriented society. Harvest Christian Fellowship offers 57 programs for its members. They include marriage counseling, child care and “the Bible in business” study group.

“This church is about honoring biblical principles and meeting the needs of people,” said the Rev. Greg Laurie, who founded the church in 1974. “We want to be relevant to the culture, using Scripture to teach people how to conduct their lives. It’s not that I’m anti-denominations. But politics happen in denominations. Leaders can seek to mold a congregation into a certain form and hinder the work God has planned for that congregation.”

The ‘Others’ Enter the Mainstream

Demographers once dismissed them as “other”--Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostals were on the margins of mainstream Christianity. The Evangelical movement was only a bit more visible, despite its 51 million members, in part because most evangelicals were contained by one or another mainstream Protestant church.

At the turn of the new millennium, though, these “others” are the most vigorous sector in all of American religious life. As membership in the once dominant Episcopal, Presbyterian and Congregational churches declined at the rate of 20% to 40% during the past 30 years, Mormons grew by 90%, Jehovah’s Witnesses by 162%, and the Pentecostal Assemblies of God Church by 267%. In the same years the evangelical movement crossed the 77-million mark.

Moderate Evangelical Christianity--of the sort identified with Billy Graham--is now closer to mainline religion than is the liberal Protestantism that backlighted such ‘50s icons as the novels of John Updike and the golf courses of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency. The reversal accompanies a shift in the prevailing winds--from liberal toward conservative Christianity; from ambiguous intellectual probing to explicit moral teachings; from an interpretive reading of the Bible to a literal one; from a low-key approach toward attracting new members to the public promotion of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Two men galvanized the issues: Jerry Falwell with his campaign to promote the Moral Majority and Pat Robertson through the Christian Coalition. Reacting to what they viewed as the debasement of secular life--be it legalized abortion, the gay rights movement or the ban on school prayer--they rallied those segments of society who felt excluded and overwhelmed by the cultural revolution of the ‘60s.

But it would be a mistake, says Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, the second-largest evangelical seminary in the country, to view evangelicalism in purely political terms. “It is a renewal movement. Many people--including Roman Catholics--are identifying themselves as evangelicals because they are for traditional Christianity. It’s not a full theological or spiritual system as much as it is a set of correctives.”

For most of this century, Pentecostalism was seen as a subculture of the Protestant Church. While it is still a movement within Protestantism (and increasingly Catholicism), there are distinct Pentecostal denominations. The two largest, the Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God, include more than 8 million members. In addition, millions of “charismatic” Christians in the Pentecostal movement maintain membership in a mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic church.

“The liberal Protestant churches are addressing feminism and homosexuality,” Mouw said, “but these are not the issues of a two-income family with violence, drugs and promiscuity surrounding their children. Pentecostals address the primordial spiritual needs of ordinary people.”

Pentecostalism differs from fundamentalism in its belief that everyday life invites mystical experiences. No Christian community restores this lost dimension with quite the same gusto. “Pentecostalism matches most people’s genuine belief in the supernatural,” said Vinson Synan, dean of divinity at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. “It fills a hunger for the miraculous that transcends anything intellectual. It crosses all social and economic lines.”

The church of the rural poor has become a life raft for the middle class. Pentecostalism has also found an enthusiastic audience among Latino immigrants. “Over the past 20 years, about 15% of American Hispanics joined other churches,” said Father Allan Figueroa Deck, executive director of the Loyola Center for Spirituality in Orange. “The perception is that a large number are going to Pentecostal churches. The middle-class churches have difficulty relating to the poor and struggling--and the Catholic Church has become increasingly middle class during this century.”

Greater Exposure Is Having Impact

Scholars trace America’s religious diversity to 1654 when Gov. Peter Stuyvesant of New Amsterdam, now New York City, allowed a ship of Brazilian Jews to land in his colony, although it had been created by and for Dutch colonists who worshiped in the Reform Church.

“From then on we’ve been making room for people,” said the University of Chicago’s Martin Marty. “They might arouse suspicion at first, because they’re not like us, but over the long run they fit in. Every new religious group has gone through it.”

Thirty years ago it was considered bold of Christians and Jews to explore each other’s faith. Now, interfaith councils and prayer services include Hindus and Zoroastrians. It is not uncommon for imams, ministers and rabbis to take part in civic ceremonies together. With the explosion of Internet programs and the proliferation of cable television, religions that were once considered exotic are now easily accessible. There are tens of thousands of “religion” sites on the World Wide Web.

In 10 years, UCLA has doubled its religious associations on campus, from 20 to 40, with the notable addition of Asian religions. Educators across the country report a similar expansion in such clubs. At the same time, colleges are showing a dramatic rise in religion majors. “The students’ appreciation of religious diversity is more vibrant than ever,” said Joseph Tyson, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, where religion majors have increased fourfold since last year.

Greater exposure is having an effect. The fascination with Zen meditation has encouraged the revival of Christianity’s contemplative prayer. Jewish groups meditate using a Hebrew mantra instead of the Pali of early Buddhism. Muslims hold religious education classes on Sundays, although Friday is their most sacred day of the week. American Buddhist temples across the country belong to a network called “Buddhist Churches of America,” imitating the Protestant Council of Churches.

But for every sign of acceptance, there are the icy details of intolerance. FBI crime statistics from 1996 cite 1,401 religiously motivated hate crimes, a 53% jump in five years that can’t be attributed just to improved reporting methods. Churches, synagogues, mosques and temples are the usual targets. But who can point a finger from inside America’s houses of worship, when Sunday morning services still tend to be the most segregated hour of the week?

No religious group has been more riven over the issue of segregation than the Baptists. The National Baptist Convention, whose three main denominations include 14 million members, is the largest black religious group in the country. The Southern Baptist Convention, now 4% black, issued an apology to African Americans in 1995 for its role in perpetuating racism--the organization supported slavery in 1845 and some of its leaders actively resisted the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Open apologies have not reconciled differences between the organizations or brought them together as one church.

The challenge of integration will become even more sensitive as new immigrants take their place in the public square. The country’s founding documents all but predicted that tolerance will never come naturally. It has to be taught, questioned, resisted, litigated and learned. Only in the past 30 years have the most virulent strains of anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism been substantially reduced.

As the U.S. goes through another of its periodic religious revivals, the country is once again faced with its religious complexity--a complexity that has no precedent in the history of nations. “We have diversity,” said Harvard’s Diana Eck. But the question is: “Will we get to pluralism?”

NEXT: Diversity in Los Angeles.

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Religious Affiliation in the U.S.

This map shows the distribution of the largest Christian denominations in the United States. Each county is coded for the denomination with the most estimated members.

Baptist: 50%

Baptist: 25%-49%

Catholic: 50%

Catholic: 25%-49%

Christian evangelical: 50%

Christian evangelical: 25%-49%%

Latter-day Saints: 50%

Latter-day Saints: 25%-49%

Lutheran: 50%

Lutheran: 25%-49%

Methodist: 50%

Methodist: 25%-49%