Because I like to keep myself so up to date on the news, I dusted off last week's Newsweek and started flipping through the pages to look at the pictures. I stopped on a page with a picture of Wolverine on it and was thinking to myself how cool it would be to have claws. On that same page was an article entitled "Modernity's Worldwide Belief Boom" that was about a new book, God Is Back, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.
God Is Back is about how "as the world grows more modern, it also becomes more religious." It talked about how globalization, politics, democracy, and the economic crisis are positively impacting people's perspectives on religion. People are using religion as "a shield against the modern world" and as "a way to get ahead." Micklethwait and Wooldridge belive the majority of people are religious and are devout in their faith.
I disagree with Wooldridge and Micklethwait. Most of the people that I know either do not believe in God or do not care enough to attend mass regularly. Maybe they have surveyed more people than I have but it seems like this new generation is caring less and less about God and turning more towards facts and reason. An example is from Peter Hessler's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Hessler visited China with the Peace Corps. He went to mass every Sunday and the only people there were very old women. Also, he noticed that the younger generation did not care about traditions or religion.
God is not back.
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Many of the people I know are either turning to God or to reason in these times, but nowhere really in between. Many people turn to religion in difficult times because they don't have hope that anyone in their world can fix what's wrong or alleviate the problem. Others turn to logic because the facts make more sense of the chaos.
ReplyDelete-JenniferDylan
I believe most generations of youth have the same perspective on religion. I think that most people don't learn to appreciate religion until they become older and wiser. I bet the old people seen in churches weren't very religious when they were young either.
ReplyDelete-Storkafork
I agree with what you said about many young people not believing in God and caring less about religion. Many of the people I talk to don't practice their professed religion often. It only seems that when they are in trouble that they want to turn to God for something.
ReplyDeleteOur generation is taking religion and even God for that matter for granted.
In harsh times, I have observed that people tend to rely on faith more often; and in significant numbers nowadays.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I disagree with several points in this discussion, most of all with the original Newsweek article. I read the article from Newseek, and based on the interview, I couldn't understand how John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge could make their claim that "God is back." There are more atheists in the world than there are Hindus, Buddhists, or Animists; behind Christianity and Islam, non-believers make up the largest "belief" group. Industrialized societies across the globe are showing a decline in religous belief and attendance. Japan's Buddhist and Shinto temples are in serious financial trouble because very few Japanese worship there anymore; a large number have had to close as a result. Western Europe (actually, all of Europe, but the Eastern half is excused on the grounds that it's still recovering from Communism) has low rates of Church attendance, and huge portions of the popoulation in all of those countries don't believe in God. Newsweek already covered the United States; South Africa has the highest percentage of atheists of all the countries in Africa, and Australia has been showing a decline in religious participation for decades. Besides, how is religiousness to be measured? Numbers don't convey the deepness of one's faith or the quality of the believer. And how is quality to be measured? The authors said that people are becoming more religious to shield themselves from the modern world and to get ahead in life; how do reactionary conservatism and self-serving materialsm express religious conviction and belief? Perhaps there is an increase in religious belief in the world as a whole, but the authors of the book seemed to present a shoddy argument, at least in the interview.
ReplyDeleteIn the same way, how could any of us possibly judge the depth of religious convictions of people all over the world without any evidence?
It's true that the Peter Hessler saw Chinese youths abandoning their faith, but he said in the introduciton that his book was merely an account of his stay, not an overview of all of China. Actually, Christianity is on the rise in China, and may constitute a sizeable minority by the middle of the century. In any case, China has never really had a popoular theistic belief system; the Chinese weren't religious to begin with, so one can't really speak of a decline.
Also, I don't understand why people are only able to turn to either reason or faith. Why not both? Are believers automatically required to abdicate their ability to reason and think? Can't I pray and use logic? I mean, the Catholic Church's whole belief system is based on philosophy and natural law, and the Church has always been one of the largest patrons of scholarly and scientific activities.
The quote you used that sums up John Micklethwait's book generalized the world too much. It is definitely not safe to say that the "world" is becoming more religious just because the economy is bad and globalization is taking its toll. These circumstances are completely dependent on the culture. Your example is also inaccurate with regards to Chinese culture, because Catholicism is not the predominate faith. It would be like finding a Sunni Mosque in downtown Benicia.
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