James Petras
Introduction
The opening long decade of the
21st century (2000-2012) has been a period of repeated and profound economic
and social crises, of serial and prolonged wars and declining living standards
for the vast majority of Americans. How have people responded to this crisis? No
large scale, long term, socio-political movements have emerged to challenge the
bi-partisan dominent classes. For a brief moment the “Occupy Wall Street”
movement provided a platform to denounce the 1% super-rich but then faded into
memory.
Questions arose whether in the
midst of prolonged hardship people would turn to religion for solace, escape
into spiritual pietism. The question this essay addresses is whether religion
has become the ‘opium of the people’ as Karl Marx suggested or whether religious
beliefs and institutions are themselves in crisis, losing their spiritual
attraction in the face of their inability to resolve the everyday material
needs of a growing army of impoverished, low paid, unemployed and contingent
workers and a downwardly mobile middle class. In other words are major
religions growing and prospering in our time of permanent economic crise and
perpetual wars or are they on the downslope part and parcel of the decline of
the US Empire?
According to the latest data as of
2008 the biggest religious group is Christianity with 173.402 million members
representing 76% of adult population followed by Judaism with 2.680 million
representing 1.2% of the adult population; followed by Eastern religions 1.961
million and representing .9% Muslims 1.349 million representing .6% of adults. The
second most populous group after the Christians are those adults who state they
have ‘no religion’ 34.169 million or 15%.
|
Adult
Population and Religious Affiliation 1990-2008
(in
millions and percentages)
|
||||||
|
|
1990 Adults |
2008 Adults |
Numerical Change |
1990 % of Adults |
2008 % of Adults |
Change in % of Total Adults 1990-2008
|
|
Adult Population
|
175,440
|
228,182
|
30.1%
|
|
|
|
|
(All) Christian
|
151,225
|
173,402
|
14.7%
|
86.2%
|
76%
|
-10.2%
|
|
(All) Jewish
|
3,137
|
2,680
|
-14.6%
|
1.8%
|
1.2%
|
-.6%
|
|
(All) Eastern
|
687
|
1,961
|
185.4%
|
.4%
|
.9%
|
.5%
|
|
(All) Muslim
|
527
|
1,349
|
156%
|
.3%
|
.6%
|
.3%
|
|
No Religion
|
14,331
|
34,169
|
138.l4%
|
8.2%
|
15%
|
6.8%
|
The dynamic trends over time show
a declining percentage of adults who are Christians: between 1990-2008 they
dropped from 86.2% to 76%; Jews have declined from 1.8% of adult population in
1990 to 1.2% in 2008 and Eastern religion is growing from .4% of adult
population to .97% of population. Likewise, the percentage of Muslims in the
adult population has grown from .3% in 1990 to .6% in 2008. The percentage of
non-religious adult population has increased from 8.2% in 1990 to 15% in 2008.
While both practioners of
Christianity and Judaism, as a percentage of the adult population, have
declined, there is a sharp divergence in terms of numerical change; between
1990 and 2008 the number of Christians has increased by 2,218 million while the
number of Jews has declined by 457 thousand. Judaism is the only one of the
major and minor religions to decline in absolute numbers.
The combined number of Eastern and
Muslim religious affiliates now exceeds Judaism by 630,000 believers about 30%.
Jews today represent only 1.2% of the adult US population compared to 1.5% for
Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. The gap between Christians and non-religious US
adults has narrowed over the past 20 years: from 86.2% to 8.2% in 1990 to 76%
to 15% in 2008. Among Christians the biggest decline is among ‘mainline
protestant churches’ (Methodists, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian/
Anglican and United Church of Christ) from 32.8 million in 1998 to 29.4 million
in 2008; and among “unspecified Protestants” from 17 million to 5.2 million. The
biggest increases are among “non-denominational Christians” rising from 194,000
to 8.03 million believers in 1990-2008, unspecified Christians from 8.1 million
to16.4 million and Pentecostals up from 5.7 million in 1990 to 7.9 million in
2008. Catholic and Baptists grew in numbers but barely held their own as a
percentage of the adult population.
Analysis of Religious
Trends in Political-Economic Context
Contrary to most observers and
pundits, the economic crisis has not led to an upsurge in religious memberships
or identification – the search for ‘spiritual consolation’ in a time of
economic despair. The mainline churches and synagogues do not attract or even
keep membership because they have little to offer in material solutions to
their members in time of need (mortgage foreclosure, bankruptcies,
unemployment, losses of savings, pensions or stocks). Contrary to some pundits
even the more otherworldly, apocalyptic, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Born Again
Churches while increasing their number have failed to attract a larger
percentage of the adult population over the past 20 years; in 1990 they had
3.5% of adults and in 2008 4.4% an increase of .9%.
The crises decade has had several
major impacts – it severely weakened religious identity with any specific
denomination, it increased religious uncertainty and vastly increased the
number and percentage of adult Americans who are no longer religious. Between
1998 and 2008, the percentage of adults in both categories doubled from 10.5%
to 20.2%; the numbers increased from 18.34 million to 46 million. It would
appear that most of the ‘non-religious’ are drawn from former mainline Christians
and Jews.
The rise of non-religious adults
between 1990-2008 cannot be related to greater education, urbanization and
exposure to rationalist thought which has more or less remained the same over
the two decades. What has changed is the rising discontent over declining
income among wage and salaried workers, the vast increases in inequality, the
perpetual wars and the public discredit of the principle political and economic
institutions – Congress is viewed as negatively by 78% of Americans, as are banks,
especially Wall Street. The religious institutions and religious faith is
increasingly seen as irrelevant at best and complicit in the decay of American
living standards and workplace standards. Despite the dramatic increase in
‘non-religious’ Americans close to 75% still claim to be believers of one or
another version of Christianity.
The crisis in Judaism is far more
severe than even the ‘mainline Christian’ churches. Over the past 20 years the
number of adult Jews has declined by about 15%, over 450,000 former Jews ceased
to identify as such. Some of the political economic causes for the flight from
Judaism may be similar to the Christians. Others may be more specific to Jews: over 50%
of Jews marry outside of the synagogue with non-Jews, cause and consequence of
‘defection’. Others may convert to other religions – Oriental or Christian. Some
Jewish neo-conservative rabbis and ideologies rant about the threat of
‘assimilation’ being the equivalent of ‘genocide’. Most likely most former Jews
have become ‘non-religious’ or secular and some of the reasons may vary. For
some, Old Testament bloody tales and Talmudic rulings do not resonate with
modern rational thought. Political considerations may also contribute to the
sharp decline in self-identifying Jews: the ever tighter links and identity of
Israel with Jewish religious institutions, the Israeli flag waiving and
unconditional support of Israeli war crimes has repelled many former
parishioners, who quietly retire rather than engage in a personally costly
spiritual struggle against the formidable pro-Israel apparatus embedded in the
inter-locking religious-Zionist networks.
Conclusion
The religious crises, the decline
in belief and institutional affiliation, is intimately related to the moral
decay in US public institutions and the precipitous decline of living
standards. Among Christians the decline is incremental but steady;among Jews it
is deeper and more rapid. No ‘alternative religious’ revival is in the horizon.
The more fundamentalist Christian groups have responded by becoming more
politically involved in extremist movements like the Tea Party demonizing
public spending to ameliorate social inequities or have joined Islamophobic pro
Israeli movements – precisely as increasing number of ex-Jews depart!
The secular or non-religious adult
population has yet to organize and articulate a program in contrast to the
fundamentalists, perhaps because they are too disparate a social category – in
terms of socio-economic and class interests. ‘Not religious’ tells us little
about what is the alternative. The shrinking percentage of religious believers
can have several outcomes: in some cases it can lead to a hardening of doctrine
and organizational structures ‘to keep the faithful in line’. In others it has
led to increasing politicization, mostly on the extreme right. Among Christians
it means insisting on literal readings of the Bible and anti- evolutionism;
among Jews, the shrinking numbers are intensifying tribal loyalties and more aggressive
fundraising, lobbying, and unconditional support for a “Jewish State”, purged
of Palestinians, and more punitive witch-hunts against critics of Israel and
Zionism.
What needs to be done is a
movement that links the growing mass of rational non-religious people with the
vast majority of American wage and salaried workers, experiencing declining
living standards and the rising costs (material and spiritual) of imperial
wars. Some religious individuals and even denominations will be attracted to such
a movement others will attack it for sectarian and political reasons. But as a
non-religious morality links individual and political crises to social action,
so can the political community create the bases for a new society built on
secular needs and public ethics.
