God with a Million Faces

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

The insights of modern science may also be pushing many away from traditional faiths. According to science writer Chet Raymo, author of Skeptics and True Believers (Walker, 1998), one of the problems of religion today can be traced to the disconnect between old and new models of the cosmos. 'All one has to do is compare the little, earth-centered, egg-shaped cosmos of Shakespeare with a Hubble Deep Field photograph,' he says, referring to the countless galaxies now visible through the Hubble Space Telescope. 'And yet so much of our traditional religion remains grounded in the old cosmology.' The call for a synthesis of science and religion has been heard again and again, but a truly compelling new mythology that's both poetic and scientifically rigorous has yet to appear.

The spread of pastiche spirituality is only part of a bigger picture of religious change today. We're living in what observers call an age of extreme 'religious pluralism.' The same cultural forces that have driven many to leave their inherited faiths have also affected others who have stayed. Almost all the major denominations now contain internal movements that are trying to transform them. Many traditionalists, of course, are fighting to block reforms. Syncretism, the formal term for the blending of rituals and beliefs from different faiths, is a dirty word to conservative worshipers, dreaded like a plague of locusts -- and maybe as hard to stop. New hybrid modes of worship are constantly appearing, from the new Christian megachurches, whose mammoth services can resemble arena rock, to tiny garage religions hardly bigger than the average band.

The latest edition of the Encyclopedia of American Religions lists more than 2,100 religious groups, a figure that has almost doubled in 20 years. They range from the most straight-laced forms of Judaism and Christianity to UFO cults awaiting deliverance by flying saucer. The influx of Asian religions is clearly mirrored in the Encyclopedia, and so is the recent rapid rise of Islam, which other sources put at about 3.5 million adherents. With about 750,000 believers, including 100,000 American converts, Buddhism is said to be the country's fastest-growing faith.

The statistics ultimately yield a portrait full of contradictions. One certainty is that we live in a very religious country -- in fact, the United States is generally considered to be the most religious country in the Western industrial world. Though nine out of ten American adults believe that God exists, there's growing disagreement about how God should be described. God is Michelangelo's bearded old man in the Sistine Chapel. God is pure intelligence. God is cosmic energy. God is a Goddess. At least eight out of ten American adults consider themselves to be Christians, but most are hazy about the basic tenets of their faith. The pollsters say that Americans pray more often than they have sex, but no one knows how many consider sex and prayer to be the same thing.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print