Vice President Joe Biden might be notorious for sometimes speaking before he thinks, but many will agree that he couldn’t have said it better when it came to abortion and the role of religion during last night’s Vice Presidential debates. In short, he proclaimed that in a secular and diverse society, religion should not extend beyond one’s private life. Hear, hear, Joe!
It took going abroad and multiple courses on American culture for me to understand that the United States is religious state. Having grown up in liberal Chicago, where religion was more of a hobby, it never occurred to me that religion could take on a more powerful role in the dictation of policy and peoples’ lives.
Religion, albeit a mixture of the civil and the organized, has always played a strong role in our society. Going back to our beginnings, a group of disgruntled settlers sought to escape, amongst other complaints, religious persecution by setting up in the “New World”. Nevermind those who were, in fact, already there, it would be our land because it was our Manifest Destiny from God. We were the “Chosen People” who were to cultivate the land on Protestant values and instill this sense of individualism and moral currency for generations to come. Bear in mind that we are also taught that the settlers and Native Americans linked hands and ate together for the “first” Thanksgiving.
This religious undertone has propelled Americans through the tumultuous early years of the colonies and on through today. According to a Gallup Poll from last year, 60% of the US population would consider themselves religious. This places us at the more religious end of the developed national spectrum, especially bearing in mind that this is a 13% drop from 2005. In fact, with the exception of Italy and Malaysia, the United States is more religious than any country in Western Europe and Asia. This is especially interesting when considering that there is a strong correlation between a country’s GDP and their amount of religiosity – the poorer the country the larger the role religion plays and vice-versa…
This has slowly begun to change. Pew recently came out with a new study on religion and the results show that the United States might be coming around on the less-than-religious feelings felt my the majority of the developed world. The results show that the Millennials and the generation right before them have a decreasing allegiance to organized religion. According to the report, “in the last five year along, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all US adults.” If you look at only those under 30, this number jumps up to over 30%. What happened to the church?
There are two prominent ideas. The first is that it is not so much that we are less religious, rather that it is more acceptable to “come out of the religious closet,” as Richard Dawkins encourages. The other is that Americans have increasingly become disillusioned with the idea of organized religion, as they have come to see the institutions as more concerned with money and political power. Americans, particularly the younger generations (as Pew cites), have grown frustrated with the inclusion of religion in public policy, especially considering that there is to be a “wall of separation” between the church and state.
Oddly enough, despite these findings and Madison/Jefferson’s “Wall”, the amount of “god” in this election season has been so prevalent that the Democrat Party had to add the word “God” into their party’s platform before their National Convention. On the Republican side, we have seen a new round of attacks on issues such as abortion, contraception, and scientific research, as the religious have largely agreed that their religion deems it immoral and so should the rest of us. Those on the religious right are quick to remind their more secular countrymen that their undisputed freedom of religion allows them to try and ban many standards we (especially women) have come to rely on. On the other side, us secular folk are thinking that well, yes, they are entitled to their freedom of religion, that freedom is impeding upon our right to steer clear of the more fundamental aspects of religion, if any religion at all.
So what are we to think? We can assume this. There is a strong generational war happening right now. As the younger generations are steering away from organized religion (though many remain “spiritual”), many of the older generations are ardently defending the America they grew up in. The face of America has changed and that is not always palatable. We must acknowledge that it is and begin to adapt to the inevitable progression that this will embody. The traditionally strong views associated with religion are slowly eroding and being replaced by social standards largely championed by younger generations.
If we look to history as an example, we will see that Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights, and other progressive movements that were initially despised by the older generations were pushed through and gradually acquired the comfort of being the “status quo.” I believe that many progressive platforms we see today (gay rights, scientific research, women’s reproductive rights, etc.) will also acquire the same normalcy as the incoming generations are coming of age to take the reins of the nation.
In such a diverse nation we must be free to adopt our own creed and conscious. If not, then we really are no better than our Islamist peers that we so eagerly criticize. Biden had it right last night; religion and politics must be kept separate to ensure each its own purity.
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