“More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, ‘I’m everything. I’m nothing. I believe in myself,’ ”
Barry Kosmin, co-author of the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).
Kosmin goes on to say that “Today, religion has become more like a fashion statement, not a deep personal commitment for many.”
Other interesting findings:
15% of Americans claim no religion at all.
The percentage of the population claiming to be baptist has dropped almost 4% since 1990.
The percentage of Muslims, while still slim, has doubled, from 0.3% to 0.6% of the population (though analysts suggest those numbers significantly undercount the adherents to Islam).
Oh, and nearly 2.8 million people now identify with Wiccan, pagan or “Spiritualist” groups.
Do you think this could be a result of a theology that today emphasizes personal testimony/narrative over the biblical story? Personal testimonies have always seemed very postmodern to me.
Absolutely. The privatization/individualization of the faith is central to all this. And when you throw in the erroneous view of the “priesthood of all believers” (“just me and my Bible”) and the Romanists’ exaltation of tradition over the Scriptures, with postmodernists’ “I create my own reality”, you’ve got makings for some real confusion.