Skeptical Faith

Google Image I often mention the “nones” in these blogs. Those are people – mostly under the age of 40 – who enter “none” when asked on surveys which religion they profess. Surveys during recent years have shown a dramatic increase in their numbers as well as a decrease in church attendance and church membership, especially among the mainline Protestant denominations (Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.) Now comes t he new "2020 Census of American Religion" from the Public Religion Research Institute. Perhaps its most surprising finding is that the steady rise in the percentage of Americans who have no religious identification has slowed and even reversed. The increase in proportion of religiously unaffiliated Americans had occurred across all age groups but had been most pronounced among young Americans. In 1986, only 10 percent of those ages 18–29 identified as religiously unaffiliated. In 2016, that number had increased to 38 percent but declined in 2020 t...

Google Image In the 1970s, a comedian named Flip Wilson turned the phrase, “The devil made me do it,” into a national buzz phrase. It seemed funny at the time because “Geraldine,” one of his funniest characters, used it interminably to excuse her bad behavior. But does the devil exist, and should people searching for God worry about him/her?   My short answers are, “I don’t know,” and “No.” Back when Wilson coined the buzz phrase, a hefty majority of Americans believed in the devil. Even in 2001, according to a Gallup Poll, 68 percent said they held such a belief. The most recent poll data I could find is from a 2016 Gallup poll in which that percentage was 61.   An Article of Faith? From the Catholic perspective - one that I believe is shared by the mainline Protestant denominations - belief in the devil, or Satan, is not among the “12 articles of faith” that are part of the Apostles’ Creed. That creed does say Jesus “descended into hell,” but Catholicsay.com. says th...

Google Image Some conservatives wouldn’t be caught dead reading the New York Times. Some liberals wouldn’t watch Fox News if their lives depended on it. More and more, we seem to be caught in a morass of conflict, seemingly arising from seeing the same reality in two startlingly different ways. And a lot of it, I believe, has to do with a lack of trust, which is both the cause and effect of the conflict. And it’s not just in politics. The lack of trust is present in families, churches, businesses, the military, the police – in virtually every sector of life. We increasingly judge each other according to our wildly different perceptions of reality. How We Feel David Brooks, the New York Times columnist who was considered a conservative until the Trump era, believes it’s not so much a matter of what we think we know as how we feel, arising from an irrational distrust of one another. “The collapse of trust, the rise of animosity — these are emotional, not intellectual problems,” h...

Google Image A few years ago, New York Times best-selling author, Timothy Egan, set out on a journey to find his faith. He detailed his journey in a book published in 2019 called, “A Pilgrimage to Eternity, From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith.” Egan was a Catholic in the sense that Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant. In other words, he “practiced” his faith occasionally at best. But, late into middle age, he decided he wanted to clarify his beliefs and clear up his doubts. His method: Walk from England to Italy along an ancient pilgrim’s route called the Via Francigena. Similar to the more famous El Camino de Santiago - the popular, 475-mile trek across northern Spain to the city of Santiago de Compostela  - the Francigena is about 1,243 miles. Roughly 1,200 pilgrims a year walk the Francigena compared to an estimated 200,000 who walk the El Camino. Finding a Spark A history buff, Egan wanted to walk where countless pilgrims walked in the Middle Ages. He visited s...

Google Image Following trends, I believe, is a natural human tendency. I can imagine ancient peoples following the hunting and gathering techniques of their neighbors and changing, albeit slowly, when they see the majority of their neighbors adopting new techniques. Contemporary clothing fashions, photos and commentary show, have changed from generation to generation. Now they seem to change at least every other year. But does “what everybody else is doing” have any real bearing on what is true or false? Isn’t it possible that vast numbers of people accept or reject ideas, not because they’re better or worse ideas, but simply because they want to conform to what others are doing and believing? Nazi Germany comes to mind. Vast numbers of Germans accepted the lies of Adolf Hitler – about the “inferiority” and “deceitfulness” of Jews, about “racial purity,” about the necessity of war and a governmental iron grip on German life – with little dissent. Did the fact that an apparent maj...