American Religion

As Harold Bloom pointed out in The American Religion, our fellow Americans make up a theologically inventive group.

What other country has created so many new religions ranging from the not successful Shakers to the very robust Mormons and Pentecostals? Plus Unitarians and Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Unitarians and others.

Bloom, who is a non-observant Jew, says Marx was wrong because in America, religion is not the opiate of the masses, it is the poetry of the people.

And it appears that people are writing their own poetry in the individualistic way that Americans approach almost everything.

This has a bearing on "churchless Christians" that many standard brand denominations are trying without much success to lure back.

There are two reasons for polling data indicating that a majority of Americans believe in God but fewer and fewer are attending churches.

First, there is the hodge-podge lodge of pick and choose beliefs, most notably found among the so-called cafeteria Catholics. But there may be a lot of cafeteria Protestants as well. There is also cross-cultural mix and match going on among different religions, such as Zen Catholics. It may drive purists nuts but welcome to the American religion.

Second, those of folks in congregations may be underestimating how difficult it is for an outsider to visit their church. A standard-brand Protestant church I visited earlier this year has a form visitors need to fill out during the service: name, phone, address, email etc., which in my humble opinion is a lot of data to collect on someone who is just visiting. There was also a microphone passed around where visitors were pressed to stand up and introduce themselves. I found this very over-the-top intimidating. To say the least I never went back. I don't know if this is common practice in standard brand denominations but it felt like a marriage proposal on a first date: "While we wait for our entree would you like to marry me?'

So while churches may believe they are inviting us "churchless Christians" back into their homes, they may not be making us feel all that comfortable. Beyond that, some churchless Christians may never fit into an existing church structure because they are inventing their own unique American religion, and that is just a fact of life in these United States.