Explanashunday!
Yesterday I started what I hope will be an ongoing thing — the presentation without comment of interesting stats I’m uncovering during the research for this book. I call it Staturday.
When Staturday’s stats are perplexing, as yesterday’s apparently were, I’ll follow with Explanashunday.
Two claims from yesterday’s set raised eyebrows. Here are the stats and the explanations:
1. That 98% of Mormons believe non-Mormons can go to heaven
It’s true — but with a twist. Mormon theology holds that everyone will be resurrected and most of them will be received into one of three “kingdoms of glory.” Not everyone gets into the best heaven, but almost everyone gets something. (The only exceptions are the Sons of Perdition, those who explicitly reject the Holy Spirit. They go to the “outer darkness.”)
2. That a majority of “Nones” believe in heaven
If you use the word “Nones” as a synonym for “nonbelievers,” you would have been flummoxed to see 87 percent of them talking about heaven as if such a place exists.
Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up: “None” is not a synonym for “nonbeliever.” Not even close.
The “Nones” is a category almost devoid of useful meaning, in my humble. It’s a pollster’s dustbin containing everyone who is not affiliated with a specific denominational religious label. Many of these folks have nothing else in common belief-wise. Atheists and agnostics are in there, as are the “spiritual but not religious,” many believers in a universal spirit, and a huge number of people who believe in God and Jesus, read the Bible and pray…but don’t see themselves as part of any particular denomination.
That’s how you get a survey result in which a lot of Nones sound more like nuns.
The confusion is largely our fault. Atheists and humanists are eager to show a big, straddling presence in the culture, so we grab that 19.6 percent and run with it. I’m sure I’ve been sloppy with that term myself at times. Time to stop that.
STATURDAY: Tickets to Paradise
Each Saturday I’ll post interesting stats I’ve come across in the research for my current book on the secular/religious mixed marriage, mostly without comment. Here’s the first.
(Putnam and Campbell, American Grace, pp. 535, 537)
Of those who believe that someone outside their own religion can go to heaven, the following include the nonreligious in that number:
Overall: 56%
Evangelical Protestant: 35%
Mainline Protestant: 62%
Catholic: 66%
(Pew Forum Religion & Public Life Survey, Aug 2008)
(Confused about the Nones and the Mormons? See tomorrow’s post.)
Meeting in the cafeteria
An ongoing series of five-minute short posts while I’m writing a book on the secular/religious mixed marriage.
Part of the message of Chapter 1 is that labels can be incredibly misleading. When we hear about an atheist married to a Catholic, for example, we tend to see God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything married to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. How’s THAT gonna work?
Well THAT probably isn’t. But look beyond the antitheist books and the Vatican doctrines to the individuals in the marriage, and things start to make more sense.
The Catholic Catechism says a Catholic is morally obligated to attend Mass on Sundays, that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” matters of “grave depravity,” that birth control is “intrinsically evil,” that “divorce is a grave offense against the natural law” and that a “remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery,” and that abortion is without exception a “moral evil” that is “gravely contrary to the moral law.”
Since these are diametrically opposed to the views of most atheists, it would seem a bad match is in the works. But look instead at the actual opinions of individual Catholics and a different picture emerges.
78 percent of U.S. Catholics say a person can be a good Catholic without going to Mass every Sunday, and 77 percent attend less than weekly, including 32 percent “rarely or never.” 82 percent of U.S. Catholics consider birth control to be “morally acceptable,” and 69 percent say it’s OK to differ from the teachings of the church on divorce and remarriage. And American Catholics closely mirror the general population on abortion rights and are actually more progressive in their attitudes toward LGBT rights than the U.S. average.
Despite what the more orthodox might say about them, these folks do not consider themselves any less religious or less Catholic: 77 percent of U.S. Catholics say they are proud to claim that identity, even those who depart dramatically from the official doctrine of their church.
Other denominations yield similar disparities between doctrine and individual belief. And the gap is growing.
On the secular side: Though atheists lack a central set of doctrines, it’s not difficult to see that strong antitheism in the secular partner would tend to make a secular/religious marriage less successful. But as a recent University of Tennessee study shows, antitheists make up only about 14.8 percent of the population of nonbelievers.
In short, neither partner is likely to be embracing the far end of his or her spectrum. I call this “meeting in the cafeteria.”
Beyond the Pat ‘n’ Madalyn marriage
An ongoing series of five-minute posts while I’m writing a book on the secular/religious mixed marriage.
Had a good time with Chapter 1 today — a look at the changing nature of both religious and secular identity in the U.S. Neither one means quite what it did 30 years ago at the individual level, which is why the secular/religious marriage has a much better shot at success now.
Despite the culture war bullets whizzing over their heads, there’s more common ground and common experience between the average religious believer and the average nonbeliever than ever before. The data are stunning, including a much greater overlap in social attitudes, political opinions, values, and daily experience than was true even a generation or two ago. Those things bode well for any marriage, and it’s no different for the secular/religious ones.
Our conceptions of what it means to be religious or irreligious are based mostly on the extreme examples of each, even though each extreme is a relative sliver of its worldview. If you think of the secular/religious marriage as Madalyn Murray O’Hair and Pat Robertson…well, it’s no wonder so many of you offered a one-syllable word for that kind of marriage: “Short.” I imagine it would be. But Pat ‘n’ Madalyn is a cartoon with very little to say about the people actually living these marriages.
Yes, there are plenty of secular and religious people who should not be married to each other. But plenty of others willingly manage the difference, sometimes easily, sometimes not. This book is for them.
In the beginning
An ongoing series of five-minute posts while I’m writing a book on the secular/religious mixed marriage.
I’m working on the intro right now, which starts with a bit about my own wedding to Becca, 22 years ago this month. If major religious differences doom a marriage, ours really should have been toe-tagged at the altar. Our religious differences were arguably about as major as they could get — a committed Christian believer marrying an equally committed atheist.
I’d identified as an atheist for 15 years at that point. I read the Bible critically at 13, argued theology with classmates in high school, and debated preachers in the plaza in college. I was a vocal critic of many aspects of religion and still am.
Becca was a born and raised Southern Baptist. I’d recently witnessed the adult baptism ceremony that confirmed her in the faith. Her stepfather, uncle, and grandfather were Baptist ministers. Her parents met at a Baptist college. She went to church every Sunday and planned to continue doing so once we were married.
So why was I crying tears of joy as she came down the aisle? Why was she smiling so enormously as she approached me? And why are we still very happily married 22 years and three kids later?
The short answer is that people are more interesting than their labels. The long answer is this book.
I’m not just looking at secular/religious marriages that have worked, but also those that struggle or fail. My hope is to figure out what accounts for the difference.
(REMINDER: If you’re in a secular/religious marriage, please take the survey and submit your stories!)
Ambi-omni-vari-mari-reciprocidocious
An ongoing series of five-minute posts while I’m writing a book on the religious/nonreligious mixed marriage.
One more post on terms, then on to content and process.
I had the pleasure of lunch with Greta Christina a few weeks ago. At one point she asked how my search was going for a word to describe the religious/nonreligious mixed marriage. I told her I was stumped — that despite a lot of really smart and thoughtful input, I couldn’t seem to find something that completely worked — not too obscure, cumbersome, unpronounceable, unfocused, or too broad (including other types of mixed marriages) or too narrow (excluding some types of religion and/or irreligion).
For one or more of these reasons I’ve considered and rejected Ambitheistic, Contratheistic, Intracredo, Reciprocal, Binuptial, Matri-omni, Omniunion, Variage, Varimarriage, Variwedded, Matrimerge, Marimerge, Faith/apistos, Quantum, Quarky, Heterognostic, and Cantilevered marriage, among many others. (Actually, Contratheistic is still slightly in the running. It would be perfect if it were one syllable shorter.)
I loved Mixistential and Maradox, but ultimately left both of them weeping at the altar. Just a wee step too obscure. Most of the slash-names (Super/Natural, A/theistic) are confusing when spoken, which is a problem for interviews and audiobooks.
Secreligious marriage is delicious…and no. But a similar variant, Relicular marriage, still appeals to me. Rhymes with “vehicular.” But the fact that I have to add that counts against it. I’m likely to simply use “secular/religious marriage,” despite those who prefer the narrower def of “secular” referring to church/state separation. (Oxford Dictionaries favors the broader def.)
Greta made an interesting historical point — that it’s a lot like the search for a more concise general term for “significant other.” The term partner is now so familiar that most of us can’t even recall a time it
DING.