: views from the Hill

Friday, August 18, 2006

And after the flood they settled somewhere over the rainbow, in Triomphe

Harper's carried Bill McKibben's The Christian Paradox last August.

excerpt:

Ours is among the most spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth. Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish. It is true that a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place saturated in Christian identity.

But is it Christian?


Interesting article.

In the article McKibben mentions a survey that found that 12% of American adults think Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

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