A recent
Associated Press poll demonstrates why I am so skeptical of any claim that there is consistency to religious beliefs in the United States of America. 70% of poll respondants say they "know God really exists" & have "no doubts about it." No doubts ever? All the great Christian theologians acknowledge doubt as a natural human trait & an active component of faith. It's part of what we are. Even Jesus, who professing Christian believe was "fully human," wrestled with doubts. This poll question is an example of how we fool ourselves by providing an answer we think we
ought to give rather than an honest one. & while 84% of those polled said religion was "very important" in their lives, 31% indicated their religion was something other than Catholic, protestant, Jewish. Muslim or Buddhist. Surely that 31% is not comprised entirely of Hindus, wiccans & animists.
& what of the Christians? Including all "protestants" under one heading is tremendously deceptive. Within protestanism, even on the religious right Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson are preaching competing, incompatible doctrines, & they are just the most obvious examples among dozens.
Catholics, along with many millions of other "religious" Americans, have good reason to be suspicious of politicized evangelical & fundamentalist protestants, whose attitudes about America's spirituality are at the core narrowly sectarian even when they masquerade as ecumenicists. Which is, I suppose, why 64% of those polled answered that religious leaders "should not try to influence government decisions." Most I am certain don't believe this in any doctrinaire way; these people are just reacting against those highly visible "prophets" who claim their divinely-annointed "moral clarity" entitles them to influence government decisions way out of proportion to their actual number of followers.