[Erin] A people without theology or geometry

Have you seen any of the reports on the Pew's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey?

From the second link, the USA Today article:

Pew released demographic data in February from the survey, which was conducted in May through August 2007. This new installment focuses on the questions asked about Americans' religious beliefs and practices, spiritual experiences, and views on society and politics.

This analysis, based on a questionnaire that never mentions Jesus, portrays a nation of "free-flowing spirituality," says Pew Forum director Luis Lugo, who finds the declining adherence to dogma "stunning."

"You no longer have an alignment of affiliation, belief and behavior. Instead we find complexity, and diversity not only between religious communities but within them, as well. We find a high level of comfort with this diversity," says political scientist John Green, a senior fellow with the Pew Forum.

When Green and Lugo factor in Pew's February findings that 44% of adults say they've switched to another religion or none at all, Lugo says, "You have to wonder: How do you guarantee the integrity of a religious tradition when so many people are coming or going or following ideas that don't match up?"

How, indeed? The short answer is that you don't. When few people take the time to learn what their religions teach, instead feeling comfortable with a cafeteria-style religiosity that lets them accept what's individually pleasing and reject anything that isn't, you're already on an inexorable road to the abandonment of religion as anything more than one among many spiritualistic feel-good options for the American religion consumer.

And that is part of the problem--religion, properly understood, isn't a consumer product. But it gets treated that way, especially in America, where one's "brand" of Christianity is seen as saying more about one's consumer tastes than about any strong adherence to a set of doctrines which one believes to be true, or even more generally, as having anything to do with truth at all.

So while Americans may describe themselves as religious, that self-label doesn't amount to much:

Neither are people likely to return to the denominational fold, says political science professor Alan Wolfe, director of the Boise Center for American and Public Life at Boston University.

"Overall people say they are religious, but they have no command of theology, doctrine or history so it's an empty religiosity. They don't call themselves spiritual, however, because that word has New Age baggage," says Wolfe, who finds "a very forgiving quality" to this non-sectarian, no-mention-of-sin view.

"Americans are deeply suspicious of institutional religion," says Green. Some see "religion as about money, rules and power and that is not a positive connotation for everyone."

Adults under 30 are further from strict religious adherence than their parents and even though other studies show they cycle back to religion at key moments such as marriage or rearing children, those spirals are smaller and smaller, says Tom Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Society. It is part of the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, which has measured religion and society for decades through the General Social Survey.

"We may see that unlike the past, people are not going to return to the church they left or to any one at all," says Green.

Get that? We've lost our command of theology, doctrine and history. And probably geometry, too, if we only knew it.

And that's why our endless moral debates devolve into shouting about individual tastes and consumer preferences--because those are the only non-material values our culture still believes in, or recognizes as valid.