The future of faith

"Secular" Europe and "religious" America -- who's really out of step with the rest of the world?

Participants are asked to answer "yes" or "no" in response to this statement: "Religion is very important to me."

About six out of 10 in the United States say "yes," noted political scientist Luis E. Lugo, who has directed the research center since 2004.

"There is not a place in Europe, even in Eastern Europe, that comes close to that kind of level of religious commitment," he said, during a religion-news seminar in Washington organized by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life. Even Canada, he noted, now "looks like Europe on this question."

This rift between the old world and the new has existed for decades. Lugo said that when he discusses these statistics with Europeans they say, "Ah! See, we knew it. The United States is a very strange place. It's just full of religious zealots."

...What happens when Lugo adds statistics from Latin America, Asia and Africa to his "salience question" chart?

The numbers are stark. In Guatemala, 80 percent of those polled said religion was "very important" in their lives. That number was 77 percent in Brazil and 72 percent in Honduras, but only 39 percent in Argentina.

And Asia? The "yes" total was 95 percent in Indonesia, 92 percent in India, 91 percent in the Philippines, but only 12 percent in Japan. And Africa? Senegal checks in at 97 percent, Nigeria is 92 percent and the numbers only declined to 80 percent in Angola.

Lugo said the typical response by Europeans to these numbers could be summed up in one word -- "Whoa!" Then there is nervous laughter.

The bottom line: When it comes to weighing the role of religion in world affairs, Europeans who worry about America have to ask: "Who looks strange now?"

"The world as a whole is even more religious than the United States," Lugo added. "So it is not the United States that needs explaining, in many ways, when it comes to religion, it is Europe that needs to be explained. Why this secular continent ... surrounded by a sea of religiosity?"

Thought Europeans may shake their heads at such studies, I find it amazing the continent once known as Christendom has forgotten man was made to worship his Creator. That impulse will inevitably find expression. The question is whether it will be in pursuit of poor substitutes for the Living God.