January 2015
Jim Denison (Denisonforum.org) As a boy, I recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of every school day. I’ve said these words thousands of times: “One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” How true are they today? Are we “one nation under God”? Fifty years ago, America’s religious landscape was dominated by Protestants and Catholics. But as Diane Eck shows in A New Religious America, the U.S. is now the world’s most religiously diverse nation.
This diversity can be traced back to 1965, when Lyndon Johnson signed a new immigration law that led to a significant surge of immigrants. As a result, Muslims in America now outnumber Jews, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians. In addition, our nation has seen a tremendous upsurge in those with no religious affiliation. In 1948, 69 percent of Americans were Protestants; today their number has fallen to 48 percent. Catholics are stable, growing from 22 percent to 24 percent. But those who have no religion have grown from two percent to 15 percent, the largest number in
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history. And the “unaffiliated” are apparently our future: three times more Americans are becoming “unaffiliated” than those leaving that category to join religious organizations. Nearly one in five men have no formal religious affiliation. Seventy-one percent of the unaffiliated are under the age of 50. Are we “indivisible”? Partisan politics in America are more heated than ever. For both Republicans and Democrats, the number with a highly negative view of the opposing party has more than doubled in the
last 20 years. Most of these intense partisans are convinced that the other party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.” Social issues reveal the ideological chasm in our nation. For instance, 28 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstance; 21 percent believe it should be illegal in all circumstances; and 50 percent believe it should be legal only under certain circumstances. While 55 percent of Americans now support same-sex marriage, 42 percent are still opposed. Forty-two percent
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The Ambassador
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