http://olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Commentary/SeaOfFaith.htm
From the article:
Beginning this week, homosexuals in Britain can sign up for "civil
partnerships," giving them most of the tax and legal benefits of marriage.
Near the head of the line for this new arrangement were Sir Elton John and
his boyfriend, who made a low-key ceremony out of it. My current issue
(dated Dec. 3) of The Economist has a brief report on all this, with a
self-congratulatory little note at the end about why this change in the law
has raised so little fuss in Britain. (The Economist is libertarian on
social issues.) After suggesting some minor reasons, we get this: "Most of
all, though Britons may be no more tolerant of each other than other nations,
they are certainly more secular. So religious passions have played little
part in the debate."
This is a routine rhetorical flourish in reports of this kind. I imagine
most American conservatives, including most nonreligious ones, would respond
to that with some thought like: "Well, thank goodness we are not that
secular. It's our religiosity that gives us ballast, preserves our cherished
institutions from unnecessary change, and keeps us on the straight and
narrow."
Is this true, though? So far as the straight and narrow is concerned, the
notion that religious belief is a social good does not actually bear up very
well under examination. India is much more religious than Japan, but much
worse behaved. (Homicide rates 0.034 per 1,000 vs. 0.005; adult HIV/AIDS
infection 0.9 percent vs. 0.1; etc., etc.) Similarly within these United
States. George Barna's surveys show that African Americans are the most
religious group in U.S. society, Asian Americans the least religious, white
Americans intermediate. The statement "My religious faith is important to
me" draws an affirmative response from 52 percent of Asian Americans, 68
percent of whites, 72 percent of Hispanics, and 89 percent of African
Americans. However, statistics on various kinds of social dysfunction and
misbehavior-crime, illegitimacy, drug addiction, AIDS infection-vary in
precisely the opposite way, Asian Americans having, and causing, the fewest
problems, African Americans the most. (Barna's surveys turn up a lot of
counterintuitive results: for example, that born-again Christians divorce at
the same rate as non-Christians.)
.
|
