In Name Only

"Not So Christian America" by Thomas C. Reeves, in First Things (Oct. 1996), Institute on Religion and Public Life, 156 Fifth Ave., Ste. 400, New York, N.Y. 10010.

For decades, survey after survey has seemed to show that Americans are a highly religious people. Less than eight percent in a 1990 survey said they had no religion, while nearly 87 percent described themselves as Christians. On closer inspection, argues Reeves, a historian at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside, and author of The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity (1996), the faith practiced by most of these people barely deserves the name Christian.

A 1989 Gallup poll found that only four out of 10 Americans knew that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, only a minority of adults could name the four Gospels of the New Testament, and only three out of 10 teenagers knew why Easter is celebrated. An in-depth survey by John C. Green of the University of Akron and other political scien- tists suggests that religious faith actually plays little or no role in most Americans' lives. Judging by such things as church attendance and membership, personal prayer, belief in life after death, and how "important" respon- dents said religion was to them, the researchers concluded that 30 percent of Americans are totally secular in their outlook, 29 percent are barely or nominally religious, and 22 percent are modestly religious. Only 19 percent regularly practice their religion. But this lack of religious commitment, Reeves says, should come as no surprise to anybody who is aware of the violence and vulgarity that pollute American life.

"Authentic Christianity and the world are by definition at odds," he maintains, but for most Americans, Christianity has been watered down and rendered innocuous, like so much fast food. It has become "easy, upbeat, convenient, and compatible. It does not require self-sacrifice, discipline, humility, an otherworldly outlook, a zeal for souls, a fear as well as love of God. There is little guilt and no punishment, and the payoff in heav- en is virtually certain."