Hello all, and thanks for Jim\u2019s warm introduction and Lyle\u2019s and Gordon\u2019s welcomes.<\/p>\n
To get started, let me summarize some recent research I\u2019ve done on current trends in the sociology of religion, and then pose some questions.
\n
\n(The complete write-up is part of an essay, \u201cReligious Experience in the Age of Digital Reproduction,\u201d a link to which appears at my BYU faculty profile page at http:\/\/www.law2.byu.edu\/Law_School\/faculty_profiles\/fp_frameset.htm.)<\/p>\n
One trend in the character of religious belief in the United States is a move from transcendence to immanence, a search for spirituality and religious meaning that is much more focused on one\u2019s own personal needs than it is on whether religion reveals \u201creality.\u201d This trend has manifested itself in (at least) three ways. First, a significant number of people now describe themselves as \u201cspiritual, but not religious\u201d\u2013that is, they care about God and spiritual matters but are a- and sometimes anti-denominational. A second manifestation, closely related to the first, is the growing phenomenon of \u201cgrocery cart religion\u201d\u2013that is, people who construct their own, idiosyncratic faith by assembling diverse and even inconsistent doctrines by which they live their lives. \u201cChristian Buddhists\u201d might be an example<\/p>\n
A third manifestation is \u201ccafeteria\u201d religion\u2013that is, believers who consider themselves active members in good standing of a denomination, but who reject one or more central doctrines or tenets of the denominations. Many Roman Catholics, for example, consider their affiliation with the Church important in their lives, and are active in their parish, but reject the Church\u2019s teachings on birth control and abortion, or on the ordination of women to the priesthood.<\/p>\n
A reaction to the trend towards spirituality, a-denominationalism, grocery cart and cafeteria religion, and immanence generally\u2013or perhaps better, an opposition to them, since it predates them\u2013is fundamentalism, understood as a religion guided by scriptural literalism and unchanging, uncompromising doctrines that reveal truth and reality, understood as \u201cobjective\u201d in the Cartesian sense.<\/p>\n
Some questions:<\/p>\n
1. Is the trend towards spirituality evident among the membership of the LDS church? Can one discern a growing tendency among members to evaluate the church and its teachings and practices according to how they serve one\u2019s perception of his or her personal needs, rather than whether those teachings and practices are true in the classical Cartesian sense? Or, instead, do members relate to the church pretty much as they have for the last half century?<\/p>\n
2. Is the LDS church spiritual or fundamentalist? Does an answer depend on whether one focuses on culture, theology, membership, or leadership?<\/p>\n
3. Can a fundamentalist church, one that insists on unchanging and uncompromising truths, and scriptural literalism, retain mass appeal in contemporary US society? Is belonging to a spiritual church worth the trouble? To what extent is the truth of the LDS church linked with what was, until recently, remarkable growth in the US and internationally?<\/p>\n
Thanks, Fred<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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