[lbo-talk] religion in the US

B. docile_body at yahoo.com
Wed Jun 25 06:31:40 PDT 2008


"If you ask what percentage [of Americans] believe in miracles—I think it's about 75 percent. What percentage believes that the world was created the way it is now 10,000 years ago, it's about half. What percentage are born-again Christians, I don't remember the exact number but maybe a third. In fact, one of the interesting poll results that came out this summer is that about a third of the population of the United States believes that we must support everything Israel does because that's a sign of the Second Coming."

-- Noam Chomsky, Humanist magazine, January/February 2007

Am also reminded of a quote from Homer Simpson in an episode of The Simpsons that had the family placed ahistorically as Pilgrims about to set off to the New World: "We must leave England and its insufficiently Puritanical ways!"

-B.

Chris Doss wrote:

"I don't have any ideas about US religiosity other than the obvious ones (heavy Puritan background, etc."

Carrol Cox wrote:

"If only it were 'Puritanism' that was at the roots of current u.s. religiosity; it would lend some intellectual vigor. But the religiosity is evangelical and/or fundamentalist, neither of which has any linkage to the 'Puritans' (almost as misleading a term as 'postmodern')."



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