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Showing posts from July, 2008

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey - Part 2

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey's Summary of Key Findings begins with the assertion that "most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith." The USA Today article about this survey seemed to interpret this as saying that Americans take a "one from column A, one from column B" approach to religion, where Oprah Winfrey is as much a source of spiritual guidance as any religious leader. But after reading through The Pew Form's statements about the survey, I'm not exactly sure what they meant by "non-dogmatic." Did they mean not "following a dogma [that is, the established teachings of a formal religion]," or did they simply mean not "arrogant, stubborn and bigoted"? In the context of a discussion about religion, I would think the former definition would be more appropriate, and certainly USA Today seemed to run with that notion, but Pew may simply have meant that people are tolerant of other religions. I'd like to lo