Читать книгу White Christian Privilege - Khyati Y. Joshi - Страница 12

The story of American religious diversity is not a new one. The religions with the longest history on this continent are Native American, but Islam, native African beliefs, and other traditions have coexisted with Christianity on these shores for centuries. The nation grew more diverse with waves of immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which brought Catholics, Jews, Orthodox Christians, and members of other faiths, including Sikhs and Buddhists.

However, demographic changes over the past half century have made it particularly urgent to understand the impact of White Christian privilege and envision approaches to respond to it. The United States has been experiencing increases in the number and diversity of religious minorities that are unprecedented. Since 1965, when immigration reforms reopened the nation’s doors to immigrants from beyond northern Europe, the country has experienced a rapid flourishing of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity. We have had a larger-than-ever influx of followers of the Baha’i faith, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and more. These religious groups are building communities and houses of worship in places that have never seen anything like them. Contemporary workplaces, classrooms, and the very “public square” of American social and political dialogue are more religiously diverse than they have ever been, and are growing more so.²⁰

How many followers of these faiths are in the US? Answering this question is more difficult than accessing almost any other type of demographic data, such as race, national origin, or gender, because the US Census—the most comprehensive count of American residents—does not collect information on religious self-identification.²¹ We therefore rely mostly on non-governmental surveys that collect data on religion based on voluntary responses as well as on self-reporting from organized religious congregations. But since Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Native American religious practices are not necessarily congregational or documented by official listings, it becomes all the more difficult to gather demographic data on the numbers of their adherents. Many of these religions’ beliefs and practices are individual and highly personal; often, worship will be done at home and through individual actions and choices rather than in a group setting. Thus, individuals may or may not affiliate with houses of worship, and the congregational bias of surveys and scholarship likely results in undercounts of these populations.

TABLE I.1. Current US Religious Affiliation
Group		Pew22 327,167,434		PRRI23 322,762,018		Other Sources
Unaffiliated, who might identify as Secular, Atheists or Agnostics		26% 85.1 million		24% 77.5 million
Buddhist		.07%24 2.3 million		1% 2.49 million
Christian		65% 212.7 million		67%25 216.3 million
Hindu		1% 3.3 million		1% 3.2 million
Jewish		2% 6.6 million		2% 6.4 million		7.5 Million (Steinhardt Social Science Institute, 2019)
Muslim		3.45 million26		1% 3.2 million
Native American spiritualities
Sikh		200,00027				500,000 (Sikh Coalition)28

Overall, a substantial majority of Americans today are still Christian, a cohort that includes a growing proportion of Black and Hispanic Christians. At the same time, the Pew Research Forum reported in 2012 that White Protestants are no longer a religious majority in the US, a status they held for more than two centuries. The Pew Research Center in 2015 and the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in 2016 found that 43% of Americans identify as White and Christian, and 30% as White and specifically Protestant. While still the largest single racial/religious cohort by far, this is a substantial change since 1976, when roughly eight in ten (81%) Americans identified as White and Christian, and a clear majority (55%) were White Protestants. The decline in the number of people identifying as Christian is attributable to both the increasing religious diversity in the country and the growing numbers of people who identify as religiously unaffiliated. Minority religions are growing, but still represent fewer than one in ten Americans: Jewish Americans constitute 2% of the public while Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus each make up about 1% of the US population.²⁹ Among racial groups, Asian Pacific Americans have a significantly different religious profile and are much more likely to be non-Christians.

When we speak of “religion,” we must remember that it is not merely a category—a checkbox on a form, a line of one’s personal biography, or an aggregation of thousands or millions of people. Religion has many functions, and is lived by each person in unique and individual ways. Religion is a belief system that helps adherents to make sense of this world and beyond. Religion (including the identity of “nonreligious”) crosscuts every other identity category. Sometimes religious groups function like ethnicities, linking people by a common place of origin (real or imagined), or a common language; in other cases, they do not. Either way, religion is a source of personal identity, and of connection to some larger group identity; it may be a vehicle for membership, affiliation, and solidarity. It is a common source of identity and community for immigrant groups. Religion may also be the basis for exclusion, competition, adversarial status, discrimination, or exploitation.