11 August 2008

Many Americans Change Religious Beliefs

Attitudes toward religious choices are flexible

Sister Edith Bogue was raised as an atheist but converted to Catholicism as an adult.

By Sonya Weakley
Staff Writer

Washington -- Sitting in Saturday school at age 10, John Mesirow began to disagree with what he had been taught throughout the early years of his childhood. The more he listened, the less it made sense. “People are responsible for their own actions,” he said. “To try to blame things on God or take comfort in God seemed irrational to me.”

Though he went through a bar mitzvah and another Jewish ritual of confirmation, the world of religion remained illogical and ambiguous to Mesirow. “I like things to make sense,” Mesirow, now an attorney in Washington, said.

According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, released in two parts in February and June by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Mesirow is one of 28 percent of U.S. adults who “have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all,” and he is one of 1.6 percent of U.S. adults who describe themselves as atheist.  (See “U.S. Religious Landscape Is Marked by Diversity and Change.”)

The survey results indicate that people who are not affiliated with any particular religion make up 16.1 percent of the adult U.S. population and constitute the fourth largest “religious” tradition in the United States. Within that group, beliefs about the notion of God are diverse.  One-fourth describe themselves as atheistic or agnostic, and the rest describe their religion as “nothing in particular” (although half of this latter group say religious is either somewhat or very important in their lives, despite their lack of a specific affiliation).

FLEXIBILITY OF AMERICAN ATTITUDES

A critical finding of the extensive survey, based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans, is that 70 percent of Americans agree that theirs is not the only way to believe. (See “Survey Finds Americans Are Religious, Tolerant, Nondogmatic.”)

Tasnim McCormick Benhalim could not agree more. Raised in a close-knit, “deeply spiritual” Christian Protestant Methodist family in the small town of Mahomet, Texas, near Austin, she began to ask a lot of questions about religion at a young age. “I wanted to know about God. I asked my parents. I asked my Sunday school teachers. I even tried to talk to my friends about it.”

Her interest continued in high school, where she read about many religious topics, including mysticism, American Indian rituals and the Baha’i faith. In college at the University of Oklahoma, she took comparative religion courses, studied Islam and Hinduism and read works of the poet Rumi, who founded the Sufi order of Islam.

Chris Bevenuto, who grew up Catholic, converted to Judaism when she married.

It was then that an Islamic professor told her that Sufism “is really the heart of Islam.”  Benhalim at the time said that she did not want to be a Muslim, and told her family that she would not convert, “but I kept meeting and studying.” she said.

Benhalim became more absorbed in the teachings of Islam and keeping the prayers.  Five years after graduating from college, she converted from Protestant Christian to Muslim.

According to the Pew Forum survey, she had followed another trend. Results from the survey indicate that the proportion of the U.S. population that is Protestant has declined markedly in recent decades. Protestants account for roughly half (51.3 percent) of the adult population. According to the survey summary, “the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country.”

KEEPING AN OPEN MIND

Neither Mesirow nor Benhalim has experienced criticism for changing their religious beliefs.

“My parents were not pleased, but they were not un-pleased,” Benhalim said. “They were not surprised.” Her family has remained close, she said. Her parents were supportive of her marriage to a Muslim and “adore our children.”

As they learned more about Islam, Benhalim said, her  family concluded that “our beliefs around God are parallel, even though the practices differ.”  Between Islam and Christianity, “the nature of God and life and why we are walking on Earth have real points of agreement, but we respect each other’s differences.”

Benhalim, who operates DiversityWealth.com, a consulting firm that helps businesses implement diversity initiatives, believes her children and others of their generation do not carry the same cultural blinders as did earlier generations. When her son invites friends to visit, “I see a little United Nations walking through my door.”

Mesirow said he openly discusses his beliefs with friends and family if the subject comes up, and he encourages his two children to read about and discuss religion and decide for themselves what works for them. “I am open-minded about it. Religion does help a lot of people.”

For more information on religious diversity in the United States, see Diversity-At Worship.