"The Reality of Religious Faith in America"
Wed May 30, 2007 at 11:01:26 AM PST
Just a quick hit, as I'm gearing up for the long commute across the parking lot for an afternoon's work.
Now that I've had time to read more about the Media Matters survey I mentioned yesterday, a few things pop out at me. First, the methodology seems to have been devilishly complicated. It's not easy to quantify such things, and if you haven't read the footnotes, you really owe it to yourself to do so.
...Oh, heck. I'll save you the trouble and do it myself in a bit.
Anyway, point two is that things are even worse than they seem. The study excluded from consideration the already-present bias toward rich old white guys in the corporate media. When you start asking questions about why there were next to no women included (Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America is the lone exception), and why the black figures had to be excluded from the data set, the picture just gets uglier and uglier. Again, I'll say more about that in another post.
What I wanted to say here before I wander too much was that at first, this kind of blowback against the study really ticked me off:
Fidelis dismissed a new report released today at a press conference by the groups Media Matters for America and Faith in Public Life entitled: “Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in the Major News Media” calling it “a transparent attempt to gain relevancy with religious Americans.”
Fidelis President Joseph Cella, who attended the press conference, stated: “The report exposes a fatal flaw within their radical movement: left wing politics disguised as religion is simply not taken seriously by Americans and therefore by most credible journalists. These left wing groups simply have lost touch with religious America, and are now working overtime to become relevant again.”
...
”Socially conservative religious populations in America today are flourishing, while liberal religious movements are fracturing. This fact makes it extremely difficult to put a religious face on a left wing political agenda,” Cella said.
Cella added: “Until they come to grips with the reality of religious faith in America, these Left wing religious groups will remain marginalized.”
It's not actually true that conservative religion is flourishing in America, as I've said many times before. In fact, Media Matters has some numbers to show that it's been more or less stagnant in the past few years.
But this garbage about not being in touch with the "reality of religious faith in America" gripes me. Did they think my beautiful country church (in more ways than one) was just a mirage?
I was all set to go on a good rant about this until I noticed a data point in the survey, amplified in the notes:
More than eight in 10 Americans, consistently across virtually every religious tradition, agree that too many leaders use religion to talk about abortion and gay rights, but don't talk about more important things like loving your neighbor and caring for the poor.
[v] According to the findings of the 2006 American Values Survey, at least three-quarters of individuals belonging to every major religious tradition say issues like poverty and health care are more important than hot-button social issues. http://media.pfaw.org/CAV/CAV_Memo.pdf
The amount of consensus across political and denominational lines is staggering. You couldn't get much more agreement if you asked if babies were cute.
Which leads to the question: who, really, is out of touch with religious reality in America? Seems to me the people have spoken, and it's not a conservative agenda they're asking for.
