More spiritual - less religious

A recent survey showed that Americans are "less religious" than 10 years ago, with atheists growing as much or more than any other category. That shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the spiritual landscape of the 90's and early 2000's. There have been many signs that point to Americans' loss of enthusiasm for exclusive religions, that is, those that insist on a "one-way" view of God and how to find eternal peace with Him.

Yet, the survey shows a growth in the Evangelical segment, which may also show the degree to which many are searching for answers in a society that increasingly tells them there are no certain answers. The great divide between those who take seriously the claims of Jesus Christ to be "the Way, the Truth, the Life" on one hand, and those on the other hand who ridicule such exclusive truth-claims appears to be growing into a "Grand Canyon" of cultural division.

Who would have suspected in the 80's an atheist, and a militant, angry atheist at that, could pack out a concert venue in conservative Omaha, Nebraska, to give people an earful of anti-religious rhetoric. Yet author and lecturer Richard Dawkins was invited to do that recently, because there are more and more people who are tired of the divisions of religious camps fighting it out over whose truth is best. They're ready to pitch the whole lot, and declare all religions as "hazardous to health."

Yet, people everywhere are seeking spirituality of some kind, from Buddhism to various forms of New Age pantheism. The human spirit's yearning for knowledge of what is beyond us is hardier than the efforts of atheists and neo-pagans. But spirituality isn't the same as religion, and it can come in any number of flavors not specific to any religious dogma. So an abundance of spiritual activity can easily co-exist with a decline in religious life.

All this fits well with the Bible's warnings that the latter days will be marked by a "falling away" from the truth, and an increase in "lawlessness", which is people acting contrary to God's law, if not also opposite to man's law; and we are seeing a lot of both. Challenging times for presenting a one-way claim for truth, as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but no more so than Jesus Himself faced against a hostile world.