RELI 134 Topics in American Religion (Spring 2016)

"What in the World is Happening to Religion in America?"

SID# 864260; Steven Cassedy, Instructor

What’s happening to religion in the United States today? A 2012 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed that the highest number of Americans in history were “unaffiliated” (do not identify with any religion) and that the number had grown by five percentage points in only five years. The “Millennial Generation,” of which most undergraduates are members (those born 1981 and after), shows the highest degree of unaffiliation and non-belief of any generational group. Many of the unaffiliated nonetheless consider themselves either religious or spiritual, while a fairly large minority consider themselves atheists or agnostics.  Meanwhile, evangelical groups grow in power, and the Catholic Church has maintained its numbers, largely because of a significant number of immigrants from Latin America. The “New Atheists” flood the market with books that ridicule religious belief in the name of an exclusively scientific worldview, another group promotes what it calls “Secularism,” while still another group, composed largely of non-religious philosophers and scientists, insists that the cosmos and human beings cannot be reduced to a clockwork mechanism all of whose mysteries will one day be revealed by science—that there is “something else” out there. In this course we will examine some historical trends in religious belief and practice in the United States and then focus on trends that have emerged in recent years. We will read a wide selection of material representing many varying facets of those trends. [Return to Spring 2016 courselist]