Christianity vs. Paganism
The current debate in the United States over "Christmas" versus "Holiday" trees, decorations and greetings is part of a much deeper clash of cultures that has gone on for centuries: Christianity vs. Paganism. Christianity is monotheistic and linear; Paganism is pantheistic and circular.
Pagans celebrate the eternal natural cycle of being. Christians venerate the linear concept of progress, from creation to ultimate redemption.
Pagans live in the realm of the eternal recurrence. Pagan rites maintain harmonious relationships among the gods; thus, these rituals guarantee the continuity of Nature's cycles, which Nature-based human societies depend on for their sustenance.
Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims) worship the God who created all natural things and stands above them. To them, when God intervenes in the world, it is not to create a disruption of natural events, but rather to generate some wonderful new direction in human affairs.
It is at the winter solstice -- more so than at any other time of the year -- that people of Judeo/Christian/Muslim faith feel most acutely the tension between the origins of their religion in Pagan Nature worship on the one hand and the evolution of their faith into belief in a single God and a linear remembrance of historical events and teachings on the other.
America's Growing Religious Diversity
And for many conservative Christians in particular, that tension could only have grown sharper in recent years as the number of Americans who do not identify themselves as Christian has been growing exponentially since 1990, according to data compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), commissioned by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Out of a total U.S. adult population of 207.9 million people who professed a religious or spiritual belief system in 2001 -- the most recent ARIS data available -- 159.5 million, or roughly 75 percent, identified themselves as Christian (inclusive of all of its denominations).
By comparison, out of a total U.S. adult population of 175.4 million believers in 1990, 151.4 million, or roughly 85 percent, identified themselves as Christian.
The number of Americans who do not identify themselves as Christian grew from 20.1 million (15 percent) in 1990 to 37.1 million (25 percent) in 2001, according to the ARIS data, with particularly sharp increases recorded in the number of adherents to Islam and Buddhism.
America's Muslim population has more than doubled, from 527,000 in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2001. The nation's Buddhist community grew even faster, according to ARIS, from 401,000 in 1990 to 1.08 million in 2001.
(Buddhists have their own major holiday in December: Bodhi Day, which celebrates the story of how the philosopher Siddartha Gautama of India became the Buddha by sitting under a bodhi tree and vowing to remain there until he achieved total enlightenment.)
While there was no census of American Pagans in 1990, the ARIS survey did report at least 307,000 Americans identifying themselves as such in 2001, with 134,000 professing to be Wiccans, 33,000 as Druids and 140,000 as eclectic "neo-Pagans" of a wide spectrum of traditions.
Interestingly, the ARIS survey counted only 53,000 Americans in 2001 as identifying themselves as "secular" and even fewer -- 43,000 -- calling themselves "humanists." There was no accounting of either group in 1990.
The truth is, America in the closing days of 2007 is more religiously and spiritually diverse now than it's ever been before in its more-than-231-year history. That diversity is certain to grow in the future, further reducing American Christians' majority -- and O'Reilly and other conservatives are going to have to deal with it, whether they like it or not.
The current debate in the United States over "Christmas" versus "Holiday" trees, decorations and greetings is part of a much deeper clash of cultures that has gone on for centuries: Christianity vs. Paganism. Christianity is monotheistic and linear; Paganism is pantheistic and circular.
Pagans celebrate the eternal natural cycle of being. Christians venerate the linear concept of progress, from creation to ultimate redemption.
Pagans live in the realm of the eternal recurrence. Pagan rites maintain harmonious relationships among the gods; thus, these rituals guarantee the continuity of Nature's cycles, which Nature-based human societies depend on for their sustenance.
It is at the winter solstice -- more so than at any other time of the year -- that people of Judeo/Christian/Muslim faith feel most acutely the tension between the origins of their religion in Pagan Nature worship on the one hand and the evolution of their faith into belief in a single God and a linear remembrance of historical events and teachings on the other.
America's Growing Religious Diversity
And for many conservative Christians in particular, that tension could only have grown sharper in recent years as the number of Americans who do not identify themselves as Christian has been growing exponentially since 1990, according to data compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), commissioned by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Out of a total U.S. adult population of 207.9 million people who professed a religious or spiritual belief system in 2001 -- the most recent ARIS data available -- 159.5 million, or roughly 75 percent, identified themselves as Christian (inclusive of all of its denominations).
By comparison, out of a total U.S. adult population of 175.4 million believers in 1990, 151.4 million, or roughly 85 percent, identified themselves as Christian.
The number of Americans who do not identify themselves as Christian grew from 20.1 million (15 percent) in 1990 to 37.1 million (25 percent) in 2001, according to the ARIS data, with particularly sharp increases recorded in the number of adherents to Islam and Buddhism.
America's Muslim population has more than doubled, from 527,000 in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2001. The nation's Buddhist community grew even faster, according to ARIS, from 401,000 in 1990 to 1.08 million in 2001.
(Buddhists have their own major holiday in December: Bodhi Day, which celebrates the story of how the philosopher Siddartha Gautama of India became the Buddha by sitting under a bodhi tree and vowing to remain there until he achieved total enlightenment.)
While there was no census of American Pagans in 1990, the ARIS survey did report at least 307,000 Americans identifying themselves as such in 2001, with 134,000 professing to be Wiccans, 33,000 as Druids and 140,000 as eclectic "neo-Pagans" of a wide spectrum of traditions.
Interestingly, the ARIS survey counted only 53,000 Americans in 2001 as identifying themselves as "secular" and even fewer -- 43,000 -- calling themselves "humanists." There was no accounting of either group in 1990.
The truth is, America in the closing days of 2007 is more religiously and spiritually diverse now than it's ever been before in its more-than-231-year history. That diversity is certain to grow in the future, further reducing American Christians' majority -- and O'Reilly and other conservatives are going to have to deal with it, whether they like it or not.
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