[Reader-list] "We Are All Hindus Now"

[anupam chakravartty]

Certainly it is one of most ridiculous articles i have read recently. this
is what happens when devotion is confused with statistics. People in america
have adopted cremation because in many of the cities there is a dearth of
space and burial grounds.

On 8/19/09, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> This is an Opinion-Piece regarding America, by an American.
>
> Kshmendra
>
>
>
> "We Are All Hindus Now"
> By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK
> Published Aug 15, 2009
> From the magazine issue dated Aug 31, 2009
>
> America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by
> Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to
> identify as Christian (still, that's the lowest percentage in American
> history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or
> Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a
> fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that
> conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less
> like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each
> other, and eternity.
>
> The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One,
> but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many
> paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a
> third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional,
> conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn
> in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus
> said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father
> except through me."
>
> Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65
> percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal
> life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to
> believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek
> spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call
> themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up
> from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston
> University, has long framed the American propensity for "the
> divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism.
> You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're
> all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever
> works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works,
> great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat
> works, that's
> great, too."
>
> Then there's the question of what happens when you die. Christians
> traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they
> comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in
> the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever.
> Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the
> spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to
> Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So
> here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent
> of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris
> poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we're
> burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now
> choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America,
> up from 6 percent in 1975. "I do think the more spiritual role of religion
> tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of
> the Resurrection," agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at
> Harvard. So let us all say "om."
>
> http://www.newsweek.com/id/212155
>
>
>
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>
>
>
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