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

[Murali V]

Probably this may give a better insight.
US - 37 persons per sq KM 2008
INdia - 324 persons per Sq KM 2001

Regards,
V Murali
On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 4:17 PM, anupam chakravartty<c.anupam at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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