CBS News Calls Secular America Immoral
In a single sentence in one story on religion in the United States, CBS Evening News managed to insult the vast majority of the American people. Describing a major new study on Americans' religious faith from the Pew Forum, CBS' Wyatt Andrews suggested that atheism in particular and Americans' widely shared belief in a secular society in general is immoral:
"The unprecedented survey of religion answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America. To the surprise of many experts, Americans are still deeply religious, with 84 percent of adults claiming a religious affiliation."
For beginners, the term "secular" in the context of American society and politics does mean what CBS seems to think it means. "Secular" does not mean "atheist." Far from it. As historian Wilfred McClay argues elsewhere on the Pew web site, secularism has a distinctly political sense in the United States:
"That is, secularism as recognizing politics as an autonomous sphere, one that's not subject to ecclesiastical governance, to the governance of a church or religion or the church's expression of that religion. A secular political order may be one in which religious practice or religious exercise, as we say, can flourish."
This broader view of secular as "not controlled by a religious body" is shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans of all faiths. While Americans may disagree about prayer in schools or the display of nativity scenes on public land, the separation of church and state is seen by most as an essential guarantee of religious liberty, freedom and diversity. (For example, while Pew reported 84% of people affiliated with a religion in the U.S., 70% of Americans believe church leaders should not endorse political candidates.) Surely, CBS News did not actually intend to term most Americans "morally void."
And just as surely, CBS News could not have meant, like Mitt Romney, to insult the 16% of Americans Pew described as "unaffiliated" by calling them immoral. (The Pew survey of 35,000 Americans found that only 4.0% were "secular" in the narrow philosophical sense of being unbelievers. 1.6% were atheists and 2.4% agnostic, while another 12.1% reported their religion as "nothing in particular.") Americans' morality - their basic goodness, honesty, charity and law abidingness - has little to do with their religiosity or lack thereof. Just ask the congregants of Ted Haggard's New Life Church or the parishioners of the bankrupt Catholic archdioceses around the country.
Which raises a final question about the CBS story. Whose "many concerns" was Wyatt Andrews referring to when he claimed the Pew study "answers many concerns about a secular, morally void America?" To ask the question is to answer it.
No doubt, many of the religious right in the United States believe their secular countrymen are "morally void." But the Pew findings suggest something else they can fret about instead. Americans are quick to dump one church for another or none at all: fully 44% have left their childhood religions. (In this election, at least, evangelicals are the big winners.) That statistic suggests that while religious faith in America is a mile wide, it may only be an inch deep.
—Perrspective
09:05 PM Permalink
I think you're over-parsing this (which is a very right-wing thing to do). I don't have the context, but as I read it pretty clearly the sentence meant what you think it meant—that the Pew report provides a response to right-wing evangelicals who are concerned about the country being too secular and being morally void. From your description it sounds like it does.
Sure, CBS could have made this point more clearly, but it's a throw-away sentence in a long report. Cut them some slack.
Reading the offending sentence in context (which I've updated above) makes it quite clear that CBS was equating "morality" with "religiosity."
In essence, CBS is saying the religious right need not have "many concerns" because most Americans are religious anyway. That both denies the meaning of "secular" in its political sense and states that by definition, the irreligious are immoral.
That sound you hear is Ed Murrow spinning in his grave.
Wow. I'm pretty used to exactly this sort of BS, but that's really awful.
In addition to your point about secular not being the same as atheist, the even more important point is that religion is not at the same thing as morality.
In most cases, these people take their point of view so for granted it's like speaking a foreign language to them to explain both how wrong and how offensive they are.
"Triggering the Grand Irrationality?"
Cowering in an obscure corner of the food pyramid
somewhere between the tofu and the unflavored yogurt
contemplating the juxtaposition of intangibles for all you are worth.....
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