The Rise of the Diminished, Ordinary God

Last updated on: February 20, 2014 at 7:38 am

February 20, 2014 by Guest Contributor

“Do you believe in God?”

This was the initial question asked by a team of British researchers in the late 1960s. “Yes,” one woman replied. Then to clarify what that meant, the researchers, according to the sociologist Grace Davie, asked a follow-up question: “Do you believe in a god who can change the course of events on earth?”

“No,” the woman answered, “just the ordinary one.”

This response, more than any pronouncement by “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins, indicates why religion was in trouble then and is in even more trouble today.

God is not, to borrow Friedrich Nietzsche’s image from 1882, dead. And neither is religion approaching extinction, despite what its staunchest opponents may have wished. The number of people in the world who have rejected religion has been rising rapidly; nonetheless, as of 2012 only 13 percent of the world’s population would describe themselves as convinced atheists, according to a global survey by WIN-Gallup International. Here in the United States, only 5 percent would accept that designation.

Read the rest here