It did not hit me until just a short while ago, it was something that had been rattling around in the back of my head for sometime but I had never thought all the way through. On most social networking sites there is a space for “religious views” and people have plugged theirs in accordingly. Recently I was reading up on someone on their Facebook site I had met at my college campus – we won’t call it stalking but “digital reconnaissance” instead - and let us just say that references to God , Christianity, and the Bible were everywhere. Luckily said person had other things to describe themselves because as I was reading it over I realized: describing yourself as Christian ultimately says very little about you.

What is striking about this is that when someone is writing in this information, they almost always add it in as if it were the most important part, as if this said the most about them. But here are some statistics:

In a 2006 Gallup poll on 31% of Americans claimed to believe the Bible is literally true. A separate report a year later from Gallup said that only 37% of Protestants/Other Christian Faiths think this and only 17% of Catholics. The remaining minority, it seems, cannot even agree on what the text actually says or implies, even when looking at the exact same version.

Approximately, 28% of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God while 49% believe it was divinely inspired but that everything should not be taken literally. Setting aside the fact that one knows very little about the actual “god” to which those being polled were speaking of, there is an appreciable philosophical gap between the two statistics.

On a more anecdotal level I have a friend who is Roman Catholic and yet adamantly favors gay rights, has appeasing views on abortion, sees no problem with the concept of birth control (not to say anything about this person specifically, only in a general sense), and believes in evolution. The Roman Catholics frequently pride themselves on being the most opposed to these ideas. One might take into account their controversial opposition to birth control – condoms- being used in Africa, birth control that would, in part, be used to stifle the growing AIDS epidemic. I once asked this person “Isn’t that cognitive dissonance?” to which they responded “hell yeah.” It might be fair to say that this person would be in the 49 percent-ers. In this example knowing this person was Roman Catholic would not only be useless in discerning practical information about them, it would have completely led me in the wrong direction when one considers what are currently hot button topics.

As for politics? Telling me your religion tells me absolutely nothing about your politics either. 33% of Republicans believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and 55% believe that it was divinely inspired. Yet over 60% of African American’s believe the bible is the literal word of God (the largest percentage amongst any demographic) and yet 95% vote for the Democratic Party time and time again.

Then there is the inevitable question of: should government and religion mix? Should the constitution be reformed to the standards of the Bible? One might be surprised to know how many believe in the literal divinity of the bible but do not feel that this should translate to government regulation.

One might have taken notice that none of this has in anyway taken into account, mind you, of how many people actually follow these guidelines. We can all account for numerous friends who “claim” to believe in the infallibility of the bible, but have no problem dancing to offense, deprecating music, with sensual dance moves and occasional – if not frequent – sexual excursions.          

Keep in mind I am not judging. It really does not bother me in the slightest. But just to reiterate succinctly what I have tried to make clear above: writing that you are Christian says little, if anything, about you.

One thing is for certain amongst all this confusion: I shall be purchasing a copy of the Evolution of God sometime in the near future.