As news concerning Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey data from 2008 starts to seep into the blogosphere, we’re starting to get some initial reactions and meditations on what it all means. Beliefnet’s Pagan blogger Gus diZerega wonders if the religious right has poisoned the well, ultimately benefiting the Pagan community.

“Now the Religious’ Right has worked hard to push their ghastly conception of a deity down everyone’s throats, where all talk of love and charity has been drowned out by belches of bigotry and ignorance, hatred and greed.  Fortunately more people are repulsed by this business than are attracted … [Pagans] have no problem with science, are tolerant of spiritual differences, and address constructively many of the biggest political and cultural issues of our day. The numbers of nontraditional religious groups, including us, now number 2.8 million calling themselves Wiccan, Pagan, or Spiritualist, up to 1.4% from .8% since 1990, all without seeking converts.  Our biggest problem is a shortage of qualified teachers compared to the demand for them. I believe there will be more of us in the next survey.”

Another Pagan blogger, Lonnie at “Here In The Cave of Wonder…”, looks at the numbers on a state-by-state basis.

“That said, while specific numbers aren’t available for Virginia yet, “other” religions seemed to have grown at a rate of only 1%. So, it’s still likely that my own observations have been true, but just not true for Connecticut (+5%). Other areas, did indeed shrink in numbers of people practicing alternative religions including RI (-1), FL (-1), MA( -1), NY (-2%), NH (-2%), and WY (-8%). For around 15 states there was no change at all.”

Meanwhile, the Get Religion blog names the “mini-rise of the Wiccans” as a discernable subplot to the ARIS story. So you can expect a number of journalists will most likely be nosing around the “NRMs and Other Faiths” in the near future to figure out why we’re growing while others shrink. As for Christian pundits, there is some (prophetic?) doom-saying going on. Pastor Tony Beam at Crosswalk partially blames “aggressive atheism” and “new age nonsense” for the current declines in Christendom.

“The combination of traditional religious teaching with the new age concept of spirituality.  The “Oprahization” of the church is well under way with millions now tuning in (through TV and the web) and turning on to Oprah Winfrey’s brand of homogenized religion.  Being spiritual, as defined by Eckhart Tolle and others means simply believing in a nebulous force that might work well for Star Wars Jedi but in the real world, is nothing but new age nonsense.”

While Beam thinks Christians can turn things around if they buckle down, author Michael Spencer at the Christian Science Monitor believes a major evangelical collapse is right around the corner.

“Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the “Protestant” 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century. This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good. Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline.”

That’s some strong stuff, and it gets even stronger on his blog. This (alleged) fragility of the evangelical boom seems to born out by ARIS researcher Mark Silk who discusses the finding with the Telegraph.

Mark Silk, who oversaw the findings, said: “There is now this shift in the non-Catholic population – and maybe among American Christians in general – into a sort of generic, soft evangelicalism. “If people call themselves evangelical, it doesn’t tell you as much as you think it tells you about what kind of church they go to. It deepens the conundrum about who evangelicals are.”

And the media storm continues fast and furious. Steven Waldman notes that “No Religion” is now the fastest growing religion in America (sorry Wicca!), while Touchstone Magazine claims that Wiccans and “self-described pagans” are growing faster than we did in the 1990s, and Commonweal bemoans the “real-time effects” of  America’s “anti-religion” bias. And on, and on, and on. It looks like there is some serious re-evaluating going on and modern Pagans (being one of the few “winners” here) may end up getting a lot more attention from this story than we think. Expect lots and lots of essays and articles in the coming weeks and months to mention the ARIS data, and for some religious groups to be emboldened (or feel threatened, or both) by what that survey says.

Tags: ARIS, Paganism, Religion, survey