Check out this poll from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The poll’s big finding is that Americans are mix-n-matching religions and belief systems as never before. No longer does a man’s self-identification as a Calvinist prevent him from getting smashed with the Asatruar, and Muslims from Maine to Mount Vernon are getting hip to reincarnation. Catholics, results show, are crazy for astrology, and almost one in five of us have had run-ins with the dead.
These results aren’t surprising. The free availibility of information on the world's divergent belief systems is bound to lead to this kind of intellectual miscegenation, and it's probably a good thing. (You've seen militant Islam, but I bet you've never seen militant Unitarianism.) To me, however, the most delightful thing about this Pew poll is the way it reveals how profoundly untethered are our concepts of "religion" and "spirituality" to any anchors in the objective universe.
For example: The proportion of Americans who say they have interacted with ghosts has doubled over the past 14 years (9% in 1996 compared with 18% today). The number saying they have “felt in touch” with someone who has died has also grown considerably, from 18% in 1996 to 29% today.
Really? Is that so? In that case, there are several conclusions we may draw. Either ghosts have gotten lots more ornery in the past decade-and-a-half, or there are now more liars and crazy people in the US than there were 14 years ago. Or maybe — maybe! — the number of ghostly encounters people report relies on something else — some cultural trend that has predisposed them to interpret weird phenomena as visits from the other side, whereas before they might have been interpreted as having extra-terrestrial, divine, angelic, or diabolical origins.
I prefer the latter explanation, and I bet you do, too. But let’s say we’re all full of it, and that the study’s respondees knew what they were talking about. Let’s say that ghostly encounters really are a commonplace for one in five Americans. In that case, what explanation might we posit for the sudden up-tick in the number of ghosts bopping around the physical realm? Should we be worried?
Might there be an invasion underway?