If a foreign visitor --a modern-day Alexis De Tocqueville, let’s say -- wanted to understand the state of religion in America today, a good place to start would have been Nationals Park in Washington D.C. three weeks ago, where the megachurch pastor Joel Osteen preached to a sold-out house. Osteen’s bipartisan reach and global influence makes him one of the most plausible contemporary heirs to Billy Graham. But unlike Graham, his message tends to be doctrine-free and relentlessly upbeat, rarely mentioning sin and regularly suggesting that God wants nothing more than to shower worldly blessings on believers.
Or the curious visitor could pick up the new census of religious affiliation in America that was released shortly after Osteen’s rally, which showed that non-traditional forms of Christian faith now comprise the third largest religious category in the country, after Roman Catholicism and the Southern Baptist Convention. Overall, the growth in American Christianity today is mostly nondenominational and Mormon, while the churches that dominated American life a half century ago --Catholic and Mainline Protestant --have continued their decades-long decline.
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