I just finished reading The Seven Faith Tribes by George Barna where he breaks down Americans into seven distinct faith groups after interviewing over 30,000 people. Why seven? Probably because it’s in the Bible somewhere but then again everything is meaningless (also in the Bible, if you read the crap version that is NIV), so does it really matter?
Anyway, I’d thought I would take a look at the various faith tribes as Barna sums them up:
- Casual Christians: by far the largest group coming in at around 66%, which is the number of the beast minus a digit. And they certainly are a beastly group. They have no real standards to speak of, other than to claim they are Christian without really understanding what that means and to not rock the boat. In other words, they are a spineless, arrogant bunch who believe it is okay to bomb foreign Muslim children (because they are not Christian) and boo people like Ron Paul for pointing out that they should love their neighbor as themselves. If most people are idiots, then they certainly are proof positive of this as they are the majority of Americans. The mere fact that the NIV translation is the most widely used version also proves my point that this group is stupid. They lack foresight and have no true understanding of their faith. God prefers you sacrifice your children to Moloch rather than be what you are now (that is Bible as well).
- Muslims: a small group in America, not exceeding 2%, this group is probably a very socially conservative group. The only problem with this is that they vote Democratic, probably because the two Christian groups are such dicks about the social issues and see Muslims as stupid because they are Muslim (I don’t see them stupid for being Muslim, just stupid for being a person). They also enjoy religious freedom in America but also want more government in our lives, which means they don’t want to enjoy religious freedom, just the oppression they would invariably suffer should their ballot desires come to fruition. Generally though, Muslims have much in common with other socially conservative counterparts, which goes to show that you can vote without considerations for major social issues like the right to scramble a baby’s brain in the womb of its mother.
- Jews: America has more Jews than any other nation on Earth. I’m going to repeat that: America has more Jews than any other nation on Earth. So despite having their own country, Israel, which would welcome all 6.5 million of them with open arms, they prefer to stay in this pit stain on the world. It probably has something to do with their pride in being Jewish and how they are survivors or how the other races and religions are mostly gullible and stupid when it comes to financial matters. Wait, that’s not fair to the Jews, because they do more than personal finance scams. They also do a lot of comedy. In any event, most, save the orthodox ones, don’t see their faith identity as a faith but more as a culture and family. They are very welcoming to fellow Jews, which reminds me of a saying a Russian friend once said to me: “Don’t do business with other Russians”. In any case, most Americans (see the first group) has some weird hard-on for Jews not realizing that they are just as idiotic as everyone else. Also, they are the most unhappy group of all seven faith tribes. And they make up about 2% of America.
- Mormons: Mormons feature the largest number of converts each year. They also feature the same rate of people leaving the Mormon church each year which means they never seem to get above about 2%. So what does that tell you? That they are evangelical failures? That the only thing they have going for them, besides some idiot prophesying while staring at gold stones in a hat, is a good family life. Which is also what Muslims have and what Captive Christians have and, to a lesser extent, Jews. So really, all they have as a faith tribe that stands out is Willard Romney. And he’s not a very good Mormon.
- Pantheists: For some reason, George Barna didn’t want to make a miscellaneous category, so he instead called it a Pantheist category. This is made up mostly of followers of the various East Asian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. For the most part, they tend to live for the moment and appear to have no direction. This was explain the conclusion that Buddha made, which is that life is an illusion and nothing really matters. Of course, if you sit under a tree for as long as he did and do nothing with yourself, then you’re going to develop such a pessimistic and pointless outlook on life as well. As for the group as a whole, they are about 1% of the population, so their vote doesn’t count and I don’t give a crap about their political views.
- Skeptics: This is the group that either has no faith (atheist) or only entertains the ideas of faith (agnostic). They are, however, the third largest “faith” tribe in America at 11%. Generally, they are libertarian in their attitudes about life in that they seem to follow the non-aggression principle. They tend to not make a fuss in politics, despite a few bad apples, but are more than happy to dismiss religion and blame it on all the woes of this world (everyone needs an enemy). You will often hear them grip about how all religions start wars but I doubt they could name five religious wars and not even one that America has fought in. They also tend to ignore the mass genocides that have been perpetrated by atheists in the last century and state that they were communists, not atheists. I guess religion wasn’t the opiate of the masses after all.
- Captive Christians: The second largest group which was probably George Barna’s way of keeping the number at seven and stating that not all Christians are “like that.” They make up 16% of Americans and hold deep convictions in their own faith. This translates onto their politics where they are suckered into voting for the biggest idiot to promise an end to abortion, among other social ills. But like many other Americans, they forget that politicians are in the void category of faith and tend to be looking out for the handout rather than appeasing the dumb masses. So despite having strong moral convictions and maybe trying to let those stand as an example of their faith, they instead show us their faith through their votes.
Actually in all seriousness, each tribe does have something to offer and we all have agreements on a variety of things as George Barna later writes about later in the book. While I have severe disagreements with some of his ideas (like putting community before self), his observations are useful and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in finding out more about other faiths or their own (or lack thereof).
In any case, while I probably would fall into the Captive Christian category, I am personally disgusted with the political views of many of them, which is outsourcing moral conviction to the State, so I doubt I’d find much time to hang out with any of them.