Page 44 - Liberating Liberals V2

Meaning-Making Maestros
whether life itself has meaning? Or are we just on this living treadmill because that’s the way it arbitrarily is? The component of the Western Civilization that has provided the main answer has been religion. In America that overwhelmingly means Christianity,
one perhaps most prominently represented by Billy Graham. His answer? Follow God and Jesus, obey the Ten Commandments, and serve the basic American contract. Or, translated to American society, love your neighbor and church and don’t buck the system.
Yet in the liberal world the religious component of the social contract has been changing quickly. A 2002 US News and World Report Poll showed that only 17 percent of Americans felt their “religion is the one true religion.”30 A 2001 Gallup Poll showed that only 27 percent of Americans believe that “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.”31
However, according to a large Baylor University Study in 2006, about 92.5% of Americans believe
in God. So maybe the changes haven’t been that substantial. Yet the study also found that about 50% of those who believe in God believe in an angry or judgmental God, and 50% believe in a benevolent or distant God. And most of the latter 50% vote like liberals.32
These percentages are suspect for many reasons, not the least of which being that the philosophy of many people changes from day to day or whim to
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