Thursday, January 17, 2013

Losing and Finding: Morning Edition Series on Non-Believers

by Gary Berg-Cross

Morning Edition on NPR has been featuring a series called: Losing Our Religion. It's worth listen in.  Good for NPR...well the title might be framed a bit with loss, rather than finding something better than religion, but I'll give them good marks for balance within the shows.

Jan 14  they started with The Growth Of The 'Nones' the One-fifth of Americans  who say they're socially liberal and aren't looking for an organized religion. It's a topic written about on this blog, but NPR also provided info on their blog- .http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/14/169164840/losing-our-religion-the-growth-of-the-nones

Next they covered the topic of my more Young People Are Moving Away From Religion 
followed by how Nonbelievers Find Other Ways To Cope with tragedy. - "dealing with trauma and loss often requires forging one's own path."The shows give a clear voice to thoughtful non-belevers such as Mari Bailey who lost her son, Michael - killed by an acquaintance in Phoenix in 2004.  She lost not only her son but her faith as well as we read below discussing her feelings during loss.

I became more angry and I questioned, 'Why do I need to be praying at all? Why is my son dead? And what kind of God lets a child be shot?' "


The most recent show is on"Making Marriage Work When Only One Spouse Believes In God." They speak with Mike Bixby & Maria Peyer at their home in Longview, Wash. Mike& maria ave been married for two and half years but have known each other since 1981. Peyer is a church-attending Lutheran, while Bixby is an atheist who expresses himself clearly and normatively:

"I do not believe that there is any sort of a higher power. I've made several attempts to go back and have faith, and it just doesn't work," he says. "It's not an open question for me anymore."

It's a bit of a rarity for mainstream news coverage but a welcome one and worth listening to.


Image

Mike and Maria: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/17/168954402/making-marriage-work-when-only-one-spouse-believes-in-god


1 comment:

Gary Berg-Cross said...

Unfortunately the last show in the series, January 18, 2013, was a bit of a letdown. Entitled, "As Social Issues Drive Young From Church, Leaders Try To Keep Them" it featured 2 religious leaders who were interviewed about the trend away fro, religion by youth. They had little substantive to say about their disillusionment with the church as unwelcoming.

See http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/01/18/169646736/as-social-issues-drive-young-from-church-leaders-try-to-keep-them