The Buddhist and Hindu religious groups have steadily increased in numbers, according to data compiled from the 2010 U.S. Religion Census. The greatest concentrations occur in the New York Metropolitan Area, and big cities in Texas, California, Illinois, and Georgia.

“Both Buddhists and Hindus, though still relatively small compared to the large Christian groups, have grown to the point that they are beginning to exert significant influence on the key issues that most affect their lives,” said J. Gordon Melton, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of American Religious History with the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, who was in charge of assembling the data on both groups.

Both Hindus and Buddhists have temples in most states, and “the groups now regularly voice their opinions on U.S. relations with predominantly Hindu and Buddhist countries,” Melton said.

All religious groups in the United States have grown in numbers with the exception of some of the larger Christian churches, which have stagnated or decreased. Those Christian groups include Southern Baptists, which have seen a significant drop since 2000, United Methodists, and Evangelical Lutheran.

The groups that experienced the largest growth were Muslims and Mormons. There are now some 6 million Mormons and 2.6 million Muslims in the country.

You can read more about the results of the study published by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies at this link: http://www.rcms2010.org/press_release/ACP%2020120501.pdf

The countries in the study included:

• Australia
• Austria
• Canada
• the Czech Republic
• Finland
• Ireland
• the Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Switzerland

One of the team members, Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona, stated: “In a large number of modern secular democracies, there’s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%.”

The team used a mathematical model to project the rate of extinction, using parameters that include nonlinear dynamics, such as social status and motives in being associated with certain groups.

A debate is growing over the definition of yoga and the way it should be practiced. According to the Hindu American Foundation, yoga is considered a moral and spiritual philosophy, part and parcel of being Hindu.

“Yoga is really a spiritual discipline,” says Uma Mysorekar, the Hindu Temple Society of North America’s president. “From its origin in Hinduism, yoga really originated from a Sanskrit word yuj, which means union.”

But avid American practitioners believe that its present form allows it to be more accessible and provides many benefits.

Such intentions will be discussed with the Tibetan parliament in exile, when it reconvenes in March 2011.

In a televised statement on December 14th, the Dalai Lama said the move does not mean he will dissociate himself from the Tibetan people’s struggle for freedom. “I am a Tibetan and every Tibetan has the moral obligation to carry out the struggle,” the 75-year-old Tibetan leader said, adding that to resolve the Tibet issue would remain his top priority.

According to the Dalai Lama’s office, the spiritual leader’s statement was delivered after reports of Tibetans living in Tibet expressing anxiety and confusion over his retirement plan.

Past studies consistently indicate that people who proclaim to be religious also reveal that they are happier compared with those who are not religious. Now a new study reveals the real reason for the increased satisfaction in life.

“Our study offers compelling evidence that it is the social aspects of religion rather than theology or spirituality that leads to life satisfaction,” said Chaeyoon Lim, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the study. “In particular, we find that friendships built in religious congregations are the secret ingredient in religion that makes people happier.”

The findings occur among those who belong to a Christian-based organization, and even occur among groups of practicing Jews and Mormons.

The more friends and social connections associated with church-related activities, adding to one’s sense of belonging to a moral community, the more extremely satisfied the survey’s participants were. “To me, the evidence substantiates that it is not really going to church and listening to sermons or praying that makes people happier, but making church-based friends and building intimate social networks there,” Lim said.

“America is still predominantly Christian, but it is more diverse than ever,” said Jeremy Brooke Straughn, an assistant professor of sociology who studies national identity. “At the same time, many people feel even more strongly that America is a Christian country than they did before the turn of the century. This is especially true for Americans who say they are Christians and who attend religious services at least once a week.”

The fact that these beliefs have intensified since the mid-1990s suggests a connection to events such as the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Straughn said.

“We suspect that these events accentuated the connection between Christianity and American identity by reinforcing boundaries against non-Christians and people of foreign origin,” he said. “Although we can’t be certain of the underlying causes, our data clearly show diverging attitudes between American Christians and their non-Christian counterparts here in the United States. Those who express these views might say the belief is rooted in love of country and religion and is not about hating or discouraging others. But voicing these beliefs may cause others to feel that they do not belong and to withdraw from participating in public life.”

Straughn and co-author Scott L. Feld, a professor of sociology, looked at two waves of public opinion data from the General Social Survey, which was collected by the National Opinion Research Center. They found that between 1996 and 2004 the percentage of people who said Christian faith was a very important attribute of being “truly American” rose by more than 11 percentage points, from about 38 percent to 50 percent. The findings are published in the current issue of the journal Sociology of Religion.

This trend coincides with a steady increase in religious diversity, with Protestants suffering the greatest relative losses. Although Christians still account for about 78 percent of the adult population, the share of Protestants has fallen from more than 60 percent in the early 1990s to 50 percent in 2006.

“Religious boundaries can be politically divisive,” Straughn said. “And this is important to take note of as we approach the November elections. Religion and national identity continue to be in the news, from questions about President Barack Obama’s religion to the recent controversy about an Islamic center near the Sept. 11 site.

“Even when voters seem focused on problems like the economy and unemployment, the issue of religion and national identity could make a difference at the margins. Especially in close races, the advantage may go to candidates seen as committed to the values of American Christians.”

“There is sufficient belief in a supreme being or entity to constitute a religion for the purposes of charity law,” the Charity Commission said. They also stated it accepted that druidry was an “ancient pagan religion” in its own right involving the worship of nature, particularly the sun and the earth.

The Druid Network recently announced on their home page their new status as an officially recognized religion with the following message:

“The Druid Network received notification that our application to be registered as a charity furthering the religion of Druidry has been finally accepted. This has been a long hard struggle taking over five years to complete.”

Druids have practiced for thousands of years in Britain, honoring forces of the natural world such as thunder and the sun, and spirits they believe arise from places such as mountains and rivers.

The Network defines their aim as a not only a religion, but as a philosophy that is a celebration of life:

“Druidry is not only a philosophy though; for an increasing number of people it is a deeply held religious practice, honouring the sanctity of nature and providing an ethical framework based on the understanding of sustainable, honourable relationship. The Network therefore also aims to provide conscious support of individuality, community, local diversity and environmental sustainability, promoting awareness of the divine within nature, helping to create a world beyond unnecessary consumerism and political paranoia. Put more simply the aim is to inform, inspire and facilitate the practice of Druidry as a modern living religion.”

References: druidnework.org

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for different levels of education.

On questions about Christianity (including the Bible), Mormons and white evangelical Protestants show the highest levels of knowledge. Jews, atheists and agnostics stand out for their knowledge of world religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Jews, atheists and agnostics also do particularly well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including what the U.S. Constitution says about religion.

While previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations, this survey shows that large numbers of Americans are not well informed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions — including their own. Many people also think that the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are stricter than they really are.

These are among the key findings of the “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey,” a nationwide poll conducted from May 19 through June 6, 2010, among 3,412 adults.

Additional findings include:

• More than four-in-ten Catholics (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize, but actually become, the body and blood of Christ.
• About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity.
• Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.
• Fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist; fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly identify Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism; and only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) know that most people in Indonesia are Muslims.
• There is widespread confusion over the line between teaching and preaching in public schools. Nine-in-ten Americans (89%) know that U.S. Supreme Court rulings do not allow teachers to lead public school classes in prayer. However two-thirds of people surveyed incorrectly say that Supreme Court rulings prevent public school teachers from reading from the Bible as an example of literature, and only 36% know that comparative religion classes may be taught in public schools.
• Most Americans are able to correctly answer at least half of the survey’s questions about the Bible. Roughly seven-in-ten (71%) know that, according to the Bible, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. More than six-in-ten (63%) can correctly name Genesis as the first book of the Bible.

Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment — how much schooling an individual has completed — is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. On average, college graduates answered nearly eight more questions correctly than those with a high school education or less. Religious knowledge is also higher among those who have taken a religion course in college. Other factors linked with religious knowledge include reading Scripture at least once a week and talking about religion with friends and family.

For those curious about their own religious knowledge, the online presentation of the “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey” includes an interactive quiz that allows Web visitors to answer a selection of questions taken from the survey and compare their results to the nation as a whole and with various religious and demographic groups.

The poll, conducted by Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, found a third of the respondents regularly or occasionally attend religious services at more than one location, and a quarter of them worship outside their own faith. More Americans, over their lifetime, will try out different religions than will stay true to one faith.

S. Scott Bartchy, a professor of the history of religion at UCLA, believes that the Internet plays a part in our mix-and-match religious beliefs, with people going online and becoming more exposed to ideas offered by religions different from their own.

Bartchy said the findings were not surprising, noting the growing cultural diversity of the United States.

Approximately 25 percent of respondents believe in New Age ideas and Eastern religious concepts, such as reincarnation and the existence in ghosts, with many people identifying themselves as being on a “spiritual journey.”

And approximately 65 percent of respondents either believe in or have had an experience with supernatural phenomena, such as astrology, contacting spirits on the other side, or psychic abilities.

“How did Jesus Celebrate Christmas?” The group, Advent Conspiracy, believes we can change Christmas from the traditional shopping, credit card debt accumulation, and traffic congestion, to one of directing our attention and money we saved from less Christmas shopping to projects that provide fresh water resources around the globe.