Looking Around the Corner to See What's Coming



Master's voice I can hear loud and clear. I know when I do wrong. I know when he is pleased...The way I see things is that we tend to limit ourselves, our believes, our understanding, our willingness...due to what?..MY MASTER... I stand were I stand and ever so proudly.. [My love is ] beyond reason, understanding or comprehension. I am completely and insanely obsessed..

The above is a form of religious testimony picked up from a website recently. But it is not a prayer to a god of Christianity. It is directed at Severus Snape, a character in the Harry Potter Series. He is a professor in the "Hogwart School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." The website where this new god is worshipped has a large following of women vying for attention from their god.

J.K. Rowling did not portray this character as a god. Readers themselves found a god in him. 

I did not take the above quote from the site itself. It is discussed in the new book I am reading, Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World by Tara Isabella Burton. 

The book addresses something I have wondered about for years. During the years I have been involved with atheism and writing this blog, polling about religion has revealed rapid growth in a group who answers by saying, "Not affiliated with any religion (or any religious organization)." In circles where statistics about religion are discussed they are called "nones." This group is now so large it is approaching one-fourth of the adult population. 

Religious writers claim "nones" are part of the Christian community but have not yet chosen a denomination. I was at a conference of American Atheists where its President said "nones" belong to atheists. "Christians claim them" he said, "but they are not Christians. We claim them." 

The author of this new book spent a year searching out the "nones." What she found was a surprise to me. 

She found a massive trove of people whose spiritual lives involve gods, mystery and spirits like Severus Snape. When people answer questions about their religious lives with "spiritual but not religious" they really have a spiritual life. It's common to combine bits of one religion with another.

The author tries to track the new groups with new gods or new beliefs. She says it is growing so fast she cannot keep up. I liked her observation that if Christianity can be called the "religion of the book" the new faith trend is a "religion of the internet." 

I hope to understand more of this as the author explains what she found.

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