Wed, 16 Sep 2009

Teenage birth rates higher in more religious states

Ya know, I could get snarky and quip "Abstinence only". But there's something else very obvious about this article - and it's so unconscious on the part of the authors I'd be willing to bet the thought never occurred to them. In fact, I'll bet you can't spot it.

Give up?

"Religious" is used as a synonym for "Christian", or, more broadly "monotheist". It's not flat out stated in this study, but note some of the questions that denote "conservative religious beliefs":

The religiosity of a state was determined by averaging the percents of respondents who agreed with the eight most conservative opinions possible in the Religious Landscapes Survey, such as 'There is only one way to interpret the teachings of my religion' or 'Scripture should be taken literally, word for word'.

It would be impossible for a Heathen (or any other pagan), a Buddhist, a Taoist or a Hindu to answer "yes" to either of those questions. Hel, we heathens don't even have such a thing as "scripture"...

It happens all the time: our baseline conception of "religious" is culturally determined. This is the single biggest problem any of the myriad of "new religions" have to overcome, if they fall too far out of the "norm". Mormons made it in, they're monotheist, too, which is the real base. Muslims and Jews were probably counted correctly in the survey, but their numbers are so tiny here as to be statistically insignificant. Especially in areas scoring the highest, like the Old South.

But I daresay no polytheist was counted as "religious", no matter how devoted to their path.

This is more than a matter of mere semantics. It's tough to get noticed when you don't exist. It was just last year that the VA began allowing pentagrams and hammers on headstones in national cemeteries. There are still no pagan chaplains in the military, and no full time ones for prison ministries. In a few isolated instances our clergy do manage to get invited to "interfaith" events, but even that can be a very condescending experience for a non-Christian.

The idea of a religion without revelation, the idea of more than one god (let alone a goddess) is so far outside most peoples comfort zone that the ideas themselves become incomprehensible. Let me explain by way of story:

A few weeks back, when the kids were here for a visit, a van pulled in to our driveway on a sunny Saturday morning. I knew they weren't egg customers when three people, a woman and two men, all carrying books, got out and headed towards the door.

I met them in the backyard and asked how many dozen they'd like. They said they hadn't come for eggs, but wished they could buy some as they really liked country eggs. Then the woman asked "What do you think God thinks about prejudice?"

"Which one?"

"Oh, racial, gender, nationality, you know, any of them."

"Uh, no... which god?"

Dead silence for a few seconds. "Uh, God the Father..."

"You mean the Allfather?"

"Yeah, God the Father...

"Odin?"

"Uh, He has a name that can't be pronounced .."

It was at this point that I politely explained that I was a heathen, and had no interest in foreign cults, and thank you very much please come back and get some eggs. I don't think they ever will.

Yeah, I was having some fun with them. But the point remains, and if you could've seen their faces, you'd see it immediately. They just couldn't grasp the concept of multiple deities. Not for real. But they had to think about it after that - I forced them to see it in a real, living person. I'll bet there were some interesting conversations in that van going down the driveway.

I don't have any answers to this, other than for each of us to educate as many people as we can, be as open as we can, and let our religious voices be heard as often as we can. Time will have to take care of the rest.

Rates of births to teenage mothers are strongly predicted by conservative religious beliefs, even after controlling for differences in income and rates of abortion. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Reproductive Health have found a strong association between teenage birth rates and state-level measures of religiosity in the US.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

/Asatru | 1 writeback | permanent link

On 9/19/2009 07:03:35
Soli wrote

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