The Road Not Chosen

Are You a Revisionist?

Have you heard about “revisionist history”? It has been quite the topic of discussion in educational & historical circles for the last decade or so. The term means, in a nutshell, that we “revise” true history to give it the slant that we want in today’s era. An example would be taking a historical event and cleaning it up to be politically correct. This is seen in a lot of the current crop of history & scientific textbooks from grade school through college.

As a teacher and a writer I am always intent on giving people the true story, not the cleaned up version. We really need to learn from the mistakes of the past so they are not repeated. If the past is tidied up, there is no lesson to learn is there?

The urge to revise history is such a human one. We want things to look better than they actually were or are.  Sometimes we even want things to look worse because it makes us look better in the here and now.

Have you ever done this with your own past? Sometimes we make our past stories look worse so our “testimony” will sound better. Then again, we may clean up our old selves because we are afraid of what people might think if they knew how corrupt we used to be. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a young person say, “I’ve never been an addict or run away. I sure wish my testimony was better.” Oh, how wrong that is! The best life is the one not marred by deep, painful sins.

The church universal can often play into the urge to revise the past. It can either glorify past sinful deeds to make the salvation seem “bigger” or heap shame on them causing people to hide who they were before Christ entered their lives. Both approaches are wrong.

For example, I have wrestled with depression most of my life. My drug & alcohol addictions as a teen & young adult were, I believe, my way to self-medicate. After becoming sober and discovering what the addictions had covered up, I went to my doctor who put me on an anti-depressant which helped immensely. As a new Christian in a Word of Faith church I quickly found out though that being on medicine was a severe “lack of faith”. Oddly enough, you could boast about your deepest, nastiest sin and be cheered for it but boy howdy, don’t admit you are medication of any kind! So I went off my meds.  I battled depression, prayed, fasted, begged God to take this “thorn in my flesh” away. For reasons only known to Him, he didn’t heal me. Off my meds, all I wanted was a drink or something else to make me “feel better”.  So I went back on the anti-depressant and felt much more, well, sane!

In a previous church configuration, I hid my use of this medicine (and eventually went off it) for fear of having shame heaped upon me. My life was not good. At times I struggled to stay alive and sometimes wished I would just die.

About nine years ago I finally realized there was no shame in taking a medication that would supply what my brain didn’t. And I decided to start talking about it, willing to take whatever came with that admission. What I found were people who needed to know that it was okay to get help, medicinal or otherwise, for depression.

Happily for the last 7 or 8 years I have been in a church that is supportive of those with not only drug & alcohol addictions but also depression or whatever else a person is dealing with. I no longer feel the need to revise my own history which has been incredibly freeing and leads to better mental health as well.

What about you? What areas of your life are you revising or perhaps feeling shame about? Remember, as Christians the blood of Jesus not only cleansed us from our sin, but from our shame also.

Isaiah 54

⁴“Fear not; you will no longer live in shame.
      Don’t be afraid; there is no more disgrace for you.
   You will no longer remember the shame of your youth
      and the sorrows of widowhood.
⁵ For your Creator will be your husband;
      the Lord of Heaven’s Armies is his name!
   He is your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel,
      the God of all the earth.
⁶ For the Lord has called you back from your grief—
      as though you were a young wife abandoned by her husband,”
      says your God.
⁷ “For a brief moment I abandoned you,
      but with great compassion I will take you back.
⁸ In a burst of anger I turned my face away for a little while.
      But with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,”
      says the Lord, your Redeemer.

In Word & Deed

Last week the nation witnessed the horror of the events in Arizona. Politicians on the Left were quick to point out Sarah Palin’s website happened to have a graphic featuring certain politicians with the symbol of crosshairs over their faces. Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Gifford was one of them.  So began a national tussle over the effect of violent words in politics. Both sides are equally to blame. The right reminded everyone that the President had once said about fighting his opponent's “If they bring a bat, we bring a gun” etc.

With all this talk rumbling about, an interesting thing happened on CNN last night.

CNN anchor John King issued an on-air apology to his viewers Tuesday for the terminology guest Andy Shaw of the Better Government Association used during a broadcast of "John King, USA".

Shaw used the term, "in the crosshairs" while the pair discussed the mayoral race in Chicago.

King apologized saying:

"Before we go to break, I want to make a quick point. We were just having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race just a moment ago. My friend Andy Shaw, who now works for a good government group out there, used the term 'in the crosshair's in talking about the candidates out there. We're trying, we're trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend. He's covered politics for a long time. But we're trying to get away from using that kind of language. We won't always be perfect, so hold us accountable when we don't meet your standards."

Alrighty then. If we all learn not to say anything violent we will have peace & harmony. The lion & the lamb will lay down together & the streets will flow with dark chocolate.

Oddly, after hearing that bit from John King (who I usually like) I turned to ABC to watch V, a show Harold & I have really enjoyed. Last night I had to turn it off. The theme of the night was torturing humans & aliens. Aliens were hung from chains so that their skin could be cut off of them as they screamed in pain. A human had several spikey things attached to his body so current could go into him to test the Queen V’s daughter’s willingness to torture someone. That is when I clicked away.

We can get all picky and uppity about not saying “in the crosshairs” but then we go home and watch popular TV & movie dramas that emphasize brutality all for our enjoyment. What is accomplished by our censoring words? If we are really committed to having a less violent country it has to encompass not just vocabulary & political dialogue, but movies, games,  etc.

As a writer I am acutely aware of the power of words. I become concerned however, when we assign them too much power, resulting in an emphasis on being politically correct but not changing the violence behind the word which imbues it with power in the first place.

Which do you think is more powerful; the word or the graphic image? Let me know.

Strike A Pose

On New Year’s Day, out of the blue, I started thinking about self portraits. Not the artistic ones by, for example, Picasso.

 

 

 

Picasso: Self portrait 1972

Copyright Pablo Picasso

 

 

 

 

 

I was considering the proliferation of pictures of ourselves on places like Facebook. Here is a recent one I took of myself:

I don’t usually take pictures of myself. Not because I’m not vain, mostly because I don’t like pictures of myself ever. Wait. That’s vanity. Oh well.

We Baby Boomers don’t really get into the self-portrait thing like the current Generation does. I’d like to say it’s because we are too busy cleaning up the environment like we said we would when we were 18.  Probably it’s because we’re too busy scraping money together for retirement since Social Security is going to be sucked dry in a couple of months.

I am truly curious though why so many of the younger ones seem obsessed with how they look in pictures. A quick tour of the photos on some of my Millennial friend’s Facebook pages reveal themselves in lots of solo poses. I will admit that I admire their courage for posting goofy looking pics. Here’s one of me:

(I need to brush up on my goofiness.)

As humans our default gear is self-love, otherwise known as narcissism. This trait was perfected by we Baby Boomers when we made it all about us in the 60s and 70s. Some Boomers continue in the path today and a smaller number of us at some point realized that the best life was one given away in service to others.

Tomorrow, my 11th & 12th graders will begin reading a book by two young men who realized that they were so self absorbed that they couldn’t begin to relate to people who were poor, destitute, and homeless. They embarked on a one year journey of being voluntarily homeless. It will be an interesting read for my wonderfully sheltered middle-class kids. My goal of course is to remind them (and me) that it’s not all about us. It’s all about someone else, Jesus, and how we best show the world what he looks like.

Back to the pictures. I’m not very good at the kind of picture taking where you hold the camera out & have someone scooch in close so you can get a pic of both of you. Here’s one I took on New Year’s Eve where I actually managed to get both of us in the frame:

Now that’s something worth getting obsessed about!

The Problem of Illegal’s

“White People - The Original Illegal Immigrants!” – John Fugelsang, actor & comedian

Arizona has been prominent in the news as of late because of the passage of a law that gives police the power to stop someone if they suspect the person is an illegal alien. This in a state that has a huge legal Hispanic population as Arizona used to belong to Mexico.

As an Los Angelino I understand Arizona’s frustration. Like California, New Mexico & Texas, Arizona has found its economy stretched past the breaking point as services such as hospitals, schools, etc. are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of illegal aliens that they must care for.

Every problem has a root cause, a starting point or ground zero. Most people would think that the root cause that lead Arizona to make such a law is the huge number of illegal's crossing the border from Mexico to Arizona. That would be an incorrect assumption. The main problem is that Americans hire illegal’s to work for them. Businesses and individuals enjoy the cheap labor & the fact that illegal's fill the “less desirable” jobs that most of us don’t want to do. If we would quit hiring undocumented workers then a large number of those workers would quit crossing the border.

Let’s quit blaming Arizona for enacting a seemingly crazy law and even stop blaming the people crossing the border for work. Laying the blame for this problem at the feet of the people who hire & enable the illegal aliens is what needs to be done. Stiffer penalties and fines need to be enacted to punish our home-grown enablers. Interestingly, there was a decrease in border crossings in the Western states during the worst of the current economic downturn. This shows that if there are less jobs available for them, there will be less people trying to get into America illegally.

If you are interested in reading more about Arizona’s new law this is an interesting opinion piece from someone who lives there and one from a retired Arizona cop who was born in Mexico. Here is how Los Angeles and other cities celebrated May Day.

Rubber Necking

I have, I realize, a list of things I can’t watch in movies/TV. This is not to be confused with the list of things I won’t watch. The can’t list is very specifically tailored to my life experiences that have left me with certain aversions. Here is part of my list.

I can’t watch women being abused verbally or physically in any way, even a small way. This is because in another life I was one of those women. Having lived through it makes it impossible to experience “viscerally”.

I absolutely cannot watch anything where a dog dies. I think my personal count of much loved and sadly dead dogs is somewhere around 12. Now watching cats die is something I could do all day long because I hate cats. They are manipulative, cold hearted, creatures. (All comments refuting my hatred of cats will be deleted so don’t bother.)

Tonight I found out that I can’t watch a medical show whose storyline consists of someone getting a raging staph infection after a surgery and almost dying. Been there, lived that with Ev about 3 years ago. Do. Not. Need. To. Watch. It. As. “Entertainment.” Nope.

The end of Braveheart, where Mel Gibson is about to be, well, you know if you saw the movie. I have a really, really strong stomach but that scene sent me running. It’s one that I wish I hadn’t even witnessed the few seconds I did see.

Anything where people are trapped into small spaces. Even worse if they are trapped in a small space underwater. Being not fond of that type of thing, I avoid it also in a moving picture context.

What is on your list of thing’s you can’t watch?  In a couple days I’ll tell you about my list of things I won’t watch and why.

Who’s Biased? Not Me!

The White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn, told CNN Sunday regarding Fox News “…what I think is fair to say about Fox, and the way we view it, is that it is more of a wing of the Republican Party." Oddly she made no mention about CNN being a wing of the Democratic Party.  Let’s just all agree to the truth, which is all network news is biased one way or the other. Good. Now that it’s out of the way….

This lead me to start thinking about bias as opposed to impartiality. Honestly, is it even possible for a human being to be totally impartial? We all have opinions on basically everything. For instance, eggplant. I think it is a yucky tasting vegetable. Now eggplant has never done anything to me. I’ve never choked on it or tripped over one and sprained an ankle. I could just ignore it but I can’t because I am not impartial about it.

I thought really hard trying to think of something I am of no opinion about. Can’t come up with a single thing. Some of you who know me well will be saying, “Duh! Because you are SO opinionated about everything!” which appears to really be true now that I am unable to find my subject-of-no-opinion.  (Feel free to help me find that elusive subject.)

Onto another subject: the use of over-familiar terms of endearment. Harold just got a voice mail from someone he doesn’t know. It started out “Hey, bud,…” That reminded me of one of my biggest pet peeves: men I don’t know who call me “hon” or “honey”. I’m twitching just thinking about it! The only group of men who can call me “hon” all they want are really old guys who have no smarmy intent. But otherwise, watch out!

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago I am writing with fountain pens most of the time now. This has led me on a hunt for the perfect red ink. There a several brands and colors to choose from. I just ordered samples of the following:

 

J. Herbin Rouge Caroubier   J. Herbin Rouge Opera

Diamine Monaco Red   Diamine Passion Red

Of course how they look on a computer screen and how they look on paper are going to be entirely different I presume. This brings to mind the Forrest Gump “life is like a box of chocolates” quote for some reason.  Speaking of chocolate, I think I’ll get up and get a piece of lovely dark chocolate that one of my students gave me Friday before their huge grammar final. If I can be bribed with anything, it’s dark chocolate!

Have an enjoyable week!

From The Dr’s Point of View

I have a lot of Dr. friends. These are caring people who aren’t in it just for the money. I know. I’ve seen them treat people (lots of people) for free and pay out of their own pockets to help those in need. All of my doc friends are vehemently against the proposed healthcare plan. They know that there needs to be reform but have legitimate fears that it will end up as screwed up as Medicaid.

I thought I’d post this story “Physicians speak out on health care bill” from The Houston Chronicle.

Physicians jammed a town hall meeting in The Woodlands on Thursday, expressing fears about the cost and effectiveness of a health care reform bill that could come up for a vote in Congress as early as September.

U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, hosted the meeting attended by about 90 physicians at Memorial Hermann Hospital-The Woodlands.

“The bottom line is that doctors don't want socialized medicine — another flawed health care system like Medicare. They don't believe it will lower the costs or improve quality,” Brady said. “Medicare is already going bankrupt and not quality care. It also shifts medical costs onto other paying customers. It needs to be fixed first.”

The bill is designed to insure 94 percent of all Americans (excluding those covered by Medicare, which kicks in at age 65) and would cost an estimated $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The revenue to pay for it would come from $544 billion over the next decade in income taxes on single people making more than $280,000 annually and couples making more than $350,000 annually; $37 billion in business taxes; $500 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid; and sizable penalties paid by individuals and employers who don't obtain coverage.

“I am very concerned about what this will cost us in terms of dollars,” said Dr. William Parker, the chief medical officer where the meeting was held. “Before this week, they did not tell us any details of the plan. We've had too little time to read, digest and discuss something that will be such a major overhaul of the health care system.”

U.S. Rep. Gene Green, a Democrat who represents a blue-collar area from Baytown to Denver Harbor east of Houston, has held four meetings on the health care plan and received mixed reviews.

“There seems to be an organized Republican effort to have people come to a Democrat's town meeting and dominate the discussions,” Green said. “Some have admitted they don't live in my area. This has never happened to me before.” (Side note: doesn’t he represent everyone in his district? Are only Dem’s allowed to attend? I’m confused.)

He plans to hold more meetings and only admit those who live in his district. Green said many citizens seem to have misconceptions about the plan. He said it will be a boost for his lower-income district, which has many more uninsured residents than The Woodlands…

Hey! We’re The Only Ones Who Can Protest!!

Wow! Protests are breaking out all over. Finally! Here is a link to the latest protest in my state which occurred yesterday. 

The Associated Press reports “White House advises Dems on health care protests”. I find that title hilarious. Like the Democrats who came into their own during the protests of the ‘60’s have forgotten what that was like? Or do they think their party is the only one who can organize protest marches, disrupt meetings, shout down speakers, etc.? Protest is allowed under our Constitution, no matter what party you belong to. I think they’re just p.o.’d that Republicans would have the audacity (hey, haven’t we heard that word before?) to protest in a manner that the Dem’s thought they had copyrighted.

The lead sentence in the AP story is this:

“Top White House officials counseled Democratic senators Thursday on coping with disruptions at public events on health care this summer, officials said, and promised the party and allies would respond with twice the force if any individual lawmaker is criticized in television advertising.”

What the heck? I get it, now we can’t criticize politicians in TV advertising. This party can sure dish it out but they can’t take an ounce of pushback! These are the people who have demonized anyone who did not and does not see it their way.

I’d like to remind you of what conservative citizens in California have suffered by the hands of Democrats when Prop 8 was on the ballot. People who donated money or otherwise supported the proposition against same sex marriage had their names and addresses published in liberal newspapers and on the Internet. Their businesses were boycotted, their churches, synagogues and mosques were desecrated. They endured threats to their lives. Now that’s something a political party can be proud of! (I will say for the record that some members of the gay community condemned these tactics.)

Peggy Noonan wrote this in her Wall Street Journal column yesterday, which was subtitled “Voters send a message to Washington and get an ugly response”:

And so the shock on the faces of Congressmen who’ve faced the grillings back home. And really, their shock is the first thing you see in the videos. They had no idea how people were feeling…

The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he’s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, “You are terrifying us.”

What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t.

People are not automatons. They show up only if they care.

But most damagingly to political civility, and even our political tradition, was the new White House email address to which citizens are asked to report instances of “disinformation” in the health-care debate: If you receive an email or see something on the Web about health-care reform that seems “fishy,” you can send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. The White House said it was merely trying to fight “intentionally misleading” information. (Aside. I have a friend who suggested we all report our own blogs! I’m actually thinking about doing that. Hmmm.)

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Wednesday wrote to the president saying he feared that citizens’ engagement could be “chilled” by the effort. He’s right, it could. He also accused the White House of compiling an “enemies list.” If so, they’re being awfully public about it, but as Byron York at the Washington Examiner pointed, the emails collected could become a “dissident database.”

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants?

The president should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they’re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what’s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation’s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we’ll turn to it again—but not now. We’ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication.

You know what would happen if he did this? His numbers would go up. Even Congress’s would. Because they’d look responsive, deliberative and even wise. Discretion is the better part of valor…

Being a child of the ‘60’s who cut her political teeth on public protest & civil disobedience, I know that protests can indeed go too far. I would like to see less shouting from those opposing the current healthcare legislation and more sit-ins, which I feel would be very effective.

Remember the ‘90’s and the Operation Rescue protests at abortion clinics? We weren’t afraid to have a sit-in, get arrested and go to jail to make a point. We need to protest loudly and effectively. It worked for Gandhi, the Civil Rights Movement and it can work now.

Those who hold public office have to realize that they will lose their job if they do not represent their constituents. As I say every week: speak up! Besides, as Christians, we might as well get use to really putting ourselves on the line.

There Is a Plan

I have always been a political junkie/activist. My first memory of my political inclination was when I was in 7th grade. I led a sit-in protesting the fact that we weren’t allowed to wear pants to school. Oddly enough, the Principal compromised, letting us wear pants on Fridays which only further fueled our rebelliousness.

In eighth grade I wore a P.O.W. bracelet (Gregory Benton Jr. I still remember his name.) In ninth grade I wrote an essay on the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance wasn’t true any more. Not only did I get an F, but almost got kicked out of school. My parents met with the principal and pointed out that, while the topic was terrible, the essay was grammatically correct with no spelling errors and that I should at least get a C. In 10th grade I helped organize a local “Walk for Hunger” which was something Bobby Kennedy started. We got pledges and walked 10 miles to raise money to feed the poor. In 12th grade I wrote a poem for our high school literary magazine about one of our lecherous teachers. (Your Playboy key has rusted, your hand is on the door, Go drink your bottle of Geritol and bother me no more)  The principal wasn’t going to let me participate in graduation, even though the teacher who was the subject of the poem, told the principal not only was he not offended but he thought it was a great poem! Again my parents made the trek to the office. (By now they had a lot of practice.) My folks actually backed me up this time, saying it was free speech and there was nothing obscene in the poem, it was merely my opinion. Needless to say, I got to participate in my ceremony.

In college I volunteered at the local Free Clinic working the suicide and abortion hotlines. Part of this I am now very ashamed of as abortion had just become legal in California and I counseled many young women, presenting abortion as a viable option. (I was a card-carrying member of N.O.W. and feminist to the bone.) This one made my parents very, very angry to the point that my dad told me that if I insisted on volunteering there he wanted me out of the house.

So today, 2009 A.D., when I look at what is happening in our country and around the world I understand where the liberals/socialists are coming from. I considered myself a socialist from 11th grade until I was 23 or 24 years old. I know very well how they think, what their tactics are, and what their goal is. And, if I am not careful, I get scared, very scared, of what the future may look like. Fortunately I became a Christian when I was 22 and God has slowly but surely altered my worldview and politics.

The temptation arises often these days to be worried and fearful. Sometimes I feel like I literally have to grab the fear by the throat and declare “I will not fear because the Almighty One is in control of everything and He works all things together for good for those who love Him.” I pray. I meditate on the Bible. I center my thoughts around God and His Kingdom which will surely come no matter what the enemy does to try and stop it.

I read something on a blog yesterday that said “sometimes bad things have to happen first so that the good things will come.” They were referencing the death of Jesus which had to come before the resurrection could happen.  So I prepare my heart and mind for what may or may not come. I try and make peace with the thought that Christians in America may have their religious freedoms taken totally away. We are not so special that we will automatically escape what millions of our fellow believers endure daily around the world.

I am still political but that is secondary to being Christian. I pray for the President and Congress to be wise and make good decisions, but I also write to them when I disagree with what they do, savoring the fact that we still have freedom of speech. Conscious of that. on this blog I write about God and about politics while I still publically can. 

Most importantly I know how this all ends, being assured to my core that God will triumph over Satan and what we endure in this life is just a tiny moment compared with the eternity we will experience joyfully with our King. I leave you with this wonderful encouragement from the late S.M. Lockridge.

 

Does This Mean 1 in 3 “Christians” Have Poor Reading Comprehension?

1 in 3 'Christians' say 'Jesus sinned'
Barna poll shows adults develop their own beliefs

By Bob Unruh © 2009 WorldNetDaily

Half of Americans who call themselves "Christian" don't believe Satan exists and fully one-third are confident that Jesus sinned while on Earth, according to a new Barna Group poll.

Another 40 percent say they do not have a responsibility to share their Christian faith with others, and 25 percent "dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of the principles it teaches," the organization reports.

Pollster George Barna said the results have huge implications. "Americans are increasingly comfortable picking and choosing what they deem to be helpful and accurate theological views and have become comfortable discarding the rest of the teachings in the Bible," he said. "Growing numbers of people now serve as their own theologian-in-residence," he continued. "One consequence is that Americans are embracing an unpredictable and contradictory body of beliefs."

The results are a dramatic departure from the nation's foundings, when leaders held prayer meetings in the halls of Congress and attributed to Almighty God the victory in the Revolutionary War.

Barna noted the millions of people who describe themselves as Christian and believe Jesus sinned, or those who say they will experience eternal salvation because they confessed their sins and accepted Christ as their savior, "but also believe that a person can do enough good works to earn eternal salvation."

Barna's private, non-partisan, for-profit research group in Ventura, Calif., has been studying cultural trends since 1984. For this study, the organization randomly sampled 1,004 adults across the continental U.S. The study has a margin of error of 3.2 percent at the 95 percent confidence level.

For the study, "born-again Christians" were defined as people who said they had made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that was still important in their life today and who also indicated they believed that when they die they will go to heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The results highlight the significant shift in beliefs held by Americans, the study said.

"For much of America's history, the assumption was that if you were born in America, you would affiliate with the Christian faith," the report said. Now however, "half of all adults now contend that Christianity is just one of many options that Americans choose from and that a huge majority of adults pick and choose what they believe rather than adopt a church or denomination's slate of beliefs."

Fifty percent of Americans believe Christianity no longer has a lock on people's hearts. Two-thirds of evangelical Christians (64 percent) and three out of every five Hispanics (60 percent) embraced that position, making them the groups most convinced of the shift in America's default faith.

In contrast, the poll showed the importance of belief was growing along with the number of options about what to believe.

"By an overwhelming margin – 74 percent to 23 percent – adults agreed that their religious faith was becoming even more important to them than it used to be as a source of objective and reliable moral guidance."

Forty percent of respondents who do not affiliate with Christianity confirmed the increasing influence of their beliefs.

The result "underscored the fact that people no longer look to denominations or churches to offer a slate of theological views that the individual adopts in its entirety," the report said.

By a margin of 71 percent to 26 percent adults "noted that they are personally more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs than to accept a comprehensive set of beliefs taught by a particular church," the report said.

Nearly two-thirds of "born again Christians" adopted that stance.

"In the past, when most people determined their theological and moral points of view, the alternatives from which they chose were exclusively of Christian options - e.g., the Methodist point of view, the Baptist perspective, Catholic teaching, and so forth," Barna noted. "Today, Americans are more likely to pit a variety of non-Christian options against various Christian-based views. This has resulted in an abundance of unique worldviews based on personal combinations of theology drawn from a smattering of world religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam as well as secularism."