Call for making religions vibrant, engaging to attract people

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Correspondent

30 September, 2010

According to a latest United States of America wide survey of religious knowledge conducted by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, atheists and agnostics outperformed the religious people in America.

ATHEISTS AND agnostics outperformed the religious people in a latest United States of America wide survey of religious knowledge conducted by Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

“Make religion more vibrant, attractive and engaging if you wanted to keep people in God’s fold,” eminent Hindu statesman Rajan Zed and Rabbi Jonathan B Freirich, prominent Jewish leader in Nevada and California in USA, in a joint statement in Nevada, suggested to organisations and leaders of various religions and denominations in the country.

Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, and Rabbi Freirich, further said that people with 'no religion' were increasing and we (religious leaders and organisations) were responsible for their alienation. Our efforts at social control, judgmentalism, stagnant approach, etc, might be turning them away resulting in many of them questioning belief in God, equating religion with fear, etc. Some of them, who still believed in God, were bypassing religion to reach God questioning the linkage between 'man made religions' and God. “If I ‘just do good’, I should be fine”, many of them argued.

Rajan Zed and Jonathan Freirich pointed out that life was getting complex and distractions were increasing, so religion was slipping away from the priority list of many. Conventional style of dealing with spirituality and religion did not appear to be effectively working, especially with today’s youth. Make it more exciting and challenging, they suggested.

We as religious leaders should live exemplary lives to add credibility to our preaching. Give them fresh answers without any religious stigma attached. Listen to what the people have to say before giving your opinion to them. Accept the people who and as they are. Make religion lively and not stagnant, Zed and Rabbi Freirich argue.

A spiritual world will be a better place to live than a non-spiritual world, Rajan Zed and Jonathan Freirich added.

Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. But this new US Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own.