Link to External Source Article Wednesday, June 06, 2007 Díos Ha Muerto?
Peggy Levitt “God is Dead,” declared Nietzche, or if he wasn’t yet, many people were certain he would be soon. So, when the Pew Survey finds that more and more Hispanics claim no religious identity and that their rates of church attendance decline the more time they spend in the United States, it should come as no surprise. Becoming more secular is what they are supposed to do. Such surveys, while extremely valuable, are based on an incomplete view of religion. They assume that religion can be compartmentalized — that just as we go to work from nine to five, so we pray on Friday or Sunday and that is that. But, for many people, religion is an all encompassing way of life. They don’t just put it back in the box when they put their prayer book back in the pew. Faith guides how they live their everyday lives, who they associate with, and the kinds of communities they belong to, even among people who claim they are not religious. Most people could not separate Irishness from Catholicism,
