BUDDHISM IN AMERICA

Buddhism in America

(Written by G.R. Lewis)

Updated in July 2008 to include the Pew Forum's U.S Religious Landscape Survey

For the last 18 years, all denominations of the Buddhist religion have experienced an unparalleled growth in the United States of America. From the years 1990 to 2001, Buddhism had grown 170% and transformed itself into the 4^th most practiced religion in America. It was neck to neck with Islam losing a 3^rd place position by a mere 22,000 people. Furthermore, in year 2001 the ARIS (American Religious Identity Survey) found that there were more Buddhists than Unitarian Universalists, Atheists, Hindus, Wiccans, New Agers or Bahais.

Pew Forum's U.S Religious Landscape Survey

In the year 2008, the Pew Forum's U.S Religious Landscape Survey was published with great fanfare. The results showed surprising shifts in American religious life over the past decade. One important development is that Buddhism climbed to be the 3^rd most practiced religion in America below that of Christianity and Judaism. The results showed that .7%, surveyed as Buddhists, which would mean that there about 2,000,000 Buddhists in the USA. Islam ranked at .6% and Hinduism settled in at .4%. Demographically, it was found that the majority of Buddhists were Gen-xers and between the ages of 30 - 49. Also, American Buddhism's growth is predominantly based on the conversion of native-born Americans showing that Asians numbered only 30% of this population. Geographically, western USA had more Buddhists than in the east coast. Finally, 20% surveyed believed in a personal God in contrast with the overall population that registered at majority of 60%.

Problems with the Pew Survey

The good news that Buddhism has become more accepted with native-born Americans and has become the 3^rd most practiced religion in the country does not underscore the fact that the Pew survey methodology had significant problems that put these results in great doubt. First of all, the Pew survey did not include the State of Hawaii, which has a high Asian population, especially Japanese-American who tend to be Buddhist. Unbelievably, the survey only used telephone landline numbers to be contacted. Cell phone and unlisted users were excluded from the survey, which would put this writer and most of his Buddhist friends outside the survey’s parameters. Of the 425,000 household telephone numbers dialed just 34% cooperated that resulted in a net of only 35,000 interviews. The writer like many others tend to shy away from phone polls or interviews so if he was contacted by the Pew survey, he would be one of those hundreds of thousands who would not respond, therefore skewing the results against Buddhism.

Another major problem that sheds doubt on this survey is that all interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish languages. The U.S. Census reveals that 40% of the 10 million Asians living in the country do not speak English or Spanish but do speak languages such as Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Chinese, etc. So, if say 50% of the non-English/Spanish speaking Asians were Buddhists then with this addition alone, the number of Buddhists in America would double, increasing by another 2,000,000 adherents. So, due to all of these methodological problems, the numbers of Buddhists in America is much higher than the Pew Survey would suggest. Some say the numbers could be at 1.7% or 5,000,000 Buddhist adherents in the USA. This would put Buddhism statistically on par with Judaism that listed at 1.7% according to the survey.

Decline of Traditional Religion

Despite the political growth and posturing of the Christian right, in 2001, only 76.5% of American identified themselves as Christian. Religioustolerance.org cited the below ARIS study stating that the percentage of American adult Christians dropped from 86% in 1990 to just 77% in 2001. Interestingly, during the same period of time, the Non-religious category experienced an increase of 110%, translating into 13.5% of the U.S. population. Based on this data, with the continued erosion of American Christianity and growth of eastern religions and of those who classify themselves as Non-religious, we may accurately draw the conclusion that the United States is no longer exclusively a Christian nation and those policies such as school prayer, Intelligent Design, Ten Commandments displays in court houses and other Christian oriented political agendas are no longer in accordance with a religiously pluralistic society. Many fundamentalists and conservative Christians fear this downward trend and see it as an attack on their “rights,” and “tradition.” There is now emerging a new set of rights and a more encompassing tradition that brings the growing communities of Buddhists, Non-religious etc. into acceptance by main stream American culture.

Unparalleled Growth

Since the year 2001, Buddhism has experienced an ever greater interest and growth among native born Americans that gives us the impression that the number and percentage of Buddhist adherents must be even larger in 2006 than in 2001. For instance, since 2001, in the State of Connecticut, the appearance of the Buddhist Faith Fellowship and other successful and growing Buddhist congregations have brought about an explosion of Buddhist practitioners in this state. The rapid growth in the Buddhist Faith Fellowship exceeds 1000% since its inception in 2001.

Regarding national growth, the number of actual American Buddhists is still unclear but the most conservative estimate is cited by the ARIS study below. The web site The Landscape of American Buddhism, states, “Scholars of Buddhism come to very different conclusions about the number of Buddhists in America. In the mid-1990s, Robert Thurman, a Buddhist Studies professor at Columbia University and a former Buddhist monk himself, told “ABC Nightly News with Peter Jennings” that there were five to six million Buddhists in the United States. Thurman was probably guessing, but by 1997, a German scholar named Martin Baumann postulated three to four million Buddhists in America, based on his own surveys and extensive research….it is quite likely that Baumann’s figure was correct for its time, and that there now may well be many more Buddhists on America soil. That makes American Buddhism as large as many Protestant denominations.”

What is the catalyst for Buddhism’s success? In our opinion, the success of Buddhism in America and throughout the western world is due to three aspects: Buddha’s central message of compassion, tolerance and rationality, in which personal experience and spiritual transformation overrides traditional western religious fear and blind faith in ancient dogma and Christian mythology. Secondly, growth is also attributed to the new generation of native-born western Buddhist teachers who have learned to skillfully communicate the dharma to the ordinary citizens and who have adopted modern organizational models to maintain and propagate the dharma. Finally, and probably the most impacting is the deep dissatisfaction of many Westerners and Americans with the status quo religion of fundamentalist, conservative and mainline Christianity, which has helped Buddhism emerge as a viable alternative religion. Religioustolerance.org cites, “large numbers of American adults are disaffiliating themselves from Christianity….” This phenomenon has occurred in other Western Nations like the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand and other industrial countries. According to Sydney Morning Herald, in its article, While Christianity Declines, Buddhism Grows Rapidly, Australia had polled more Buddhists than Baptists in 2005. For more information on this subject matter, the article Buddha Rising, from the National Geographic Magazine, December 2005 issue, explores Buddhism's current world-wide renaissance and expansion, especially in western countries like the United States.

Emergent Religion

Buddhism in America is an emergent alternative religion poised to be a spiritual, cultural and political force in the 21^st century. The Guide to Buddhist America, published in 1998, lists more than 1,000 Buddhist meditation centers in the United States and Canada. Today, you can go to any Borders or Barnes and Noble book store and find a large section devoted to Buddhist spirituality. Buddhism is also influencing modern psychology, exploring the potential cognitive and health benefits from meditation. As a cultural phenomenon, one can now see and buy Buddha statues, bracelets and other paraphernalia almost anywhere. Most interestingly, a recent survey by the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion found that 26,125,000 Americans, or 12.6% of the U.S. population, claim that their daily spirituality has been influenced by Buddhism. Getting on this bandwagon, some progressive Christians have clearly copied Buddhist concepts such as Buddha-nature and Awakening, by calling them instead “Christ-nature” and “Christ consciousness;” moreover, since the 1960s Catholic Trappist monks have even known to practice Zen meditation on a regular basis.

Since the mid 1990’s, there have been even Hollywood Buddhist movies like Little Buddha, Kundun, Seven Years in Tibet and Enlightenment Guaranteed not mentioning a whole collection of others that have strong Buddhist themes like Star Wars and the Matrix. Speaking of Hollywood, according to Zen Abound Magazine (online) there are many celebrities these days practicing Buddhism like Tina Turner, Orlando Bloom, Richard Gere, Steven Seagal, Keanu Reeves, Patti Smith etc. As for music, the Buddhist Beastie Boys offer many dharmic lyrics such as the song Bodhisattva. Regarding American sports, Buddhist philosophy was at work in the success story of Chicago Bulls Coach Phil Jackson. On the internet Buddhism is quite a power house with countless web sites devoted to its teaching and propagation. If you Google "buddhism," you will get 33,400,000 hits.

As for being a political force, there are still too few Buddhists in America to turn the tide of fundamentalism and the near-sighted national and state policies. However, there was a Shin Buddhist Congressman, Mr. Bob Matsui from Sacramento who died in 2005; and in 2007, the 110th U.S. Congress acquired two new Buddhist Representatives, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Hank Johnson of Georgia. Furthermore, there are esteemed organizations such as the Buddhist Peace Fellowship engaged in death penalty reform, environmental activism, and the global peace movement, and the Buddhist Aids Project and the Zen Peacemaker Order. In the 21st century, there are even Buddhist universities such as the Naropa Institute and we know of at least one Shin Buddhist high school called the Pacific Buddhist Academy in Hawaii.

Major Religions in the USA

The below information was taken from Adherents.com, summarizing the growth of the major religions in the United states from the years 1990 to 2001. It offers the most conservative statistics on the number of Buddhists in America. Regarding this fascinating information Adherents.com states, “the largest, most comprehensive surveys on religious identification were done in sociologists Barry A. Kosmin, Seymour P. Lachman and associates at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Their first major study was done in 1990: the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). This scientific nationwide survey of 113,000 Americans asked about religious preference, along with other questions. They followed this up, with even more sophisticated methodology and more questions, with the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000 Americans.”