Buddhism in America

Recently someone here mentioned that a very small number of Americans are Buddhist. Here are some interesting facts. Here is an article on Buddhism that appeared in one the U.S./s most prominent news papers, the New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/opinion/sunda...l?src=me&ref=general . Here is a quote: "Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the United States. More Americans convert to Buddhism than to Mormonism."

Here is excepts from SpiritHit News called "Measuring Buddhist Influence in America"
The current issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion includes one of the most important
pieces on Buddhism in America to appear in recent years. 'Buddhists and Buddhism in the United States: The Scope of Influence,' was written by sociologist of American religion Robert Wuthnow and ethnographer of Theravada in the USA Wendy Cadge....The approach which Wuthnow and Cadge take is to assess the level of influence that Buddhism has exerted on religious Americans, rather than the more conventional numbers game of trying to determine exactly how many Buddhists there are in the country. This is a much more productive approach because Buddhism, unlike Christianity, is not founded on an adherence model Wuthnow and Cadge's study is significant for two reasons. First, it takes a different tack in assessing the importance of Buddhism in America than most works have. This means that the number of people who identify overtly as Buddhists doesn't tell us much about whether Buddhism is impacting American religion...

Based on their survey conducted in 2002-2003, they found that one out of every seven Americans has had at least a fair level of contact with Buddhism, and that one out of eight Americans reported that Buddhism had influenced their religious life. Those are staggeringly high numbers. To put it in perspective, there are about four million Americans who actively identify as Buddhists. But if we ask how many Americans include Buddhist elements'”a little or a lot'”in their personal spiritual lives, the
number appears to be about 12.5% of the population: that's 26,125,000 adults. The number who say the Buddhist influence has been significant is almost the same: at 12%, that's 25,080,000. Clearly Buddhism is exerting an influence far beyond the relatively small number of people who claim Buddhism as their primary religious identity. There's another lesson to be learned between the lines. The number of Americans who have had at least a fair amount of contact with Buddhism is 14%, or 29,260,000 adults. The gap between those who have encountered Buddhism, and those who have adopted some Buddhist elements into their lives, is small generally.

jack

Jack,

You might be interested in this. Charles Prebish, who is cited several times in the "Buddhists and Buddhism" article, was a recent guest on The Secular Buddhist. You can listen to the interview here: secularbuddhism.org/2012/06/10/episode-1...rican-buddhist-life/

The interview itself is terrific for it's entertainment value alone, but it also poses some challenging issues for those of us who want to see the Buddhadharma flourish in the west. In it Prebish raises issues that have concerned me of late. Namely that in order for Buddhism to become a sustainable spiritual practice in the west that the needs of family must be integrated into the tradition. There are also some really cool stories about his practice and adventures along the way.