The discovery, the product of an exhaustive two-year study, warrants a closer look as we find ourselves in the three-month period from November through January that includes no less than 20 major religious holy days celebrated by a tapestry of faiths, ethnicities and cultures—from Bahá’í to Wiccan.
According to the study, conducted by the nonprofit More in Common, 73 percent of Americans consider their faith an important part of their identity.
Science proved that the power of the sun can be unleashed from a single atom. Similarly, each of us has infinite power and potential.
So what is it about religion? Why is it when we talk about how we’re really all brothers and sisters after all—under the same sun, moon and sky—religion consistently emerges as the star of the show?
And why is it when scholars and leaders of different faiths sit together, they find, more often than not, that there is abundant common ground?
Because there are common denominators among religions that remain stubbornly in place across the boards, despite the rantings of bigots and fools.
Specifically, there are three things that solder us together, no matter our faiths—three factors that all religions share, despite differences in belief, deity, geographical location and even time—offering 24/7 proof of what Pope Francis recently said: “All religions are a path to God. They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all.”
Something Greater
The first common denominator is the idea that there is something going on that is more than what our workaday sunlit world would have us think. Something or Someone bigger, possibly eternal, possibly outside of us, possibly within us—a divine spark that transfigures whatever one’s position in life is, no matter how trivial, into a purpose far beyond one’s job description—and possibly, too, far beyond one’s own lifetime.
Just the notion that there is a larger purpose, a bigger game—expressed over 2,000 years ago by a Jewish carpenter through such statements as “the Kingdom of God is within you”—put the world on notice that we all have divinity in our DNA and that, as children of God, we can use that divinity to forgive and to love.
The world responded and, today, Christianity is the largest religion on Earth.
Betterment Is Possible
The second feature that all faiths hold in common is the conviction that betterment is possible. Whether a higher state comes after the accumulation of good works and discipline as you strive for a Christian heaven or a Muslim Jannah or a Buddhist Nirvana, or whether it’s the achievement of the bliss of the Hindu moksha within one’s lifetime—whether it’s called “salvation” or “immortality” or simply “a moral life”—the idea that one can raise oneself higher can be found written in every scripture of every faith anywhere.
As but one example, a single man, Gautama Shakyamuni, better known as the Buddha, taught that one could achieve higher states of enlightenment and salvation without the need of divine intervention, but through discipline, hard work and diligence. Buddhism, the first truly democratic religion, opened the portals of spiritual freedom to all, not just an elite few, and civilized India, China, Japan and the Middle East in the process.
Service to One’s Fellow Man
The third idea has been called many things, but our simplest understanding of it is kindness and good works, as manifested through service to others, charity and lending a helping hand.
Hinduism, the world’s oldest religion, is built on a foundation of service to others. Although comprising just 1 percent of the US population, there are nearly 800 Hindu charities in America, 5,000 Hindus serve in the military and, of the 80,000 Indian-American physicians comprising nearly 30 percent of all the doctors in our country, the overwhelming majority are Hindu.
Caring for others is a spiritual tenet in Hinduism. When coupled with the other two factors shared by all faiths—divinity in our lives and the possibility of betterment—you get the inevitable result, as described in the Bhagavad Gita: “When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.”
Scientology, the world’s youngest major religion, thus shares the view of the oldest. Its Founder, L. Ron Hubbard, once said: “Scientology helps people to help one another. This is the message of all prophets in all ages: Help one another. It is the formula for life that cannot fail. It is the message of Scientology.” Responding to Mr. Hubbard’s call, and in the spirit of his humanitarian legacy, Scientologists do just that—confronting humanity’s scourges of addiction, immorality and suffering with global humanitarian initiatives spearheaded by the religion’s ecclesiastical leader, David Miscavige. The call to help is so strong, in fact, that being a Scientologist has come to be synonymous with one who helps.
Look at your religion. Does it share these three common denominators and aims? Of course it does, while providing a deep wellspring of wisdom to help you—or anyone else who desires it—achieve those aims.
After a thousand millennia, science proved that the power of the sun can be unleashed from a single atom. Similarly, each of us has infinite power and potential. But Something needs to be there to remind us of that fact.
In this particular eon, for our purposes, religion will do.
The big surprise of the More in Common study is not so much that 73 percent of us share the same feeling about the vital importance of faith in our lives this season, but that the percentage isn’t far greater.
As beings created in God’s image, let’s go for 100 percent next year.
