Huff Post
by Kecia Ali.
Associate Professor of Religion, Boston University
According to the Internet, I am 100 percent Reform Jew. This came as something of a surprise to me since I’m a Muslim.
Let me explain. In the wake of Sept. 11, I was invited to contribute an essay to a short book on Islam sponsored by the religion website Beliefnet. I poked around the site and came across the Belief-o-Matic quiz, which uses 20 theological and social questions to pinpoint “what religion (if any) you practice … or ought to consider practicing.” I answered the questions, which included issues of theism (a-, mono- or poly-), Christology, afterlife and various contemporary topics, with a lot of attention to sexuality and social policy. It also inquired whether each issue was of minor, middling or major importance to me. Since I favored a single god (no divine Christ), a single lifetime and socially liberal stances, it judged me a perfect match for Reform Judaism. Islam appeared seventh on my list of religions to try, after Unitarian Universalism and Sikhism.
As the reference to Sikhism makes clear, the religious options are global but the quiz itself is unmistakably American in spirit. Though conversion is a worldwide phenomenon with deep historical roots, the notion of shopping for a religion rather than fitting oneself more or less comfortably into the religion one was born into is both modern and very American. The Pew Forum’s 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found.
Interesting to know.