Surprising? Yes. A paradox? Apparently. How do experts explain it? Most credit the separation of church and state, which ensures freedom of worship and has encouraged the flowering of more than 1,500 different religious bodies and sects–including 75 varieties of Baptists alone. But now three provocative new surveys, based on fresh sociological data, challenge the traditional image of the United States as a secular nation with the soul of a church. By using novel methods, asking more precise questions or simply polling many more Americans than ever before, these studies demonstrate that while religion pervades the American landscape, only a minority take it seriously.
In the Colonial era, many more citizens actually attended church than qualified for membership. Today, it appears, many more Americans claim regular church attendance than actually show up for worship. For example, The Gallup Organization reported last year that 45 percent of American Protestants and 51 percent of American Roman Catholics attend services weekly-figures that are amazingly consistent with those of the last three decades. But according to a study to be published in the December issue of American Sociological Review, half the people who tell pollsters that they spend Sundays in church aren’t telling the truth. A team of sociologists headed by C. Kirk Hadaway of the United Church of Christ fin that only 20 percent of Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics show up on Sundays. Their figures are based on actual head counts in selected churches, which they then compared with surveys of the same communities. The explanation, says team member Mark Chaves of Notre Dame, is that “most people believe voting or going to church is a good thing to do and, when surveyed, often say they did vote or go to church even when they didn’t.”
Most religion polls commissioned by the media–like most membership figures from religious denominations–are notoriously imprecise. These inexpensive telephone surveys usually rely on small random samples and don’t distinguish between serious and merely nominal believers. Often, they also fail to allow for nuanced answers. As the president of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, Archbishop William H. Keeler, complained last week, the religious opinions reflected in such surveys “need to be challenged on both their width and their depth.” But in “One Nation Under God,”* a statistical map of American religion just published, Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman of the City University of New York have assembled data from 113,000 respondents–by far the most comprehensive random sample of detailed religious preference ever collected.
Like a giant sociological satellite, this second study displays a religious America divided into geographical fiefdoms (map). Roman Catholics now dominate the Puritans’ old New England strong-hold and command absolute majorities in three states. Baptists pervade the South; they are the majority in three states and nearly so (49 percent) in the District of Columbia. Although 60 percent of Americans are Protestants, Baptists and Catholics combined represent nearly half (46 percent) of the population. Utah and Idaho are Mormon realms and most Lutherans are concentrated in the upper Midwest. The nation’s nonbelievers (8.2 percent of American adults), it turns out, are not secular city folk. Rather, they are most likely to be found in the sparsely populated regions of the Pacific Northwest or upper New England and the desert reaches of the Southwest. The authors speculate that nonreligious Americans may be drawn to frontier communities. Moreover, many small Western communities are new and lack established churches. New York City by contrast, is 43 percent Catholic and home to the nation’s largest non-Christian population. And if you live in Dallas, Ft. Worth, half your neighbors are either Baptist or Methodist.
Perhaps the greatest strength of “One Nation Under God” is the unaccustomed light it throws on minority religions and ethnic affiliations. The book finds that there are more Scientologists (45,000) than self-styled fundamentalists (27,000), and it projects 8,000 followers of wicca, or witchcraft, and 20,000 for New Age devotees. Two thirds of Asian-Americans are Christians–a reflection, the authors observe, of the fact that Asia’s Christian minorities are already Westernized through conversion. Politically, African-Americans, agnostics, Jews and other nonChristians have replaced Roman Catholics as the Democratic Party’s most loyal supporters. Among blacks, 70 percent of church members are women. And despite rising rates of intermarriage-in the last decade most American Jews who married wed Gentiles–78 percent of households are religiously homogeneous.
Not surprisingly, the best-educated Americans turn out to be religious liberals, along with the tiny minority of Hindu-Americans (.2 percent of the population) and agnostics. As the authors observe, “The term agnostic is likely to be used only by reasonably well-educated people.” One surprise is the high educational achievement of the Disciples of Christ, Ronald Reagan’s denomination, a solidly Midwestern tradition that emerged only in the 19th century. Episcopalians and Roman Catholics would move higher up the ladders of income, employment and property ownership if only white members were included.
As Kosmin and Lachman readily acknowledge, their monumental study suffers from an important methodological flaw: it is a self-identification survey which takes respondents at their word. “Many respondents simply report the faith they were brought up in,” observes political scientist John C. Green of the Ray C. Bliss Institute at The University of Akron. But now, in what may well be the boldest sociological effort to measure the real strength of religion in America, Green and colleagues Lyman Kellstedt of Wheaton College in Illinois, James Guth of Furman University and Corwin Smidt of Calvin College in Michigan have devised a third study which separates the genuinely committed from the religiously tepid and those who merely wear a denominational label.
Using an in-depth random survey of 4,001 Americans, the team has reconfigured the puzzle of American religion along the following lines: nearly a third of Americans 18 and older are totally secular in outlook (pie chart). This includes 7.5 percent who describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, along with 22.5 percent who exhibit what Green calls “only trace elements” of religion in their lives. According to their calculations, an additional 22 percent are modestly religious and 29 percent are barely or nominally religious. In sum, they find that only 19 percent of adult Americans–about 36 million people–regularly practice their religion.
“We’re not talking about Mother Teresas,” says Green. “We’re looking at people who meet a religious minimum according to their own traditions.” In measuring mainline Protestants, for example, the team considered church attendance, membership in a denomination, frequency of personal prayer, belief in life after death and how “important” respondents say religion is in their lives. Those who registered some activity in all five dimensions of religion were considered “committed.”
As Green and his fellow political scientists discovered, levels of religious commitment make a major difference on moral issues like abortion but less on social questions like support for the Equal Rights Amendment, for national health insurance and for civil rights for homosexuals (chart). More important, their figures help to unravel the paradox of American religion. Half of the American population claims a religion that does not inform their attitudes or behavior. It also appears that there is a genuine culture war between secular and religious America. By a margin of two to one, the seculars have the most troops, but they are unorganized. Believers have their churches, temples and mosques and that’s what gives them influence.
Achievement Levels from “One Nation Under God”
Income Employment Education Property median annual percent working percent college percent owning household income fulltime graduates their own home Agnostic $33.3 63.5% 36.3% 59.7% Assemblies of God 22.2 48.8 13.7 75.1 Baptist 20.6 52.3 10.4 66.6 Brethren 18.5 46.2 11.4 81.4 Buddhist 28.5 59.4 33.4 50.6 Roman Catholic 27.7 54.3 20.0 69.3 “Christian” 20.7 51.8 16.0 63.7 Christian Science 25.8 40.1 33.1 69.0 Churches of Christ 26.6 47.2 14.6 78.1 Congregationalist 30.4 49.7 33.7 80.9 Disciples of Christ 28.8 55.4 39.3 72.3 Eastern Orthodox 31.5 55.1 31.6 72.7 Episcopal 33.0 52.6 39.2 70.6 “Evangelical” 21.9 47.0 21.5 69.7 Hindu 27.8 64.1 47.0 47.1 Holiness 13.7 49.9 5.0 53.7 Jehovah’s Witnesses 20.9 44.1 4.7 59.1 Jewish 36.7 50.1 46.7 61.7 Lutheran 25.9 50.0 18.0 76.5 Methodist 25.1 49.6 21.1 75.2 Mormon 25.7 49.9 19.2 74.0 Muslim 24.7 62.5 30.4 43.3 Nazarene 21.6 48.5 12.5 71.2 No religion 27.3 60.5 23.6 60.6 New religious movements 27.5 63.4 40.6 53.4 Pentecostal 19.4 52.8 6.9 60.8 Presbyterian 29.0 48.8 33.8 76.9 “Protestant” 25.7 49.3 22.1 75.4 7th-Day Adventist 22.7 46.0 17.9 54.6 Unitarian 34.8 52.7 49.5 73.2
FAVORING FAVORING FAVORING ABORTION GAY HEALTH POPULATION RIGHTS RIGHTS RIGHTS All Evangelical Protestants 25.7% 35% 37% 55% Committed Evangelicals 8.0 16 24 48 All Roman Catholics 23.2 47 59 63 Committed Catholics 4.0 23 58 63 None 19.7 62 62 61 All Mainline Protestants 16.7 56 56 60 Committed Protestants 3.0 35 41 57 All Black Protestants 7.8 42 55 66 Committed Black Protestants 3.0 31 40 65 All Jews 2.1 80 77 76 Committed Jews 0.3 55 71 49
SOURCE: RAY C. BLISS INSTITUTE, THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON, RELIGIOUS SPOT
