Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Major study documents religious mobility
The Grand Rapids Press newspaper invited CSR staff to comment for a story about a major new study of American religion by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
A massive survey of over 35,000 people, the U.S. Religious Landscape study reveals significant levels of religious mobility among Americans, with 28 percent reporting leaving the faith tradition of their childhood and another 16 percent reporting movement between groups within the Protestant tradition. Over sixteen percent reported no religious affiliation at all, but this figure includes 5.8 percent who still think of themselves as “religious” (see the bottom of the table at right on the Pew page.)
At first glance, these figures may seem to be a sign of deterioration in the religious culture of the United States. But such changes must be interpreted in the context of broader cultural changes that include deaffiliation with political parties, civic and voluntary organizations and social clubs, ethnic identities, workplace loyalties and more. These trends have been documented in recent years by scholars such as Robert Putnam (Bowling Alone 2000, Better Together 2003) and Theda Skocpol (Diminished Democracy: from membership to management, 2003).
It remains debatable whether our society’s various “dealignment” trends are healthy or not, on balance. They may represent a deplorable loss of discipline, loyalty and structure in society. But they may also represent a healthy decline in the number and nature of social distinctions that used to divide us, as partisans, club members and as religious believers. There has certainly been a movement toward evangelical ecumenism, as a wide array of churches have become more similar on key theological and ethical doctrines and more tolerant of internal diversity of opinion about issues such as baptismal practices, sabbath days and forms of worship, and so forth. In politics, increasing partisan polarization is primarily at the elite level, partly a creation of party leaders desperate to revive party loyalties by drawing sharper distinctions.
“Social desirability” is also a major issue in survey research. It is at least possible that higher rates of religious affiliation in the past reflected a lot of apathetic nominal believers reporting affiliation because it was the normal thing to do, while the zeitgeist of the present may encourage assertions of independence where the objective reality is some variety of affiliation. By analogy, in political parties, it is common to find that self-described “independent” voters are actually more partisan than self-described “weak partisans”. It is possible that significant numbers of religious “independents” are just subconsciously embarrassed to admit to the strength of their own commitments, just as I am reluctant to admit how much I enjoy certain television programs. Detecting such problems requires even more intensive methods such as observing the actual activity and practical ideologies of survey respondents to see whether they behave consistently with their survey statements.
Don’t miss the Pew study’s interactive system of maps and charts. One very interesting serendipitous finding I made very quickly: Our own state of Michigan appears to be the closest thing to a religious microcosm of the nation, at least in terms of the proportions adhering to the major religious traditions as categorized by Pew. To see this, click on Maps, then select any tradition from the drop down menu, then click on Michigan on the map or in the new dropdown at right. The resulting table of bar charts at right shows that Michigan’s percentages of evangelical Protestants (26%), mainline Protestants (19%), historically Black Protestants (8%), Catholics (23%) and unaffiliated persons (17%) are a virtual mirror of the national figures. Here’s a screenshot:
As far as I can tell from a quick look, Ohio and Washington states are runners-up for reflecting the national distributions.
If you are interested in analyzing the Pew data for scholarly work, contact CSR--we’d love to help you.
UPDATE: The Press included another CSR quote in the March 1st edition.
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