Posted on 09/12/2006 10:08:39 AM PDT by Mark Felton
WACO, Texas A Baylor University study finds that more Americans are active in religious groups than previously thought. The study released yesterday also found that most traditional Christians reject the label "evangelical" and prefer to describe themselves as "Bible-believing" or "born again."
The survey was conducted by the Baylor University Sociology Department and the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion. It's the first in a series on the spiritual life of Americans.
Researchers found that only 10-point-8 percent of Americans have no ties to a congregation, denomination or faith group. Previous surveys had put that figure at 14 percent, overlooking about ten (M) million people involved in some form of organized religion, according to the Baylor report.
The study also found that many Americans without ties to congregations still believe in God or a higher power.
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WACO, Texas — We may be "one nation, under God," but Americans actually worship at least four versions of the Lord, according to the Baylor Religion Survey released Monday. "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights into the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the United States," conducted by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, leveled more than two dozen questions about God's character and behavior at 1,721 Americans nationwide. They perceived of God in one of four ways:
— Authoritarian God: Individuals who follow this model feel God is highly involved in their personal lives and world affairs, they give the Deity credit for their decision-making, and they feel God is angry and meting out punishment to the wicked.
— Benevolent God: These believers also think God is very active in their daily life, just not as wrathful. They believe Benevolent God is mostly a force for positive influence in the world, and reluctant to condemn individuals.
— Critical God: The faithful of this subset believe God is not meddling in world affairs but is nonetheless looking on in disapproval. These people tend to believe that God's displeasure will be felt in another life, and that divine justice is not of this world.
— Distant God: Individuals in this group think that Distant God is not active in humanities affairs, and is not especially angry, either. Believers consider the Deity more of a cosmic force who sets the laws of nature into motion.
Which of the God models you follow is an accurate predictor of a number of factors, including race, political stances, even where you live, said Paul Froese, a Baylor sociologist who worked on the BISR project headed by Rodney Stark and Byron Johnson. For example, there is a strong gender differential in belief in God. Women, he said, tend toward the more engaged versions (types A and B), while men tend toward the less engaged and are more likely to be atheist. More than half the blacks in the study said they believe in the Authoritarian God. None surveyed said they were atheist. Lower-income and less-educated folk were more likely to worship god types A or B, while those with college degrees or earning more than $100,000 were more likely to believe in the Distant God or be atheists, the Baylor study concluded. Froese noted that the geography also seemed to correlate: Easterners disproportionately seem to believe in a Critical God; Southerners tend toward the Authoritarian God; Midwesterners worship the Benevolent God; and West Coast residents contemplate the Distant God. American Piety found also that God's anger alone (such as type C) does little to inspire religious participation. The authors suggest religion may most successfully motivate individuals through what it can offer them in spiritual intimacy and congregational connectivity rather than through demands backed by threats of divine punishment. Believers in an "angry" God tend to reject the idea that church and state are or can be separate, and are more likely to feel that one's religious faith is exclusively the correct path of righteousness. The belief that God is engaged in the world also is associated with higher expressions of religious involvement and commitment, the study found. Other findings in the expansive, newly released Baylor study:
— Catholics and mainline Protestants are more apt to see God as distant, as are Jews.
— Evangelical and black Protestants lean toward the Authoritarian God. People who see God exclusively as "he" also worship this image.
Executed in conjunction with the Gallup Organization, the national, random sampling of more than 1,700 English-speaking adults was conducted from October to December last year. The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points. Through telephone surveys, or a 16-page form, participants answered almost 400 questions on spiritual beliefs and practices. Baylor researchers say it's the most comprehensive study of its kind in more than 40 years. Byron Johnson, professor of sociology and director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, says American Piety will change the way religion is studied in this country. This nation's beliefs and practices have not been probed in such detail since a 1960s study by Rodney Stark, then with the University of California at Berkeley. Stark now works for Baylor as BISR co-director with Johnson Johnson said analysis of the responses will offer a snapshot of American religious life in the early 21st century. "Specifically, we examined the religious identities claimed by Americans, their experiences, activities, images of God, beliefs about heaven, views about the role of religion in politics, and even the consumption of religious goods," he said. Survey areas covered are tantalizing, including the war on terror; whether God truly favors one political party over another; the viewpoints of the faithful when it comes to paranormal matters such as horoscopes; and the impact of the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code on believers. Getting agnostic and even atheist participation on Baylor's religion survey didn't seem to be a problem, he added. Although 10.8 percent did not claim any affiliation with any faith family or house of worship, only 5.2 percent of those surveyed declared themselves to be atheists. Bader said Baylor is only just beginning to mine the data for more insights into the American religious spectrum. When the next phase of the study is conducted in 2007, he said, he hopes not only to see how images of God have changed in the two-year interim, he also hopes to add other study modules as well. For example, he wants to probe racial and ethnic diversity, and gather more data on nondenominational worship.
Terri Jo Ryan writes for the Waco Tribune-Herald.
Ping.
of course! These people still believe $$ define success, they are most often the worshippers of materialism.
Since I came to christ my "need" to pursue financial gain (at the sacrifice to spiritual gain) is greatly diminished. i no longer believe my success is defined by my income.
I say all this as a successful engineer, entrepreneur etc...
Since coming to Christ i have been called to study physics and pursue a far less financially rewarding career in theoretical research. I love it. (my earlier business in international marketing, making a lot of money is not important anymore).
Waco was hardly the place for this endeavor. The Branch Davidians were nuts to go there. It's Southern Bible Belt country at its finest.
Study: Americans not losing religion
By Manya A. Brachear
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 12, 2006
In what has been called the most comprehensive survey of the nation's faith since a seminal study in 1968, Baylor University sociologists reported Monday that Americans aren't losing religion, but defining their spiritual lives differently.
As a result, researchers say, millions of pious people have slipped below the radar of most religious surveys, misleading many scholars to sound the secular alarm too soon.
"People might not have a denomination, but they have a congregation," said one of the survey's authors, Kevin Dougherty, citing studies that indicate the number of non-religious Americans has doubled in the past decade. "It is not evidence of rising secularization, but how researchers ask about religious affiliation."
The Baylor Religion Survey, the first in a series of studies funded by a nearly $250,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, queried 1,721 Americans on topics ranging from the existence of God to the reality of Bigfoot.
The survey looked at spending on religious merchandise, literary taste and self-proclaimed labels.
In assessing religious behaviors and attitudes, researchers asked, "With what religious family do you most closely identify?" Even if respondents answered "none," some later provided names and addresses for where they worshiped.
Dougherty attributed the discrepancy in survey results to a failure to recognize the rise of non-denominational evangelical churches, making it more difficult for worshipers there to find a label that fits.
But Barry Kosmin, lead investigator for the American Religious Identification Survey, which queried 50,000 Americans in 1990 and 115,000 people in 2001, said the term "religious family" is confusing. His studies found the number of "non-religious" Americans jumped from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001.
"I'm a little incredulous and skeptical," Kosmin said of the Baylor study. "If someone is born-again they're very unlikely to say they have no religion."
While many surveys stop at the question of whether God exists, the Baylor poll posed 29 questions about God's character and behavior and found Americans believed in four images of God: authoritarian, benevolent, critical and distant.
"A person's view of God" directly affects how an individual sees the world and interacts with others in society, said Byron Johnson, a sociology professor and co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor, a Baptist university in Waco, Texas.
Catholic and mainline Protestant participants opted for a distant God. White evangelical or black Protestant Southerners described God as authoritarian--highly engaged and angry.
Midwesterners leaned toward highly engaged but not so angry--a benevolent God.
Other questions that strayed from previous studies examined beliefs in phenomena that defy scientific explanation.
The more often someone attends church, the less likely he espouses paranormal beliefs. Evangelicals were the least attracted to paranormal beliefs. And while 43 percent of Americans reported having dreams that came true, nearly 18 percent believed in the Loch Ness monster or Bigfoot.
"Baylor survey finds nation more active in religion than thought"....much to the disdain of liberals
Well, as a Calvinist, my beliefs don't fit within any of these models. Rather, it falls between A & B. I believe that God is benevolent, but He does not hesitate to condemn individuals if they do not follow Him. But He is in the business of redeeming individuals. How people respond to His call is their responsibility.
right
uummm...they hardly limited their phone calls to the Waco area.
Do you think Gallup polls only reflect the opinions of those in NY, or wherever Gallup or Zogby are headquartered?
Baylor is a world class research institution. They can figure out how to do a properly normalized nationwide poll, I reckon.
Point taken.
If Atheists account for 4.2% of Americans, why don't they shut the hell up 95.8% of the time?
Clearly, the Baylor investigators know very little about the subject they are investigating.
Mark, Don't you know that you have to fall into one of these groups. God in a BOX is been tried before! God is Too Big to put into a Box. FOOLS!
That sounds a tad synergistic.
bump for later
LOL...From the title I first thought this was another article telling us that we're religious, therefore we don't think.
Baylor is a major research institution and their approach was sound and covered the spectrum in the US.
The number of responses was sufficient to project the results over the whole population with an error rate of probably 2 to 3 %.
These guys know what they are doing.
Notice all polls have the same margin for error. That's why momst FReepers don't trust polls. I'd have to hear the questions to feel better about it. I can tell when I'm telephone polled which way the interviewer's questions are slanted.
"Clearly, the Baylor investigators know very little about the subject they are investigating."
The survey fills the holes left in most other surveys that try to fit a persone into denominations. There are many, many non-denominational churches that don't fit into the normal mainline listing of churches. This looks to me as if it is a really good study, one that seems to recognize the realities on the ground.
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