Religion in America

Got an email for an interesting talk happening in my backyard. May be going, but wanted to mull over some of the stats in the email publicly. The abstract is in black plain type. My comments to the abstract are in brown italics...

Americans continue to pull away from organized religion. In the most recent data 17 percent of adults have no religion, up from 7 percent in 1990 and 14 percent in 2000. Our previous research focused on the trend from 1991 to 2000. Taking a wider view, we now conclude that the trend started earlier (around 1986) and continues.

I find this to be true of generational contemporaries that I know and folks a generation younger than me that I know. I think it is harder in America today for a young person who is a reasonable rational person to express any faith- because it is now seen as the realm of the fundamentalist crazy person. To be religious, especially devout, is to be lumped in with raving right wing evangelicals- and who wants that (other than raving right wing evangelicals, that is)?

Our previous work identified two sources of change: generational succession and political disaffection. Both are still important. More Americans than ever are being raised without religion, making recent cohorts less substantially less religious than the generation that is passing away. Furthermore, in the past Americans who were raised without religion often acquired one in adulthood; that happens far less often now.

I wonder what this will mean for my son, as he will be raised in our faith and surrounded by people of many faiths. We plan on teaching him multi-religious perspectives and respect. Will this make him a distinct minority? Will his only peers in this regard (people raised with religion) be conservatives?

Political disaffection continues to play a role in the increase in those reporting no religion preference; the trend away from organized religion is limited to political moderates and liberals. About 95 percent of political conservatives identify with a religion now, just as they did twenty years ago. Americans expressed stronger anti-religious feelings in 2008 than in 1998.

I find it quite scary that progressives are leaving religion, leaving it behind as a banner for conservatives only. No wonder atheist evangelicals like Richard Dawkins have found such an audience.

For example, two-thirds of adults agreed that "religion brings more conflict than peace" in 2008 compared with just one-third in 1998. Similarly more Americans described themselves as "non-religious" in 2008 than in 1998.

These trends reflect a decrease in belonging but not in believing. A majority of the rising number of Americans who cite no religious preference believe in God and two-thirds believe in life after death. Among religiously affiliated adults, non-believers declined sharply between 1988 and 2008.

Yeah, I've talked to so many folks who refuse the word "religious" opting instead for the (in my humble opinion namby-pamby) term "spiritual". It's like the word "religious" has become a bad word, much like the word "feminist".

It also means people have beliefs that go unexamined and unexplored. People's theologies are really messed up quite often, and no one ever gets challenged on that- because of some strange cultural relativism that says "personal beliefs are off limits". More on this topic when I get it flushed out in my own head. Feel free to ask questions, it may help clarify my thoughts!

Event details:

The Institute for the Study of Societal Issues presents in the ISSI Fall 2009 Colloquia Series:
Unchurched Believers: Fewer Americans Have a Religion But Religious Beliefs Haven't Changed Much
Wednesday, December 2; 4:00-5:30 pm
Wildavsky Conference Room, 2538 Channing Way
Michael Hout, Professor, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley
This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. For wheelchair access, call 642-0813 at least one day before the event.

Michael Hout holds the Natalie Cohen Sociology Chair. He teaches courses on inequality, data analysis, and population. In his research, Hout uses demographic methods to study social change in inequality, religion, and politics. In 2006, Hout and Claude Fischer published Century of Difference, a book on twentieth-century social and cultural trends in the United States, that exemplifies this approach. Another book, The Truth about Conservative Christians with Andrew Greeley (University of Chicago Press, 2006) is another example. A couple of illustrative papers include "How Class Works: Subjective Aspects of Class Since the 1970s" in a book edited by Annette Lareau and Dalton Conley (Russell Sage Foundation 2008), "The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change" (Am. J. of Soc., Sept. 2001) and "How 4 Million Irish Immigrants Came to be 40 Million Irish Americans" (with Josh Goldstein, Am. Soc. Rev., April 1994). Previous books are: Following in Father's Footsteps: Social Mobility in Ireland (Harvard Univ. Press 1989) and, with five Berkeley colleagues, Inequality by Design (Princeton Univ.
Press, 1996). Hout's honors include election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1997, the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and the American Philosophical Society in 2006. Hout currently chairs the Graduate Group in Sociology and Demography and the Berkeley Population Center. Hout's education includes a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in history and sociology and masters and doctorate from Indiana University in sociology. He taught at the University of Arizona before coming to Berkeley in 1985.