Related articles and links |  1 of 2

About 20 percent of Americans have read one of the 12 Left Behind novels or megachurch pastor Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life. Nearly 50 percent have seen Mel Gibson's feature film, The Passion of the Christ. About 40 percent say that born-again or Bible-believing best describes their religious identity.

Those are some results from the new Baylor Religion Survey, one of the most comprehensive studies of religion in America. Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) released initial survey findings today.

Conventional wisdom holds that America's religious landscape has grown more secular over time. But Baylor sociologists are citing survey findings that support their long-held hunch that decades of other surveys have painted a picture of the landscape that's imprecise at best.

According to a statement from the survey's scholars: "Past survey research has tended to consistently depict Americans as a highly religious people, while some of these same surveys have shown that the percentage of Americans indicating no particular religious affiliation has doubled over the last two decades.

"Our survey reconciles any apparent contradiction. It turns out that Americans remain connected to congregations to an extent far greater than they associate with denominations or other religious labels. Also, a fair number of those who claimed 'no religion' in our sample were actually active, engaged affiliates of evangelical congregations who were 'screened out' by previous surveys that concentrated on denominational affiliation."

The survey suggests some 90 percent of Americans identify with an individual congregation or "religious family." Many of those surveyed don't see themselves as belonging to a particular denomination. Those who do are also more evangelical than earlier research has indicated.

The survey subdivided the respondents into four kinds of believers in God, including people who believe in the authoritarian God, the benevolent God, the critical God, and the distant God. The survey found 29 percent of respondents who were Catholic or mainline Protestant showed belief in a distant God. A majority of surveyed black Protestants and evangelicals showed belief in an authoritarian God.

The John Templeton Foundation funded the Baylor ISR's study of a national representative sampling of 1,721 Americans with a three-year, $716,000 grant. In late 2005, the Gallup Organization conducted the 360-question survey by mail and phone. The survey included sets of religion questions about politics, moral attitudes, civic engagement, paranormal beliefs, Pentecostal practice, the war on terror, and buying habits of religious goods.

The ISR plans to repeat the survey with varied sets of questions every two years. The last similar survey on religion in America was prominent sociologist Rodney Stark's 1963 Berkeley study, titled "American Piety." Stark is now co-director of Baylor's ISR.

The new study, "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the U.S.," has uncovered findings that may confirm some widespread beliefs about Americans' faith, but it will also likely surprise both social scientists and the public.

Among the Baylor study's findings:

1. 4 percent of Americans think God picks sides in partisan politics. Evangelicals are most likely to believe God favors the United States, followed by Catholics.
   
   
2. Fewer than 5 percent claim a faith outside the Judeo-Christian mainstream.
   
   
3. Approximately 55 percent of all respondents believe abortion is always wrong when the rationale is that the mother cannot afford the child or when the mother does not want the child.
   
   

next page... |  1 of 2

share this page

September (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50