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Survey: U.S. sorts God into categories

Arkansas Democrat Gazette, USA
Sep. 12, 2006
Laura Lynn Brown
www.nwanews.com

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Wednesday September 13, 2006

More Americans are religious than previously thought, though some of them just don’t know what religion they are.

That’s one conclusion of the Baylor Religion Survey, released Monday by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, which considers it to be one of the most comprehensive studies ever of Americans’ beliefs and practices regarding religion.

A 2004 study found that a rising 14 percent of Americans are among the “religious nones,” who have no religious affiliation, based on questions about their denomination or religious identity. The Baylor study released Monday, which included a question asking respondents “where do you go to church now,” saw the “nones” drop to about 10 percent.

“People are more able and more likely to identify with the local congregation,” said Kevin Dougherty, assistant professor of sociology and one of several Baylor faculty who are continuing to analyze the survey answers. “Nearly a third of the people who said ‘I don’t have a religion or know the name of my religion’ five questions later gave the name of their church,” he said. That means about 10 million Americans have a house of worship, even if they can’t say whether they’re born again or evangelical or fundamentalist, he said.

Rodney Stark, a Baylor so- ciology professor and author with a long history of work with religion surveys, explained that by saying, “People in the pews don’t share our language.”

Declining identification with denominations also means, for example, that some members of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in California may not realize they go to a Southern Baptist church, he said.

Andrew Eshleman, who teaches religion classes as an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thought the findings were more common sense than revelation. “I think that’s true,” he said of the findings, “but I’m surprised that you needed a survey to figure that out.”

The survey asked people 77 questions about their religious practices and beliefs.

The first findings from the study were released Monday in a report titled “American Piety in the 21 st Century: New Insights to the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the U. S.” The entire report and the questionnaire can be found at www. baylor. edu / isreligion / splash. php.

The report also finds that Americans’ concepts of God fall into four categories based on whether they think God is active in the world and angered by human sin.

The report says 31 percent see God as an Authoritarian God, who influences global as well as personal events and is often angry; 23 percent see a Benevolent God, who is equally active in daily life but less likely to be angry or punish people; 16 percent see a Critical God, who watches rather than interacts with the world and will mete out justice and punishments in the next life; and 24 percent see a Distant God, who set the laws of nature in motion but is neither active in the world nor angry about what happens.

People who attend church and pray regularly lean toward the first two; people with higher income and education tend toward the latter two, the study found.

Southerners and blacks are more likely to see God as authoritarian; Midwesterners favor the benevolent God.

A person’s view of God is also related to his opinion on social and political issues such as abortion, homosexuality, the death penalty and war, the study suggested.

Steady church attenders are more likely to support the Patriot Act, to trust President Bush, and to believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Some beliefs fell along racial lines. Whites are almost four times more likely than blacks to belief the Iraq war is justified, the report said.

Almost 19 percent of respondents think God favors the United States; that belief was strongest in the South. But only 4 percent think God favors a particular political party.

The Gallup Organization did the polling and gathered surveys from 1, 721 respondents. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The study is funded by the Templeton Foundation, which funds research and publications related to scientif ic study of religion and spirituality.

The survey will be repeated every two years, with core questions repeated and topical questions rotating in and out. One topic this time, the religious marketplace, asked about television, movies, books and religious products.

The 57 percent who watched the series Touched by an Angel dwarfed the 6. 7 percent who’ve watched faith healer Benny Hinn.

The majority of those who spend $ 50 or more a month on religious products are evangelical Protestants. About 28. 5 percent of Americans have read The Da Vinci Code, and those who have are less likely to be regular churchgoers and more likely to believe in paranormal phenomena.

Eshleman was surprised that the study’s questions about paranormal beliefs neglected what he sees as one of the most prominent such beliefs in American culture: angels.

In the sacred texts of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, he said, “there’s not a great deal about the activity of angels.”

Yet there’s a huge interest in them, judging by the popularity of books and TV shows about angels, he said.

Topical questions about paranormal beliefs suggested that about 18 percent of respondents believe in creatures like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster; 20 percent believe it’s possible to communicate with the dead; 24. 6 percent think some UFOs are spaceships from other worlds; and 37 percent say places can be haunted.

Does that suggest such beliefs are increasing ? “We don’t know,” said Christopher Bader, another Baylor assistant professor of sociology who worked on the study. “This is the first baseline.”

Baylor University is affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.