TruthBook Religious News Blog

Gallup, America's Promise Alliance and the American Association of School Administrators incorporate youth voice into national dialogue on dropout prevention and college readiness

WASHINGTON, May 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A poll released today by Gallup and America's Promise Alliance shows that more than one-third of students surveyed in grades 5-12 are struggling or suffering, and half (50 percent) are not hopeful, as quantified by Gallup researchers. The findings mark the beginning of what will quickly become the largest-ever survey of American children, and will help school systems and communities benchmark progress and determine solutions to the dropout crisis. Currently, one in three American students does not graduate from high school.

For this initiative, Gallup measured three key metrics -- hope, engagement and well-being -- that research has shown have a meaningful impact on educational outcomes and more importantly, can be improved through deliberate action by educators, school administrators, community leaders and others. Questions focused on:

* Hope -- the ideas and energy students have for the future;
* Engagement -- the level of student involvement in and enthusiasm for school; and
* Well-being -- how students think about and experience their lives.

Findings from the poll include:

* Nearly two in three students in grades 5-12 surveyed (63 percent) are thriving; more than one-third are struggling or suffering. Struggling and suffering students evaluate life in negative terms, struggle to meet daily demands in life and lack some of the resources needed to succeed.
* Half of those surveyed (50 percent) reported answers indicating they are not hopeful, with one-third (33 percent) indicating that they are stuck, while 17 percent feel discouraged.
* More than nine in 10 (94 percent) of those surveyed say they will graduate. Those who are close to their parents/guardians, or who have a caring adult in their life are more likely to believe they will graduate.
* More than eight in 10 (86 percent) believe they will find a good job awaiting them after graduation.
* Eight in 10 (80 percent) said they smiled or laughed at school yesterday, while seven in 10 (70 percent) said they learned or did something interesting at school. Just half (52 percent) said they were treated with respect all day.

This is a lengthy article with much more information. Please click on "external source" to access the complete article.

Labels: America's Promise Alliance, dropouts, Gallup Poll, middle school students, suffering

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Friday, April 10, 2009

More Religious Countries, More Perceived Ethnic Intolerance

by Steve Crabtree and Brett Pelham

This is the second article in a two-part series on religiosity and community intolerance. The first article addressed religiosity and intolerance toward gays and lesbians.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup Polls conducted in 139 countries between 2006 and 2008 reveal that in countries where a higher percentage of citizens say religion is important in their daily lives people are also more likely to say that their communities are not good places for ethnic or racial minorities to live. However, this trend is not linear. Countries with average levels of religiosity -- comparatively speaking -- report about as much intolerance as the world's most religious countries.

"Religious" people in this analysis are defined as those who report that religion is important in their daily lives. Using the percentage of "religious" people in a given country, all 139 countries are divided into five groups, ranging from least to most religious.

Comparing Different Religious Groups

Despite the history of caste systems in some predominantly Hindu cultures, the Hindu American Foundation states, "While tolerance and pluralism are valued by many religions, these concepts are the very essence of Hinduism," and Gallup's findings suggest Hindus are generally true to their creed. It is also important to note that many Hindus do not consider caste to have much to do with race or ethnicity.

After Hindus, Christians are the religious group that reports the lowest level of ethnic intolerance in their communities. In fact, Christians report only slightly more ethnic and racial intolerance than do secularists. In contrast, those in other major faith traditions -- Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews -- are substantially more likely than are secularists to say that the places where they live are not good places for ethnic and racial minorities. Jews are more than twice as likely as secularists to report that their communities are not good places for ethnic and racial minorities.

Local Frictions Have Big Effects

To a great degree, differences among different faith traditions may have more to do with culture than with faith. That is, these group differences may reflect historical and political factors, such as long-standing conflict over territory, rather than religious ideology per se. A case in point involves Jews and Muslims living inside and outside Israel. A majority of Jews and nearly half of Muslims living in Israel say their neighborhoods are not good places for ethnic and racial minorities. Outside of Israel, however, only about one in three Muslims and about one in five Jews say the same thing.

Ethnic and Racial Intolerance and Individual Levels of Religiosity

It is also informative to look within each major faith tradition to compare those who do and do not say that religion is important in their daily lives. In most faith traditions, religious and less religious people report similar levels of intolerance.

The largest gap, at 10 percentage points, is among Buddhists. However, this difference is driven predominantly by the reports of Buddhists in only a few countries, most notably Vietnam and South Korea. In Japan and Cambodia, for example, it is less religious Buddhists who report more community intolerance. In short, this small average difference, even for Buddhists, varies widely across countries.

Why, then, is there a persistent belief among many that religiosity is associated with ethnic intolerance? Perhaps it's partly because there are specific religious sects in which this is more likely to be the case. For example, Gallup Polls taken in 26 countries (mostly in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union) asked respondents to say whether they thought of their religion as "the one true religion in the world," "one of a few true religions in the world," or "just one way, among many different religions." Among Christians and Muslims, those who say that their religion is the one true religion are the most likely to say their communities are not good for ethnic and racial minorities. In some cases then, exclusionary views of religion are accompanied by exclusionary views of race and ethnicity.

A Caveat: Individual Intolerance or Awareness of Discrimination?

It is a well-worn truism in research on discrimination and ethnic and racial intolerance that the answers one gets in a survey depend greatly on the precise questions one asks. This analysis focuses on a question that essentially asks people to serve as informants about their communities at large. Gallup might have observed different results if it had asked people, for instance, if they would prefer to have a member of a specific minority group as a neighbor.

A Glass of Intolerance: Mostly Empty?

Critics of religion have often noted that religion has historically played a major role in fueling and maintaining ethnic tensions. From the Crusades of the Middle Ages to the ancient tensions that flare daily in the Middle East, religion is certainly connected in some ways to ethnic tensions. This fact notwithstanding, the present findings suggest that most modern religious traditions seem to have made some progress, at least since the Middle Ages, in promoting ethnic understanding and cooperation. Although there are some connections between religiosity and ethnic and racial intolerance, these connections were generally small and inconsistent -- and certainly much smaller than the comparable effects that exist for religious intolerance of gays and lesbians.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted between 2006 and 2008 with about 1,000 adults in most countries (and a sample size range of 446 to 2,006). Confidence intervals vary widely based on the sample sizes of specific groups. However, for the results involving groups of countries that vary in religiosity level, confidence intervals were always less than +1 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Labels: Brett Pelham, ethnicity, Gallup Poll, religion, religiosity, religious intolerance, Steve Crabtree

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Friday, March 06, 2009

Survey reveals makeup of rarely studied group: Muslim-Americans

By The Associated Press
March 2, 2009

Gallup Organization interviews with a random sample of 946 Muslim Americans in 2008 shed light on the demographics of this rarely studied group:

RACE: Muslims are the nation's most racially diverse religious group. At least a third of Muslim-Americans are black — mostly converts or children of converts to Islam. "The significant proportion of native-born converts to Islam is a characteristic unique to the United States," Gallup said. More than a quarter call themselves white, while nearly one in five identified as Asian and about as many classified themselves as "other."

RELIGIOSITY: Muslim-Americans are more religious than other Americans, but less likely than those in predominantly Muslim countries to say religion plays an important part in their lives — 80 percent of Muslim-Americans compared to virtually all in Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Morocco, for example.

IDEOLOGY: Muslim-Americans are the U.S. religious group most evenly spread out along the political spectrum — 29% liberal, 38% moderate, 25% conservative.

PARTISANSHIP: 49 percent of Muslim-Americans called themselves Democrats, 8 percent Republican and 37 percent independent. Gallup found that among all Americans in 2008 34 percent identified as Democratic, 26 percent Republican and 33 percent independent. But voter registration was relatively low among Muslim-Americans.

OTHER DEMOGRAPHICS: Muslim-Americans skew young, with 36 percent age 18-29, double the rate for the general population. They're more likely than other Americans to be single. Forty percent have at least a college degree, compared to 29 percent of Americans overall. Muslims may be slightly more likely than other Americans to report low household income.

Results were subject to sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points for Muslim-Americans, 0.2 points for all Americans.

Labels: American Muslims, Gallup Poll, ideology, partisanship, race, religiosity

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Poll: One in Three Americans Unfamiliar with Charles Darwin

By Katherine T. Phan
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Feb. 11 2009 08:52 AM EST

This is the first of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Charles Darwin may be an influential name in the scientific community for the theory of evolution but a new Gallup poll shows that roughly one-third of Americans have no clue who he is or what he’s known for.

Ahead of his 200th birthday celebration on Feb. 12, a Gallup poll conducted over the weekend asked Americans the question: “For what scientific theory is Charles Darwin known?”

The Gallup weekly briefing on Tuesday showed that 55 percent of respondents correctly associated Darwin with the theory of evolution, theory of natural selection or his fundamental work Origin of Species. Another 10 percent gave incorrect answers while the other 34 percent said they didn’t know who Darwin was or what scientific theory he was known for.

“Whether that’s good or bad depends on your perspective,” Frank Newport, Editor-in-Chief of The Gallup Poll, told KETV Channel 7 in Omaha.

“I think most of us would assume that even if you disagree with it that a higher percentage of Americans might at least know who Charles Darwin was or at least if he was associated with the theory of evolution.”
Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Darwin, a 19th century British scientist, developed a theory of evolution occurring by the process of natural selection.

During his time, Darwin’s theory was controversial because it was perceived as contradicting the biblical teaching on creation. Nearly 150 years since the publication of his Origin of Species, it remains a highly divisive issue among Americans.

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a report showing the American public evenly divided on the question of whether or not evolution is the best explanation for life on earth, with 48 percent agreeing that it is and 45 percent rejecting the notion that evolution best explains the origins of human life.

The Pew Forum survey showed that the views on evolution differed widely across Christian communities. Evangelical Protestants were most likely to reject the idea of evolution (70 percent), according to the report originally released in 2008. Meanwhile, historically black Protestants were more likely than mainline Protestants to disagree that evolution best explains the origins of human life, 51 to 42 percent.

Roughly half of Orthodox Christians and Catholics, however, agreed that evolution best explains the development of life on earth.

As the Pew Forum pointed out, the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the theory comes with the understanding that natural selection is a God-directed mechanism of biological development and that man’s soul is the divine creation of God.

Some mainline churches have taken a similar stance, stating that evolution and creationism do not contradict each other.

While the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has not issued a definitive statement on evolution, it does contend that “God created the universe and all that is therein, only not necessarily in six 24-hour days, and that God actually may have used evolution in the process of creation,” as reported by the Pew Forum.

Another mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affirms that evolution and the Bible do not contradict each other. But the Presbyterians are cautious and say it “should carefully refrain from either affirming or denying the theory of evolution.”

Rejecting the theory of evolution altogether is the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Southern Baptists affirm their belief that creation science can be backed by scientific evidence “without any religious doctrines or concepts.”

Labels: Charles Darwin, church, evolution, Gallup Poll, Katherine T. Phan, Pew Forum, religion

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What do Alabama, Iran, Zimbabwe share? Religion

What do Alabama, Iran, Zimbabwe share? Religion

Feb 10, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) —

Eighty-two percent of Alabamans say religion plays a key role in everyday life, or around the same percentage as in Iran (83 percent) and the southern African state of Zimbabwe (81 percent), a poll conducted by Gallup showed Monday.

That could be because "a population's religiosity level is strongly related to its average standard of living," Gallup analysts Steve Crabtree and Brett Pehlam said in a report summarizing the findings of the poll.

The poverty rate in Alabama was 17 percent in 2007, according to the US Census Bureau, while World Bank statistics show around 20 percent of Iranians live in poverty.

In Zimbabwe, a country where the economy has been plummeting for a decade and inflation is running at several billion percent annually, at least 80 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

Also giving weight to the analysts' theory is the fact that the most religious US state, Mississippi, is also the poorest.

Eighty-five percent of Mississippians say religion is a key part of daily life, according to the poll, for which 1,000 adults each were interviewed in 143 countries between 2006 and 2008.

One in five Mississippians live in poverty, US Census data shows.

Religion was a key part of daily life for 17 percent of Swedes and 25 percent of Japanese.

When all 143 countries surveyed are taken into account, the median percentage for religiosity was 82 percent. The median is value in a set, above and below which there are equal numbers of values.

Although several states were above the global median, the United States taken as a whole fell well below it.

Even though God is invoked when the US president is sworn in, mentioned on dollar bills and in the pledge of allegiance that American students say daily to the flag, just 65 percent of Americans said religion matters in their everyday lives, according to the survey.

That puts the United States about five percentage points behind countries like Armenia, Jamaica, Kosovo, Mexico and Greece on Gallup's religiosity scale.

But "Americans look extremely devout" compared to 27 other wealthy nations, where the median of people who said religion is important in their daily lives was 38 percent, the Gallup analysts said.

Labels: Alabama, Gallup Poll, Iran. Zimbabwe, poverty, religion

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Gallup: Americans see religious influence waning

12/31/2008 8:03 PM |
By Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service

Two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence on U.S. life, a sharp jump from just three years ago when Americans were nearly evenly split on the question, according to a new Gallup Poll.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans think religious influence is waning while just 27% say it is increasing. That perspective demonstrates a continuing downward trend, Gallup said.

Those who regularly attend worship services are more likely to say religion is losing its influence; three out of four weekly attenders (74 percent) said religious influence is falling, compared to 24% who thought its influence is on the rise.

The latest poll also finds that the percentage of Americans believing that religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" has reached an all-time low. Slightly more than half of those surveyed — 53% — held that view, while 28% say it is "largely old-fashioned and out of date."

The poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 4-7 with 1,009 adults; the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Labels: Adelle M. Banks, church, Gallup Poll, influence, religion

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No surveys? That would be heavenly!

January 10, 2009

You can make them say almost anything you want. They can leave you not knowing much more than you did before you either took them or studied the results.

It's like listening to a politician making a speech. When finished, you'd swear the candidate had said something -- you just can't quite recall what it was.

Anyhow, a couple of recent surveys add more patches to America's crazy quilt of faith.

A Gallup Poll shows two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence in the nation's life. That's down from about a 50-50 split three years ago.

Ironically, among those who worship regularly, 74% believe religious influence is waning, compared with 24% who say it is growing.

Another survey, this one by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, shows U.S. Christians apparently are a pretty open-minded bunch. Fifty-two percent believe at least one non-Christian religion will give you an eternal Get-Out-of-Hell-Free card.

Among those Christians who believe their faith tradition isn't the only way into heaven, 80% can cite at least one non-Christian faith able to do the job.

It gets even more interesting. Among white evangelical Protestants and black Protestants, there are sizeable numbers who say there's more than one way to heaven. About 47% of white evangelicals and 49% of black Protestants say theirs is not necessarily the one true faith. Among white evangelicals who say many roads lead to heaven, 72% can name at least one non-Christian religion that will get you there. Among black Protestants, the number is 85%.

So how do we to get into heaven? The Pew survey showed a third of Americans think religious beliefs are the key, while 29% believe actions determine who gets in. Another 10% said God will consider a combination of beliefs and actions. The rest aren't sure.

Labels: Gallup Poll, Jim Ketchum, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, surveys

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Friday, October 10, 2008

World Survey: Highly Religious More Giving of Their Time, Money

10/09/2008

A Gallup poll surveying over 140 countries and all major religions found that people who consider themselves "highly religious" are more likely to donate to charity, volunteer, and help strangers in need.

Though donating to charity was more common than volunteering, highly religious people still reported doing more of both than less religious people. The gap is smaller between highly religious and less religious when it comes to helping strangers.

The survey can't conclude whether religiosity makes one more likely to help others, or if generous people are more attracted to religion. Most faiths have traditions of helping others, such as charity among Christians, Muslims and Buddhists.

Labels: charity, Gallup Poll, religiosity, volunteering

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Saturday, August 02, 2008

Belief in God drops among educated, but 'universal spirit' prevails

by Elizabeth Tenety
Jul 30, 2008

Religious Beliefs by Education Levels

WASHINGTON -- At first glance, a study from Gallup released Monday seems a victory for atheists: Belief in God declines as education increases. Yet something more nuanced is taking place in academia because while belief in God declines, belief in a ‘universal spirit’ increases significantly during college.

Among Americans with a high school diploma or less, 88 percent believe in God, 8 percent believe in a “universal spirit or higher power” and 5 percent say they do not believe in either. For college graduates, belief in God is at 73 percent, but another 20 percent believe in a ‘universal spirit’ and only 6 percent say they do not believe in either.

The Gallup telephone survey of 1,017 American adults between May 8 and May 11 confirms the findings of a six-year study conducted at UCLA on spirituality in higher education released earlier this year. It found that while participation in religious services declines from 44 to 25 percent between students’ freshman and junior years, students also report nearly a 10 percent increase in “integrating spirituality” into their lives between those two years.

Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a Catholic organization that works to strengthen the religious identity of Catholic colleges and universities in the United States, is among those not thrilled with the move away from traditional religion.

“We’re losing so much of the great thought and theology that has developed over centuries” when society emphasizes spirituality without the grounding of religion, Reilly said.

Reilly said two forces impact the religiosity of young adults. “In American society, we’ve relied much less on religious education so fewer young people and young adults are getting education in a particular faith.” Reilly added: “The education they are receiving at all levels is much more secularized than what was traditionally provided. Young people continue to have a sense of the divine but very little by way of religious formation.”

But Reilly said the survey did show that, “despite the increasing secularization of American culture,” Americans generally still recognize a higher power, which shows a tendency toward recognizing there is a God.

Labels: education, Elizabeth Tenety, Gallup Poll, God, spirituality, youth

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Friday, May 23, 2008

70 percent of Americans find divorce 'morally acceptable', says Gallup survey

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

An alarming 70 percent of Americans now believe that divorce is “morally acceptable,” according to a recent poll by Gallup’s 2008 Values and Beliefs survey.

The new figure – the highest on record – represents an 11 percent increase from just 7 years ago and a 3 percent increase from 2 years ago. Only 22 percent of Americans said they believed divorce was “morally wrong,” according to the results.

The acceptability of divorce among Americans was ranked higher than all of the other 16 ethical issues surveyed – including the death penalty, gambling, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion and medical research on animals. Additionally, divorce has risen faster in moral acceptability among Americans than any of the other ethical issues.

Although the recent results revealed that the acceptability of divorce has risen steadily to the point where it is now “morally acceptable by a majority of nearly every major demographic category of Americans,” respondents who identified themselves as “conservative,” “religious,” or over 65 years in age were more likely to say that divorce was “morally wrong.”

Respondents who identified themselves as “liberals,” “independents,” and “non-religious,” on the other hand, registered the highest number of responses that said divorce was “morally acceptable.” Nearly 91 percent of those who said religion was “not very important” in their lives said divorce was “morally acceptable,” according to the results.

While the recent poll reveals a steady and alarming rise in the acceptability of divorce, more than 70 percent of Americans continued to rate suicide, cloning humans, polygamy, and “married men and women having an affair” as “morally unacceptable.”

The Gallup poll results were based on telephone surveys of over 1,000 adults.

Aaron Leichman
Christian Post Reporter

Labels: Aaron Leichman, Americans, divorce, Gallup Poll, morality

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Saturday, May 10, 2008

Muslims on the West

Muslims on the West

The coauthor of a new Gallup analysis of public opinion in the Muslim world said that based on its findings, conflict between Muslims and the West is not inevitable.

"Most Muslims like and admire much about the West, from our democracy to our technology," said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and coauthor of a new Gallup book, "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."

The book, which Mogahed wrote with John L. Esposito, professor of religion and Islamic studies at Georgetown University, is based on 50,000 interviews by Gallup in 40 countries with predominantly Muslim populations or significant Muslim minorities. The interviews were conducted between 2001 and 2007, and the book was published this spring.

Among the findings:

Muslims around the world do not view the West as monolithic.

Muslims are as likely as Americans to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified.

Muslims say the West can best improve relations with the Muslim world by respecting Islam.

Labels: Dalia Mogahed, Gallup Poll, Muslims, Rebecca Trounson

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

Civil religion quietly unifies and guides American public life

Saturday, 12/29/07
By RAY WADDLE

Opinion

Americans say they're more likely to vote for a homosexual than an atheist when choosing a president, a USA Today/Gallup survey reported in February.

This all-American wariness of unbelief suggests we want leaders to make decisions within a familiar moral tradition (biblical, more or less), with a providential deity somehow assisting.

Civil religion is not Christianity, it's not a denomination, and these days it's not fashionable. Yet it has been a unifying feature of national life for 200-plus years. Will it survive America's 21st century search for identity?

The American civil religion was spelled out 40 years ago by sociologist Robert Bellah, who found it in places small and large — on the currency ("in God we trust") and in inaugural addresses ("here on earth God's work must truly be our own": John Kennedy).

It endorses human liberty and stirs public purpose. It has its own "sacred" texts, such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and King's Dream speech, stressing sacrifice, rebirth, rededication.

It claims holy days: Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. And hallowed ground: Arlington Cemetery and all other military burial grounds.

Imprecision is the key

Civil religion does not replace traditional religions but functions alongside. Yet it has few defenders these days.

It is too neutral and imprecise for religious partisans, not neutral enough for atheists.

But its imprecision is what makes it work. It declares a cosmic baseline for morality, but it's not overly doctrinaire or aggressive.

It's the religion that people mean when they appeal to the common good or a common moral inheritance, as Mitt Romney did recently in his religion speech.

Civil religion has hazards. It can turn into worship of the nation. But Bellah once argued that true civil religion places us under divine judgment when we stray from our principles. It should inspire self-criticism.

Can American civic life keep its civil religion in the surging face of pluralism? Is there room for non-believers, or must it be scrapped? National civil religions emerged after the demise of the divine right of kings as a way to ennoble national solidarity.

The big question persists. Can there be a public morality that rallies public purpose without reference to a creator?

Notable regimes have tried — Hitler, Mao, Stalin, all discredited. History offers no shining modern examples yet of civil religion without God. Americans, so far, are voting with history.

Labels: Americans, civil religion, Gallup Poll, morality, Ray Waddle, religion, spiritual values

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Survey: Religion vital for voters

Amanda Shimko
Issue date: 11/29/07

Page 1 of 2 - Please click on "external link" for full article

A September report released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life states that candidates who are viewed by the public as not highly religious seem to top the newest Gallup Polls for both the Democratic and Republican Parties.

The nationwide survey, based on telephone interviews from 3,002 adults in August, rated people's perceptions of candidates and their religiosity.

Romney, a candidate with a Mormon background, was perceived as most religious by participants. Of those polled, 46 percent found Romney to be very religious, while George W. Bush comes in at 43 percent.

The latest Gallup Poll, released Nov. 13, shows Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani as the frontrunners of the Democrat and Republican Parties. Both candidates ranked in the bottom of the religious survey, ranking 16 and 14 percent, respectively.

While these numbers state the percentage of people who found the candidate to be very religious, 63 percent found Giuliani to be somewhat religious, while Clinton received 53 percent in the same category.

Clinton received the biggest percentage of all candidates, both Democrat and Republican, of those who find her not too or not at all religious.

According to the study, voters in the past have said it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs, and voters tend to express a more favorable view toward those candidates.

But, the report goes on to state, the new study finds that candidates with White House dreams do not have to be seen as very religious in order to be accepted by the public.

James Riddlesperger, professor and chair of the political science department, said religion has always been an important part of American politics.

However, Riddlesperger said, the effect of a candidate's religious preference on the next election outcome remains to be seen.

"We've never had an election this intense this early," Riddlesperger said. "It's too early to tell."

Labels: Amanda Shimko, candidates, election, Gallup Poll, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religiosity

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Friday, August 10, 2007

New field of neurotheology opens door for scientific study of belief

By Hannah Elliott
Published August 8, 2007

NEW YORK (ABP) -- If scientists could chart physical changes that happen in the brain during prayer, would it mean that prayer is something that happens only in the mind? And if brain scans show unique molecular activity during meditation, does that mean all religious belief is imaginary?

Scientists -- and some theologians -- are studying those questions using neurotheology, an emerging discipline that addresses the correlation between neurological and spiritual activity.

Some say neurotheology proves that God created the brain. Others believe "the brain created the god." At the root of the debate, some say, is the threat that faith could be reduced to nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain.

The coupling of science and belief has become increasingly prominent in popular media. Time and Newsweek magazines have both recently run long stories exploring the newly recognized discipline. And current studies at Wheaton College, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania are using neuroimaging to locate brain regions activated during emotional or spiritual events.

The quest is to find a neurological basis for out-of-body or enlightenment experiences, including trances, time perception, oneness with the universe and altered states of consciousness. But neurotheology can also help explain the more mundane habits of a religious life: prayer, beliefs, meditation and senses of the presence of the supernatural.

Paul Simmons, a clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said the brain is intimately related to relationships with and perceptions of God -- so neurotheology is a good way to help theologians use all of their capacities to study God. The underlying question, the former pastor and ethics professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said, is whether that experience is "just a mental state or have you gotten in touch with a transcendence?"

"Our brain is basic to all that we are, all that we understand, all that we perceive," Simmons said. "We can't avoid that in theology any longer. At least, we must be aware of the fact that many of our claims made about religion are actually based on science."

Theories about correlations between the brain and beliefs are nothing new. Historians have speculated that figures like Joan of Arc, Saint Teresa of Avila, Fedor Dostoevsky and Marcel Proust had aliments like epilepsy, which in turn led to their obsessions with the spiritual world.

Modern scientists differentiate between the brain and mind by defining the brain as physical and chemical, while the mind has to do with thoughts and ideas.

Plato's ideas focused on both the brain and the mind. Aristotle argued that God is pure mind, and since people have a brain they can think "God thoughts," Simmons said. "Aristotle thought you could think pure thoughts and thus get right in touch with God."

Beginning in the 1950s, scientists used electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to record electrical activity in the brain. By placing electrodes on the scalp, they could study brain waves concurring with elevated states of consciousness. In the 1980s, they stimulated different areas of the brain with a magnetic field, causing subjects to claim senses of ethereal presences in the room.

The first modern book published on the subject came in 1994. Called Neurotheology: Virtual Religion in the 21st Century, it was promoted in a theological journal called Zygon. And Newsweek recently citied a 1998 book -- published by MIT Press, no less -- called Zen and the Brain. Since then, scholarly journals have devoted issues to religion and the mind, including studies using data from meditating Buddhist monks and praying Franciscan nuns.

The reason for the renewed interest, according to neurotheology pioneer Brian Alston, is that the people writing about it have changed the terms of the field. This popular type of neurotheology focuses on beliefs, he said.

Studies since the 1960s have consistently reported that between 30 percent and 40 percent of people have felt "very close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of yourself," Newsweek reported. According to the Gallup Poll, 53 percent of Americans say they have experienced a "sudden religious awakening or insight" at least once.

But has the fascination with the brain and belief come from an oversimplified version of neurotheology? Some have criticized Time's article as equating science with Darwinism and religion with God -- over-generalized definitions for such complex subjects.

"It's oversimplified, but at the same time, there's a large kernel of truth in there," Simmons said. "The issue is whether a religious experience is a matter of brain circuits or God. Religiously inclined people will say, 'Well, that's God using our brain manifesting [itself] in brain activity.'"

Alston, who wrote What is Neurotheology?, said popular writing has certainly oversimplified the dialogue between science and theology. Theology does not just deal with the religious and the spiritual -- it has much broader implications, he said.

The word "neurobelief" -- instead of "neurotheology" -- is a better way to characterize the discipline, Alston said. Neurotheology should represent beliefs that are broader than just religious and spiritual, he added. It should represent beliefs that are cultural and political as well.

"What neurotheology tries to do is say, 'Look, here are ways that all this works together. Instead of seeing these things as enemies, let's look at these as things that can relate,'" he said. Part of the issue, he said, is that, "in the Western world, we have created a dichotomy between what we consider to be physical and what we consider to be spiritual."

That divide has been implicated in some of the criticisms of neurotheology. The key problem with neurotheology is its attempt to unify two strikingly different perspectives on human beings within one discipline, Alston wrote in a paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association last year.

Some critics believe that even if neuroscience and theology are brought together within the discipline of neurotheology, the differences will inevitably lead to one discipline -- namely theology -- dominating the other, Alston wrote.

David Wulf, a psychologist at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, has written that religious experience is actually normal brain functions happening under duress -- not communication with God.

Another prominent thinker, Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of ecology and evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has published essays questioning the discipline itself. In an essay titled "Neurotheology: A Rather Skeptical Perspective," Pigliucci wrote that he had two problems with neurotheology: "First, it is no theology at all. Theology is the study of the attributes of God.... [T]he neurological study of what happens to the brain during mystical experiences cannot tell us anything about God because all we can do is to measure neural patterns...."

The other problem, Pigliucci wrote, is that it violates Occam's razor, the rule of logic that what "can be done with fewer...is done in vain with more. That is, when faced with multiple hypotheses capable of explaining a given set of data, it is wise to start by considering the simplest ones, those that make the least unnecessary assumptions."

That logic would leave God out of the equation.

For scientists to conclude that "the self and the world at large are in fact contained within and possibly created by the reality of [an] Absolute Unitary Being" leaves the "boundaries of both science and philosophy to plunge into pure metaphysical speculation," Pigliucci wrote.

If "we realize that mystical experiences originate from the same neurological mechanisms that underlie hallucinations ... I bet dollar to donut that the reality experienced by meditating Buddhists and praying nuns is entirely contained in their mind and is not a glimpse of a 'higher' realm, as tantalizing as that idea may be," he concluded.

Simmons called that criticism "on target." Neurotheology doesn't deal with theology as it is traditionally done -- trying to get religion and experience together with reasonable consistency, he said. Progress in the field will come mostly in mental health, he said.

Alston, who studied ethics and philosophy at Yale Divinity School, says criticism of neurotheology depends on who is receiving the information. Much of it has to do with the difference between the physical brain and the metaphysical mind. Some experts believe that ideas in the mind cause action, while others say chemicals in the brain cause action -- and if chemicals are altered in the brain, behaviors will change, Alston said.

Either way of thinking is okay, since neurotheologists aren't interested in changing firmly held beliefs, he said.

"What I'm trying to do with neurotheology is to explain that each of these has a way with relating to the subject matter," he said. "It once again depends on the standing point of a person in terms of if they're a biologist and what their tools are and if they are a psychologist and what their tools are."

And with the stakes so high in this new and complex discipline, there's likely to be no shortage of opinions from either camp.

Labels: brain, Brian Alston, Gallup Poll, God, Hannah Elliott, neurotheology, prayer, science, spirituality

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

How do you pray?

Aug 02, 2007
By Terry Lee Goodrich/McClatchy Newspapers
FORT WORTH, Texas

Prayer is getting a lot of attention these days: in polls, in labyrinths, in conferences to fine-tune prayer skills. Bloggers muse about such matters as their favorite postures for praying. Some Web sites post prayer requests.

No matter how often people pray or to whom, when it comes to private prayer, "people say that the most recent time they prayed, it was about family," said Christopher Bader, a researcher in a random survey about religion in America.

The survey of 1,721 people, released by Baylor University and the Gallup Organization, showed that three-fourths of Americans pray at least once a week. More than one-fourth prayed several times a day. Of those who prayed regularly, 77 percent prayed for relatives.

"We couldn't get too specific about what people pray about, like, 'I need to get rid of this bunion on my foot' or 'I need to get this job,'" Bader said. "But we found that the least likely thing they were to pray about is what is listed as a prayer concern in a church program or newsletter. People are thinking about their issues."

He said researchers got a surprise when they asked to whom people prayed.

"Given the evangelical focus on Jesus and the rhetoric about having a personal relationship with him, only 5 percent said they prayed to Jesus," Bader said. "Most prayed to God and sometimes to Jesus. But when they pray, they are thinking more broadly, about the big boss, so to speak."

Fourteen respondents noted that God and Jesus are, according to the New Testament's explanation of the Trinity, the same, along with the Holy Spirit.

Depending on religious affiliation or the lack of it, people also prayed to the Virgin Mary, Buddha, Allah, angels, saints, spirits and "a higher power."

"Nine percent said, 'No one special,'" Bader said.

Here is a look at the prayer lives of some in the United States.

Religion survey

The Baylor Institute for Studies on Religion asked about 400 questions in the survey. They included whether respondents think God takes sides in politics, what God's personality is like, whether they watch TV shows like "Touched by an Angel," even whether they believe in the paranormal and such creatures as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

On the matter of prayer, the survey found:

Women are more likely than men to pray several times a day.

People with high incomes are less likely to pray several times a day than those with low incomes.

About 45 percent of respondents say a table grace on certain occasions; 19 percent do so at all meals.

Senior citizens are more likely than younger people to pray often.

About 53 percent of respondents pray about world affairs.

About 28 percent pray for financial security.

When it came to prayer by religious affiliation and tradition, black Protestants outdid any other group: 74 percent of those surveyed said they pray once or more a day.

Labels: Baylor University, Christopher Bader, Gallup Poll, God, prayer, religion, Terry Lee

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Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Poll: More Americans Prefer Focus on Personal Faith Over Changing Society

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Feb. 23 2007 10:07 AM ET

Highly religious Americans are almost evenly split on whether it is best to live the best possible personally religious life or it is also necessary to spread their beliefs, a recent Gallup Poll found.

Polls conducted last fall found that the largest percentage of Americans label themselves as "somewhat religious" (39 percent). Those who classify themselves as "extremely" or "very religious" constituted 37 percent of polled Americans. And 23 percent say they are "not too religious" or "not religious at all."

Among the highly religious people, 48 percent say it is sufficient to live the best possible personal life based on their religious beliefs and principles without having to spread their faith. An earlier study by the Barna Research Group had found similar figures with 46 percent of those who claim to be evangelicals being less likely to say they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs with others.

Still, the Gallup Poll found that 49 percent believe it is necessary to attempt to spread their beliefs and principles to other people.

More than half of highly religious Americans who believe it is necessary to spread beliefs to others say this is best accomplished by converting others to one's religion, which the Gallup report labeled as the traditional evangelical view. Only 31 percent say the best way to spread their religion is by changing aspects of society. The latter portion makes up only 6 percent of all American adults.

The bottom line, the report stated, is that the majority of highly religious Americans believe that they do not need to change the society around them to conform to their religious beliefs, but instead can live the best possible personal religious life, or focus on one-on-one conversion.

The poll comes amid the 2008 presidential campaigns. A key to Republican successes, the Gallup Poll noted, was the highly religious voters, who were particularly concerned for and focused on changing societal elements in such areas as abortion, same-sex "marriage," and stem cell research using embryos. The recent poll, however, indicated little interest in changing society on the basis of their religious beliefs.

Data is based on telephone interviews with 2,013 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted in September and November 2006.

Labels: Americans, Audrey Barrick, Gallup Poll, religious practice

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Religion's Generation Gap Growing

March 2- Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll used to be the Big Three of rebellion. Some families are adding religion to that list.

An increasing number of teens and young adults who were raised in nonreligious or nominally religious families are getting swept up in religious fervor. This is creating a complicated and sometimes painful family dynamic.

The parents of 16-year-old Kevin Ellstrand are self-described secular humanists who shun organized religion. Two years ago, Kevin says, he "started following Christ with all my heart." He has taken a missionary trip to Mexico and participates in a weekly Bible study group.

In a time when many teens are having sex and taking drugs, his parents mostly consider his piety a blessing. They get upset, however, when Kevin explains that he doesn't believe in evolution. "To me, this is appalling," says his mother, Karen Byers, who has a doctorate in strategic management and was raised a Methodist. "We get into arguments, and voices get a little louder than they should."

While parents of newly devout offspring often consider religion a benign if not positive influence, some say they are disappointed that their children have chosen a lifestyle so different from their own. Some of these teens and young adults are forgoing secular careers in favor of the ministry, moving away from home to religious enclaves, skipping family celebrations and changing their given names.

Clergy are in the difficult position of trying to guide young people toward devoutness without dishonoring their families. The reluctance of parents to accept their children's choices can be a source of frustration for some youths and their pastors. "My joke is, they liked them better when they were on drugs," says Pastor Peter La Joy, who directs the student ministry at Calvary Chapel in Tucson, Ariz.

While statistics on the number of devout young people are hard to come by, some groups that minister to the young report big gains. Young Life, an evangelical Christian ministry that focuses on children "disinterested" in religion, says more than 106,000 teens attended its programs on a weekly basis during the 2005-2006 school year, up from 66,362 12 years ago. "Mecca and Main Street," a new book by Geneive Abdo, a senior analyst at the Gallup Organization's Center for Muslim Studies, argues that a significant number of young U.S. Muslims are becoming substantially more devoted to Islam than their parents.

In the Jewish community, a growing number of formerly secular young people are embracing an Orthodox lifestyle.

Families in which the children are more religious than the parents aren't the norm. In "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers," University of Notre Dame professor Christian Smith reports that a child's religious beliefs generally will closely reflect his parents'. And not all religious fervor among the children of secular families has a solely spiritual basis. At times, "it's a part of teenage rebellion," says Azeem Khan, the former national coordinator of Young Muslims, a group that runs summer camps and other youth-oriented religious programs.

Overall, American's religious devotion seems to have remained fairly constant over the past 10 years. In a 2006 Gallup poll, 63 percent of respondents said they were members of a church or synagogue, down slightly from 65 percent in 1996. When asked how important they considered religion in their own lives, 57 percent said it was very important, the same as in 1996.

The embrace of Islam by young people can be confounding to secular Muslim-Americans who immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. "Our parents were more culturally Muslim than religious," says Farhan Latif, the former president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Michigan's Dearborn campus and the alumni adviser to the chapter. But in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks - and the racial profiling of Muslims that ensued - some young people have gravitated toward their religion as a show of ancestral pride and an act of defiance against a society they see as discriminatory. Young Muslims, for example, says it has seen participation double since 2000 to more than 1,000 people.

Young people gravitating toward orthodoxy is also an emergent issue in the Orthodox Jewish community. There is even a minilexicon of terms to characterize the movement. Baal Teshuva (Hebrew for "master of return") is the name Orthodox Jews give to secular Jews who are changing their lives to live like and among the frum - a Yiddish word describing observant Jews. Strict Orthodox Jews tend to live in close-knit communities, dress in a conservative fashion and strive to observe all of the Torah's 613 laws. There's even an Orthodox shorthand that includes terms like "BT" (Baal Teshuva) "FFB" (frum from birth).

Few issues create more tension for families comprised of people with different religious commitments than religious holidays and family celebrations. Last year, Philip Ackerman of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and his wife wanted to take their three children and all of their grandchildren on a cruise to celebrate his 70th birthday. Among Mr. Ackerman's children is Azriela Jaffe, who is a BT and the author of a book about how newly observant Jews can get along with their less-observant relatives, "What Do You Mean, You Can't Eat in My Home?" Because the cruise ship didn't offer kosher food, and the itinerary would require travel on the Jewish Sabbath, Mrs. Jaffe and her family declined the invitation.

In some instances, of course, a child's embrace of religion can create stronger family bonds. When Ian Matyjewicz and his twin brother became observant Jews, their mother (a secular Jew) and father (a lapsed Catholic) felt some anxieties. In some ways, Phyllis Matyjewicz says, she and her husband, George, felt like their boys were "going into another world" and wondered if each of her sons would remain "the same person." They decided to investigate the lifestyle their sons were embracing - and then decided to join in. Phyllis had to adjust to the strict rules of Orthodoxy. For George, it was a more complex proposition: He had to go through a lengthy conversion process.

For Giti Egan, her 15-year-old daughter's decision to become an Orthodox Jew brought up a range of emotions. Ms. Egan, a 36-year-old mother of three, was raised Orthodox - and left the religion after deciding that she simply didn't believe the stories in the Torah. Now her eldest child, Kara Lieberman, is embracing that world.

At Kara's request, her parents send her to an Orthodox girls school. She keeps kosher within her mom's and stepfather's non-kosher kitchen. (They bought her separate plates, silverware, pots and pans - and have turned over for her exclusive use a refrigerator, dishwasher and oven.) Kara spends nearly every weekend away from home because she finds it easier to maintain the rules of the Sabbath by staying with observant relatives. "That," says her mother, "is a bummer."

But whenever Ms. Egan gets annoyed by the recordings of rabbis' lectures blaring from Kara's room or disappointed by the lack of weekend time together, she considers the benefits of her daughter's religious devotion. "She's a much happier kid now," she says.

Labels: Gallup Poll, holidays, orthodoxy, religion, teenagers