TruthBook Religious News Blog

Faith leaders reach out to get men in the pews
By Teri Greene

Women are the majority in 21 of 25 Christian denominations, according to the recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, and some local pastors say they see those statistics reflected in their own churches. And while it affects the congregation, it hits families especially hard.

Some area churches are doing everything they can to encourage the presence of men in the sanctuary and in the community as outreach volunteers.
A new approach

Nationwide, many churches are brainstorming new ways to bring in the men.

One simple difference

A basic difference in the way men and women see themselves, as people and as members of the faith community, could be the factor behind the under-represented male population in many churches, some pastors say.

Many pastors acknowledge this difference between the genders when it comes to religion.

Sixty-two percent of those who attend church regularly as adults say that as children they went to church with both parents, according to a new survey of 1,007 adults by Ellison Research, a market research firm in Phoenix. If only one parent went to church -- usually the mom -- the likelihood of the adult regularly attending dropped to 50 percent. If neither parent took them to church, 33 percent now attend.

Women can have a key role in turning the negative trend around - or at least finding ways to compensate for it -- said Katrina Todd, public relations director at Pilgrim Rest. As a woman whose husband often has to work Sundays, Todd sees how problems can easily arise.

"I think sometimes our roles get reversed, because the men are taking on more hours at work and the women pick up the slack and do what's needed," she said.
Finding 'home'

But sometimes, it's more complicated, Todd said.

"I have spoken with some female friends and sometimes it's an issue of, they can't come to a common ground of the denomination, so the mom just decides, 'I'm going to go on with this denomination,'" taking the children with her and leaving dad at home.

Hoomes said it may just be a matter of whether the man is receptive to the church his wife and family are attending.

"My experience has been that churches appeal to individuals based on their own preference and past experiences," said Hoomes, adding that men of all ages serve in leadership positions at First Baptist. "Our pastor, Dr. Jay Wolf, describes worship styles like restaurants, different choices to meet different needs."

Todd's advice for women facing this dilemma: "Just encourage your husband and decide you will go to church wherever you feel the spirit together," she said. "Say, 'Let's make this decision as a family. What's going to be the best church to fulfill our needs? What has the best ministries - for youth or marriage, or whatever we need? Let's go out and research together and find out what's going to work for the family.'"

The way the church sees men is an important factor, said Gilbert, who acknowledges that the number of men in his congregation has begun to grow.

"We're not focusing on how bad they are," Gilbert said of church members in men's ministries. "We're saying, 'What can we do to better equip you to deal with the pressures of being a father or husband?'"

He said increasingly popular culture is bashing men, and that needs to be reversed.

"Men are saying, 'At what point do I feel welcome?' Here, we have somebody helping men to improve," Gilbert said. "Women have led us, carrying the household, doing more than they were called to do. Men need to go further, to step back and take their rightful place, becoming leaders in their households."

Labels: Christianity, church, men, religion, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, women

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Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Believers see many paths to heaven

Most Americans believe in God but not dogma

By CATHY LYNN GROSSMAN • USA Today • June 24, 2008

Newly released data from a major survey find that most U.S. adults range far from knowing or caring about the distinctive teachings of their professed faith.

They believe overwhelmingly (92 percent) in God and 58 percent say they pray at least once a day. But when it comes to specific religions they're all over the map, say the latest data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Pew's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey questioned 35,000 Americans, nearly three in 10 of whom profess no religious identity but sometimes go to church. Most evangelicals, whose denominations teach that Jesus is the sole route to salvation, instead say people who have "led good lives" go to heaven. Only one in three Catholics say their church should preserve its traditional beliefs rather than change with the times or adopt modern practices.

Pew released demographic data in February from the survey, conducted in May through August 2007. This new installment focuses on questions about religious beliefs and practices, spiritual experiences, and views on society and politics.

Diversity and complexity

This analysis, based on a questionnaire that never mentions Jesus, portrays a nation of "free-flowing spirituality," said Pew Forum Director Luis Lugo, who finds the declining adherence to dogma "stunning."

When Green and Lugo factor in Pew's February findings that 44 percent of adults say they've switched to another religion or none at all, Lugo said, "You have to wonder: How do you guarantee the integrity of a religious tradition when so many people are coming or going or following ideas that don't match up?"

You can't, said the Rev. Frank Page, of Taylors, S.C., immediate past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

Page said people don't know their faith because "Gospel, once clearly preached in virtually every Protestant church, is rarely heard in the 21st century. The number who teach a clear doctrinal Christianity are a minority today. How would people know it when they never hear about how to be saved?"
Individualism vs. church

Cardinal Francis George, archbishop of Chicago and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sees in the numbers that Catholics, like everyone else, are shaped by an individualistic culture. "People are trained to trust only their own spiritual experience," he said.

Labels: Americans, Cathy Lynn Grossman, church, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, spirituality, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

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Monday, June 23, 2008

Part II of U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

WASHINGTON, June 23

Part II of U.S. Religious Landscape Survey details Americans' religious
beliefs and behaviors as well as their social and political attitudes

WASHINGTON, June 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life today released its second report on the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which finds that while many Americans are highly religious, most are not dogmatic in their approach to faith. This new analysis examines the diversity of Americans' religious beliefs and practices as well as their social and political attitudes. It follows the first report of the Landscape Survey, which was published in February 2008 and detailed the size, internal changes and demographic characteristics of major religions in the United States.

"The fact that most Americans are not exclusive or dogmatic about their religion is a fascinating finding," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "Most people will be surprised that a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including a majority of evangelical Protestants, say that there isn't just one way to salvation or to interpret the teachings of their own faith."

Based on interviews conducted in English and Spanish with a nationally representative sample of more than 35,000 adults, part two of the Landscape Survey includes a wealth of information on the religious beliefs and practices of the American public. It also explores the social and political attitudes of religious groups, including members of many small religious traditions - such as Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics - not typically analyzed in public opinion surveys.

"This report illustrates, chapter and verse, the amazing diversity and dynamism both between and within religious traditions in America," noted John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum. "And this diversity of affiliation, belief and practice matters when it comes to social and political questions."

The second report of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds:

* Although many Americans are highly religious, they are not dogmatic in their faith. Seventy percent of Americans with a religious affiliation say that many religions - not just their own - can lead to eternal life. Most also think there is more than one correct way to interpret the teachings of their own faith.

* This does not mean, however, that Americans take religious matters lightly. Most, in fact, say they rank the importance of religion very highly in their lives, and a plurality wants to preserve the traditional beliefs and practices of their faith, while only a small minority wants to accommodate their religion to modern culture.

* There is tremendous diversity of religious beliefs and practices in the U.S. Important religious differences exist between the major religious traditions, but there are also important differences within religious traditions.

* While more than nine-in-ten Americans (92%) believe in the existence of God or a universal spirit, there are considerable differences in the nature of this belief. Six-in-ten adults believe that God is a person with whom people can have a relationship; but one-in-four - including about half of Jews and Hindus - see God as an impersonal force. Similarly, seven-in-ten Americans say that they are absolutely certain of God's existence, while roughly one-in-five (22%) are less certain in their belief.

* Three-quarters of Americans report praying at least once a week, with large majorities among most religious traditions saying they pray on at least a weekly basis. Even among the unaffiliated, roughly one-in-three pray on a weekly basis. At the same time, however, there are those among all faith groups who pray much less frequently; overall, one quarter of the public says they pray a few times a month or less often.

* Almost two-fifths of Americans report meditating at least once a week. This practice is particularly common among Buddhists, but nearly half of evangelical Protestants and Muslims say they meditate at least weekly. About one-quarter of the unaffiliated report weekly meditation. These patterns may incorporate elements of both Christian and non-Christian traditions.

* Politics and religion in the United States are intertwined, and religion is highly relevant to understanding politics in the U.S. Yet while the diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice translates into important differences on many social and political issues, differences on other issues are less pronounced.

* Religion is closely linked to political ideology. The survey shows that Mormons are among the most politically conservative groups in the population. Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, by contrast, are among the most likely to describe their ideology as liberal.

* People who regularly attend worship services and say religion is important in their lives are much more likely to identify as conservative, and this pattern extends to many religious traditions. For example, within the evangelical, mainline Protestant, historically black Protestant, Catholic, Mormon and Orthodox Christian traditions, those who attend church weekly are significantly more likely than those who attend less often to describe themselves as political conservatives. And among Jews, those who say religion is very important to them or pray every day are more likely than others to be politically conservative.

* The connection between religious engagement and political attitudes appears to be especially strong when it comes to hot button social issues such as abortion or homosexuality. For instance, about six-in-ten Americans who attend religious services at least once a week say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while only three-in-ten who attend less often share this view. This pattern holds across several religious traditions.

* On other topics covered in the survey, such as views on the role and size of government and foreign policy attitudes, the role of religion is less clear and there appears to be greater consensus across and within religious traditions. For instance, a majority of nearly every religious group supports stricter environmental regulations and believes the government should do more to help Americans in need. Similarly, most Americans, including majorities of most faiths, say it is more important to focus on problems here at home than to be active in world affairs.

In conjunction with the release of this report, the Pew Forum is updating its online presentation of the findings at religions.pewforum.org. Updated features include interactive mapping by state, dynamic charts and a variety of other tools that allow users to explore the beliefs and practices as well as social and political views of major religions in the United States.

Subsequent releases will include a re-contact survey that delves deeper into the relationship between religious and political identity, issues related to conversion and attitudes toward religious pluralism in America.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life delivers timely, impartial information on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Forum is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy organization and does not take positions on policy debates. Based in Washington, D.C., the Forum is a project of the Pew Research Center, which is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

SOURCE Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

Labels: beliefs. practices, God, meditation, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, prayer, religion, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

American faith: A work in progress

American faith: A work in progress
Politics and a new view of morality have radically altered the religious landscape.

By Stephen Prothero

Numbers lie, but they also tell tales, untrustworthy and otherwise. So the key question stirring around the much discussed U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released in late February by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is what tale does it tell about the religious state of the union.

For some, the story of this survey, based on interviews in multiple languages with more than 35,000 U.S. adults, is the strength of American religion.

Not too long ago, I wrote that American atheism was going the way of the freak show. As books by Christopher Hitchens and other "new atheists" climbed the best-seller lists, I caught a lot of flak for that prophecy. But atheists make up only 1.6% of respondents to this survey. And 82% of respondents report that religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives.

Others find in this new data a nation of religious shoppers: 44% of the Americans surveyed have traded in their original religious home for another. Apparently, the grass is also greener at the church, synagogue or mosque next door.

Still others, noting that only 51% of Americans describe themselves as Protestants, see Protestantism teetering on the verge of becoming a minority.

Catholicism is at least by some readers of the tea leaves in trouble, too, now that ex-Catholics constitute 10% of the population.

Diminished safeguards

The tale I take away from this study is that shifts in the political and moral winds are transforming American religion. Many believe that the Founders separated church and state in order to save the federal government from the interference of overzealous ministers. Not so. The purpose of the First Amendment's establishment clause — which prohibits the federal government from passing laws that favor any one religion (atheism included) — was to safeguard religion against the encroachment of politics. And this new survey suggests that those safeguards are, well, going the way of the freak show.

The key subplot here is the rise of "nones," a category growing faster than any other religious group. Of all adults in the USA, 16% say they are religiously unaffiliated, while 7% were raised that way. Moreover, 25% of younger Americans (ages 18-29) report no religious affiliation at all.

It is important to emphasize that this march of the "nones" is by no means beating the drums for the old secularization thesis, which posited that as societies embraced modernization they would shun God. This is because many "nones" are quite religious. In fact, many Americans refuse to affiliate with any religious organization not because they do not believe in God but because they believe in God so fervently that they cannot imagine any human institution capturing the mysteries of the divine. In this study, only about a quarter of all "nones" call themselves atheists or agnostics. In other surveys, about half the unaffiliated typically affirm the Christian God.

Two related factors seem to be at play in the rise of the "nones": a decline in the stigma of being a religious free agent, and an increase in the stigma of being a church member. According to Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University who has written widely on religious demographics, Americans have long "overconsumed religion because of social constraints." It used to be that you were considered a bad citizen, a bad marriage prospect and a bad employee if you didn't show a little faith in faith. And plainly it is still imperative for presidential candidates to pledge their allegiance to God as well as flag. But in recent years, the moral failings of Ted Haggard, John Geoghan and other men of the cloth have been broadcast from National Public Radio to YouTube. As the almighty have fallen, atheists have felt empowered to stand up and ask whether religion really is any sort of guarantor of moral behavior. What is so moral about affiliating with gay-bashing gay evangelists or pedophilic priests?

Plainly, the Republican Party gained ground over the past quarter-century by attaching itself to family, morality and God, even as the Democratic Party lost ground by focusing on such matters as rights and reason. In the process, the Republicans became the party of God and the Democrats the party of secularism — not a good strategy for the Democratic Party in a country where 96% of voters believe in God. So Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both taking pains to pitch their party as a party of prayer and piety.

Even so, for much of the past generation, "Christian" and "conservative" have seemed to be interchangeable terms. It should not be surprising if at least some on the left who once upon a time might have described themselves as "Christians" have decided to jettison that affiliation for political reasons. Such reasons, it should be emphasized, are basically the same ones why so many Europeans have divorced themselves from their country's established churches: because the marriage of a given church with a particular political regime is never eternal, and when it ends it leaves a lot of angry children in its wake.

Customized religion

Another story buried in the data of this new survey is the power of evangelical Protestantism, and particularly non-denominational churches. Of those surveyed, 44% called themselves "born again" or "evangelical" Christians, and among religious options non-denominational Protestantism is one of the fastest growing.

The story behind the numbers of this latest survey is not that religion is in trouble. It is that religion is morphing into something new. Faith is becoming more political. But it is becoming more personal at the same time.

Stephen Prothero is the Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University. He's also the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't.

Labels: Americans, Christian, evangelicals, faith, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Stephen Prothero, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, unaffilIiated

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Thursday, March 06, 2008

Pew Survey: Demographers dispute snapshot of American Jews

By Sue Fishkoff
Published: Wednesday, March 5, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- American Jews are adopting and discarding their Jewish identities with increasing rapidity in a country that is becoming less white and less Christian, according to a new study of religious affiliation in the United States. But just hours after the study’s publication on Feb. 24, Jewish demographers were disputing some of the findings on Jews.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, shows how Jews fit into a national religious mosaic that is shifting at ever-increasing speed. Some of the findings about Jews, including the high income and educational levels, came as no surprise, as they mirror the results of earlier Jewish-only population studies.

Leading Jewish demographers, including those who worked on the National Jewish Population Studies of 1990 and 2000-2001 (NJPS), dispute some of the Pew data relating to American Jewry, particularly the figures about converts to and from Judaism.

“While we can learn a lot from this kind of survey in a general sense, in terms of Jews per se we have to be cautious because they’re such a small part of the sample,” said Jonathon Ament, the assistant director of research at the United Jewish Communities and the senior project adviser on the 2000-2001 NJPS. The NJPS survey included 4,523 respondents. With fewer than 700 Jewish respondents and a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 points that Ament calls “quite high,” he said the Pew report should be “taken with a grain of salt.” Pew researchers say the sample size is statistically sound.

Finding the total number of Jews has often been a source of controversy within the Jewish community. The Pew study arrives at its own numbers, suggesting the continuing difficulty of defining who is a Jew. Pew counted an estimated 3.8 million Jews, or 1.7 percent of the total American adult population. The NJPS counted 4.1 million Jewish adults out of a total Jewish population of 5.2 million. Some thought the NJPS underestimated the Jewish population, including Brandeis University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, which offered its own estimate of 6 million to 6.4 million.

But it was the findings on converts to and from Judaism, which involve controversial definitions -- including "Who is a Jew" -- that drew the most skepticism among Jewish demographers. According to the Pew study, 15 percent of America's nearly 4 million Jewish adults were not raised as Jews. That means, Pew researchers said, they either converted to Judaism or embraced the Judaism of one of their parents or grandparents. The study also reports that 9 percent of adults who were raised Jewish now profess another faith. Four percent of those former Jews are now Protestant, about half of them evangelicals; 1 percent are Catholic; and nearly 5 percent belong to a non-Christian faith, ranging from Islam to Buddhism to a New Age religion.

Still, the report found that Jews and Hindus are the most successful at retaining their people.

More than 84 percent of those who were raised Hindu still identify as Hindu, followed by 76 percent of those raised Jewish who say they are Jewish today. Fourteen percent of those raised Jewish now identify with no organized religion.

Judaism, Catholicism and Hinduism are the three faith groups filled with the highest percentage of born followers. Eighty-five percent of today's Jewish adults were raised as Jews, vs. the 15 percent of today's Jews who have "joined" the community. Ninety percent of today's Hindu adults were born and raised Hindu, along with 89 percent of Catholics.

Other highlights of the Pew report include:

* Jews are tied with Mormons as the sixth largest faith group, each claiming 1.7 percent of the country’s adult population.

* There are twice as many adult Jews as adult Muslims.

* Jews rank fourth among religious groups most likely to marry in the faith. According to Pew, 69 percent of married Jews are married to another Jew -- the same figure reported by the 2000 NJPS.

* Of the 31 percent of Jews married to someone of a different faith or no faith, the largest percentage, 12 percent, are married to Catholics. The faith groups most likely to marry their own are Hindus, Mormons and Catholics.

* The most highly educated faith communities are Hindus (48 percent with post-graduate degrees) followed by Jews (35 percent), compared to the national average of 10 percent.

* Two percent of America’s 1.57 million Buddhists were raised Jewish.

When it comes to drawing a Jewish picture from the Pew study, it’s difficult to compare the results to the National Jewish Population Study because it is rare to find the exact same questions or categories in both studies. In addition, the NJPS and other Jewish-sponsored population studies use a combination of self-identification and behavioral questions to arrive at a nuanced understanding of who is a Jew, whereas the Pew report allowed respondents to declare their own religious identity.

The conversion figures offered by the Pew study differ from those of other Jewish studies. The 1990 NJPS showed that 180,000 people had converted to Judaism, comprising 3 percent of the total Jewish population. The 2000-2001 NJPS did not report the number of converts to Judaism, so it’s impossible to make comparison with the Pew report’s statement that 15 percent of today’s Jewish adults were not raised Jewish.

“What does ‘raised Jewish’ mean?” asks demographer Bruce Phillips of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, who also worked on the 2000-2001 NJPS. “To you and me it might mean someone went to Hebrew school,” but the respondents answering the Pew study were not asked to elaborate.

Similarly, the 1990 NJPS showed that 210,000 Jews had converted out of Judaism, representing nearly 4 percent of American Jewry. By the time of the 2000-2001 NJPS, that figure had risen to just above 5 percent, along with an additional 7.6 percent who said they had left Judaism for no religion. The NJPS total of 12.6 percent is less than the 23 percent of Jews who told Pew researchers that they now professed no religion or had joined another faith. But some of that difference can be ascribed to definitions used by the study organizers.

Pew researchers acknowledge these “definitional issues,” said Green, a senior researcher on the project. But that was not the focus of the Pew study. The study was concerned with measuring how much movement there is into and out of faith groups rather than in describing exactly what those faith-shifters are discarding and adopting, or why.

Labels: Hindus, Jews, Judaism, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, Sue Fishkoff, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey