TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Lillian Kwon
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jun. 09 2009

Compared to attendees of a typical Protestant church, people who attend megachurches are more likely to be young, single, more educated and wealthier, a new survey reveals.

The majority of megachurch attendees (62 percent) are under the age of 45 whereas less than half (35 percent) of those in a typical congregation fall in the 18-44 age group, according to a megachurch report by Scott Thumma of Hartford Institute for Religion Research and Warren Bird of Leadership Network.

The report – "Not Who You Think They Are: The Real Story of People Who Attend America's Megachurches" – is based on data from a national survey that drew 24,900 responses from 12 carefully selected megachurches across the country. It is claimed to be the largest national representative study of megachurch attendees conducted by any researchers to date.

With more than 5 million people worshipping at megachurches – Protestant churches of 2,000 or more weekly attendees – in a typical week, Thumma and Bird sought to provide a look at who these worshippers are, why they come and why some stay.

"[U]ntil now, very little was known about those who attend these churches,'" the researchers state in their report, released Tuesday.

For comparison, the researchers used findings from the U.S. Congregational Life Study (USCLS), a study of Protestant churches of all sizes that was completed in April 2001.

Please click on "external source" for the complete, 2-page article.

Labels: Lillian Kwon, megachurches, protestants, Scott Thumma, Warren Bird

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Friday, May 08, 2009

Do frequent churchgoers support torture?

by Michael Paulson May 3, 2009 09:05 PM

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life last week reported a finding that at first blush is stunning: the more often one attends religious services, the more likely one is to say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists is at least sometimes justified. And white evangelical Protestants are the most likely subgroup to offer at least some support for torture, while those who are not affiliated with a religious denomination are the least likely.

This is just the first paragraph from this interestiung article. Please click on "exernal source" to access the complete article, including the entire survey graphic and other comments.

Labels: evangelicals, Michael Paulson, protestants, torture

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Men are from Tyre, Women are from Bethany

Robert P. Jones and Daniel Cox

Please click on "external source article" for the complete article.

Just a generation ago, mainline Protestant clergy were made up almost exclusively of men. Over the last two decades, the number of women clergy in the mainline increased nearly three-fold, from only 7% in 1989 to 1-in-5 (20%) in 2008. While still a minority in the church, as the percentage of women in the ministry continues to grow, female clergy have the potential to dramatically shift the balance of opinion of mainline churches and denominations on a variety of key issues. They will also increasingly influence mainline congregants, who make up nearly one-quarter of all voters and 18% of the general population--an estimated 40.7 million Americans.

The Clergy Gender Gap on Social Issues

Consider the stark gender differences on the volatile issue of same-sex marriage, which most mainline denominations have been fiercely debating over the last few years. Nearly 6-in-10 (58%) female clergy believe that gay couples should be allowed to marry, compared to only about one-quarter (27%) of male clergy--a gap of more than 30 points.

This clergy gender gap is more than three times as large as the gender gap among all Americans. One-third of all women support allowing gay couples to be married legally, compared to one- quarter of men, an 8-point gap. Among all mainline Protestants, the gap between men and women is even smaller at 5 points (31% to 36% respectively).

This pattern is also clear on the issue of abortion, where the clergy gender gap is 34 points. Nearly 8-in-10 (78%) female clergy say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared to only 44% of male clergy. Among all Americans, the gender gap is only 5 points on this issue, and among mainline Protestant laity, the gap is only 3 points.

The Clergy Gender Gap on Economic Issues, Priorities, and Political Identity

But this fault line between male and female clergy is not just confined to social issues. We found double-digit gender gaps also on key economic issues and issue priorities as well.

For example, 9-in-10 female clergy say that the federal government should do more to solve social problems such as unemployment, poverty, and poor housing. Among male clergy, about three quarters (76%) agree. More than 8-in-10 female ministers say that more environmental protection is needed, even if it raises prices or costs jobs, compared to two-thirds of male ministers. And 85% of female clergy support the government guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes, compared to about 6-in-10 (63%) male clergy.

Female clergy also hold starkly different issue priorities than their male colleagues. Half of all female clergy say that social welfare problems, like poverty, education and health care are the most important issues in the country that the church should address, compared to only about one-third (34%) of male clergy. Male clergy are more than twice as likely to cite cultural issues like abortion or same-sex marriage as most important (12% to 5% respectively).

These different issue positions, not surprisingly, lead to divergent political identities. More than three-quarters of female pastors identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared to half of all male clergy. Male clergy are about four-times more likely to identify with the Republican Party (40% to 11% respectively). Likewise, nearly three-quarters (74%) of female ministers identify as liberal, compared to about 4-in-10 (42%) male ministers.

Here, as above, the clergy gender gap far exceeds the gender gap in the general population. Overall, women are only slightly less likely than men to identify as Republican (25% vs. 30% respectively), and the proportions of women and men overall who identify as liberal are nearly identical (24% vs. 25% respectively).

Labels: clergy, Daniel Cox, gender, Mainline Protestant Clergy Voices Survey, protestants, Robert P. Jones

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Friday, January 30, 2009

Role Of Denominations Change In Modern Church

By The Associated Press, Associated Press (AP)
CLAYTON, N.C. -

If American religion is a spiritual shopping center, denominations that once dominated the market are in danger of being boarded up.

A major survey of 35,000 Americans released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirms the long-held belief that denominational loyalty is fraying - and those with much at stake include both mainline Protestant and evangelical churches.

Sociologists point to many factors in the erosion of denominational loyalty, including a transient population less anchored to one city or job and the rise of individualized faith, including people who borrow from many traditions.

The Pew survey found many Americans don't want to be associated with denominations, even when they belong to one. People who call themselves "just a Protestant" account for 5 percent of the adult U.S. population.

Even when given the chance to choose from specific denominations, many people said, "I'm just a Baptist," for instance - even though the Baptist family ranges from strongly conservative to smaller liberal traditions.

About 16 percent of Americans are unaffiliated with any religious tradition - an increase from earlier surveys - although many of those say faith is important to them. Nearly half of American adults have left behind the faith tradition of their upbringing.

One key finding of the Pew survey: Nondenominational Protestants are growing in number, and tend to be younger. About three-quarters of nondenominational Protestants fall under the evangelical tradition, said Greg Smith, a research associate with the Pew Forum. But in a conclusion that might surprise some, Pew researchers also identified 20 percent of nondenominational churchgoers as mainline Protestants.

Smith said the mainline tag was applied to people who attended nondenominational churches but did not identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, and to those who said they attended "liberal nondenominational" or "emergent" churches.

Many emergent churches borrow the worship and liturgical styles of mainline Protestant churches but hew to a conservative evangelical theology.

The decline of mainline Protestant denominations and rise of evangelical churches in the 20th century is well documented, with many contributing factors: mainline Protestant churches are aging faster, recording lower birth rates, attracting fewer immigrants and embroiled in divisive battles over sexuality and the Bible.

The Rev. Lovett H. Weems, Jr., director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, a United Methodist Church seminary, said growing churches have both a clear sense of identity and meet people's needs in a changing culture.

"They're not just setting up shop and saying, 'This is who we are, these are our beliefs and we will be here if anyone wants it,'" he said.

Whether because of tradition or bureaucracy, mainline Protestant churches have been slow to adapt, but Weems senses that is changing. In Virginia, the United Methodist Church is aiming to develop 250 "new faith communities" in the next 30 years.

The choice of that term instead of "churches" is telling. Rather than traditional congregations, those communities might be one church with several campuses, ethnic churches or congregations that meet in people's homes, Weems said.

The nation's largest Protestant church body, the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, is aware of the sentiment. The proportion of young adult lay people and pastors who serve as "messengers," or delegates, to the convention's annual meeting has been dropping since the 1980s and declined sharply since 2004.

After growing steadily from 1950 to the mid-1990s, the conservative-dominated Southern Baptists have experienced relatively flat growth, causing alarm.

In another sign of the times, more than half of new Southern Baptist churches don't use the word "Baptist" in their name, recent church research found. One older example is blockbuster author Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Southern California.

Labels: faith, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religious denominations

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Meditation goes mainstream

Bonna Johnson
October 10, 2008

A report released this year showed an astonishingly high number of Protestants - nearly half - say they meditate at least once a week. Among the public, 39 percent meditate at least weekly, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

It's no surprise that people are seeking paths to peace and serenity in our high-octane, 24-hour world.

"We're a mentally focused, hard-core, achievement-oriented society," says Dr. J. David Forbes, a medical doctor and meditation teacher in Nashville, Tenn. "People are finding it hard to quiet the brain down."

Once they do, he says, meditation may lead not only to new insights but also to a healthier, happier life, he says. Studies show daily practice can reduce stress and anxiety, lower blood pressure and even increase life expectancy in the elderly, he says.

Meditation has been, at times, eyed with suspicion. The Vatican in 1989 went so far as to say that methods such as Zen, yoga and transcendental meditation, can "degenerate into a cult of the body" and be dangerous.

And the notion that meditation is too way out there for Christians, if not rooted in the Bible, still exists today.

"The idea of emptying the mind is not biblically based," says Don Whitney, associate professor of biblical spirituality at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. "There can be a danger."

Referring to meditation's long association with Hinduism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions, Whitney says, "Some of the yoga stuff, where you're given a mantra, that is rooted in false religions." He sees no problem with stretching, but once you start chanting, you're treading on treacherous ground, he says.

But for many Christians, meditation fits quite nicely into their religious life. They're drawn to biblical Scriptures, such as in the Psalms, which says, "Be still, and know that I am God."

For them, meditation has brought deeper meaning to their lives.

Labels: Bonna Johnson, meditation, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religion

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Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Poll: Revealing New Look at Religious Voters

By Deal W. Hudson
6/18/2008

The volatility of the Catholic vote created by the Iraq War was confirmed by the study's findings.

WASHINGTON, DC (Inside Catholic) - A new survey on religion and politics provides important background on the dynamics at work among religious voters in 2008.

The "National Survey on Religion and Public Life" published by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College was based on a large sample of 3,002 interviews, nearly three times the sample size of most political polls.

Analyzed by director Corin E. Smidt, the survey data yielded the following major conclusions:

Mainline Protestants are now firmly identified with the Democratic Party, 46 percent to 37 percent. Smidt calls this "an historical turning point," but the shift has been in the making for over a decade. Taking their place in the Republican Party are, of course, the Evangelical voters -- 54 percent to 25 percent, slightly down from 2004.

White Catholic loyalties lean slightly toward the Democrats, 41 percent to 38 percent, reflecting the 30-year migration of Catholics into the GOP. Democrats used to own the Catholic vote in years gone by.

The White Catholic vote is "up for grabs in the 2008 presidential election." Because of the instability created by the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and the Vatican's criticism of it, I agree with him.

The news about Latino Catholics is not good for the GOP. Only 15 percent call themselves Republican, compared to 57 percent for the Democrats. The number of independents among these voters is growing (28 percent).

Individual religious beliefs and practices are more important than denominational affiliation in predicting political views. When you distinguish between traditionalists, centrists, and modernists within each denomination, each group's politics will resemble the others across the denominations. Modernist Catholics will think politically like modernists belonging to other denominations, and so on.

Traditional believers of all denominations are more likely to be Republican, and modernists are more likely to be Democrats -- with the odd exception of modernist Evangelicals, who lean toward the GOP.

The survey numbers on abortion and gay rights bear the importance of looking beyond denominational affiliation. Catholics overall agreed, 51 percent to 43 percent, that "abortion should be legal and solely up to the woman to decide." Among traditionalist Catholics, the number changes dramatically, with 71 percent disagreeing. Modernists, not surprisingly, agree 80 percent with a woman's "right to chose."

Gay marriage is not supported as strongly as abortion among religious voters, but comparing 2004 with 2008, support appears to be growing: 9 percent among Evangelicals, 5 percent among mainline Protestants, but only 2 percent among Catholics, who have heard Benedict XVI quite outspoken in opposition to gay marriage.

The volatility of the Catholic vote created by the Iraq War was confirmed by the study's findings. Non-Hispanic Catholics did not agree that the United States rightly took action against Iraq, 52 percent to 42 percent, while traditionalist Catholics supported the war 56 percent to 36 percent.

Centrist and modernist Catholics overwhelmingly oppose the war: 54 percent to 34 percent, and 68 percent to 29 percent, respectively. Latino Catholics disapprove by a margin of 69 percent to 25 percent.

The Calvin College poll asked its respondents whether they would vote for McCain or the Democratic nominee (Obama was not yet the clear victor) for president in 2008. White Catholics favored McCain 43 percent to 39 percent, but Latino Catholics supported the Democratic nominee 63 percent to 19 percent. Evangelicals picked McCain 59 percent to 24 percent, and mainline Protestants slightly favored McCain over the Democrat; 19 percent were still undecided at the time of the survey.

The methodology of the survey suggests that an innovative way for political candidates to organize their religious outreach may be in the offing. Instead of a Catholic or Evangelical outreach, future campaigns may focus on the newer categories of "traditionalists" and "modernists," regardless of denomination.

Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster, 2008).

Labels: abortion, Catholic, Deal W. Hudson, Democrat, gay rights, Iraq, National Survey on Religion and Public Life, politics, protestants, Republican

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Monday, March 24, 2008

Marketing The God Business

by Laurence D. Cohen

Few enterprises know the marketing challenge of attraction and retention more profoundly than the God business, the churches, religious denominations and faiths and cults and Obama worshipers.

It was sort of easy in the old days. Your parents were some sort of Presbyterians or something, you burst from the womb — and a new Presbyterian was born.

The latest national survey on religion from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests a marketplace more akin to fast food and cars. The general market leader, Protestants, is losing market share faster than Ford and General Motors. Protestants will soon be less than 50 percent of the American market.

Even among Catholics, where brand loyalty was pretty high, Hispanics are gravitating to the evangelical products — and remaining Catholic customers are calling the 1-800 number and demanding to speak to a manager.

Disgruntled Prayer People

The Catholics did a major brand overhaul a while back, modernizing and updating the product line and sales pitch. As you might expect, many of the existing customers were furious. They don’t want no suburban, guitar-strumming, banner-waving Mass with a cool, new post-Vatican II liturgy and a with-it priest.

There are few barriers to entry in the American religion market; the Hindus and Buddists can open up a church on the corner with much the same ease as more mainline American faiths — and even among the mainline Protestants, there is a casualness among the faithful as to where they attend and to what degree they claim allegiance to one denomination or another. Crest and Colgate receive more loyalty than that.

The Pew survey suggests that about half the adult American population has changed religious affiliation.

The need for sharper marketing among the mainline Protestants has been apparent for years. A poll in 1996 indicated that the only thing most Americans knew about the Lutheran faith, for example, was that it was some sort of religion.

Some of this loss of marketing focus and denominational identity was intentional, of course. One suspects that many students at Wesleyan University in Middletown don’t know why the school is, or was, called Wesleyan — and at Trinity, students might be somewhat fuzzy about why the Book of Common Prayer was the volume of choice in the Trinity College chapel. Yale recently dropped the chapel’s formal United Church of Christ affiliation, without prompting a religious war or even a whimper.

The turmoil in the religious marketplace may or may not be a “crisis.” Many of the Founding Fathers encouraged such competitive energy, to avoid the tyranny of a dominant faith. James Madison praised America’s multiplicity of faiths, “for where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”

There’s a hint of anti-trust law in that. Praise the Lord.

Labels: affiliation, Catholic, Laurence D. Cohen, marketing, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religion

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Many Americans switch religious denominations, study finds

In a landmark survey, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds a new religious landscape in America.

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 26, 2008 edition

Page 1 of 2 - Please click on external source for complete article

Reporter Jane Lampman talks about the results of a new survey on religion in America.A panoramic snapshot of American religious life in 2008 reveals an extraordinary dynamism that is reshaping the country's major traditions in historic ways.

Almost half of Americans have moved to a different religious denomination from that in which they were raised, and 28 percent have switched to a different major tradition or to no religion (i.e., from Roman Catholic to Protestant, Jewish to unaffiliated).

The fluidity is combining with immigration to spur dramatic changes in the religious landscape. Protestantism appears on the verge of losing its majority status. The number of "unaffiliated" Americans has doubled, to 16 percent. One-third of Catholics are now Latino and the religion is depending on immigration to maintain its share of the population.

These shifts are captured in a survey released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

"The extent of change in the American religious marketplace is remarkable," says Luis Lugo, the Pew Forum's director, in an interview. "Everyone is losing, and has difficulty retaining childhood members, but everyone is also gaining."

The report is the first of three that Pew will release this year from a path-breaking survey of the US religious landscape. Based on interviews in English or Spanish with a representative sample of 35,000 adults, it describes America's religious composition and the changes under way. Later this spring, the second report will analyze Americans' beliefs and practices, and the third, their social and political values.

The movement between churches and denominations is not new, but the report documents its remarkable scope. "Religious fluidity is part of a larger picture of fluidity in American life generally," says Wade Clark Roof, author of "Spiritual Marketplace" and professor at University of California at Santa Barbara. "You can read this as 'It's what America is about – we choose.... The downside is enormous instability, lack of grounding, wandering in the wilderness."

Observers point to many reasons for the shifts. People may change churches because they relocate to a part of the country where different denominations predominate, or they may prefer another style of worship. Whatever the reasons, the survey reveals some clear winners and losers.

Protestantism, which has shaped American identity for generations, may soon become a minority faith. In the 1980s, 65 percent of Americans called themselves Protestants; today that number is down to 51 percent. Only 43 percent of those aged 18-29 say they are Protestant.

Much has been written about the declines in mainline churches. But in comparing the current religious affiliation of adults with their childhood affiliations, the survey found a net loss of 3.7 percent for Baptists (Baptists account for one-third of all Protestants and nearly two-thirds of black Protestant churches.)

Labels: Americans, Jane Lampman, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religion, unaffilIiated

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Sunday, December 16, 2007

Pentecostals in Latin America

A look at the religion's theological roots and how the faith took hold in the region.

By Sarah Miler Llana
from the December 17, 2007 edition

Modern Pentecostalism, whose name comes from the biblical term Pentecost commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, grew out of the Holiness movement at the turn of the 20th century in the US.

Pentecostals place strong emphasis on personal experience with the "Holy Spirit," such as speaking in tongues, divine healing, and prophesying. In the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey in 2006, most Pentecostals said that they had experienced divine healings or received revelations from God.

"Renewalists," a term that includes those belonging to Pentecostal denominations and "charismatics," who have adopted the expressive worship services of Pentecostals but belong to Catholic or mainline Protestant churches, now make up an estimated one quarter of the world's Christians, according to the World Christian Database. That number was just 6 percent 30 years ago.

For decades, Pentecostalism remained on the margins of US society, even as missionaries poured into Latin America. Pentecostals now account for 13 percent of Latin Americans. When accounting for "charismatics," the number shoots up to 30 percent.

Scholars say there are many reasons why Pentecostalism has attracted so many adherents. Aggressive evangelism, led at first by US missionaries, has certainly played a role. So has urban anomie and economic crisis. But each country has its own set of factors too, from civil war to natural disasters.

A 1976 earthquake in Guatemala, for example, brought a current of US Christians to Central America, says Paul Freston, a leading expert on religion in Latin America. Today the country has the highest percentage of Protestants in Latin America.

Pentecostals across the region, most of whom considered themselves Catholics before, say they converted in order to tackle their problems, for a sense of community, or simply because Pentecostalism offered something that the rituals of the Catholic mass did not.

Pentecostals have been particularly skilled at reaching out to the region's poor, providing answers to the overwhelming problems their poverty provokes each day. The Catholic answer, in the 1960s, came in the form of "liberation theology," a Marxist-tinged approach to addressing the needs of the oppressed. It had enthusiastic supporters across Latin America, but soon got wrapped up in cold war politics. Religious scholars often quip: "Liberation theology opted for the poor, and the poor opted for Pentecostalism."

Labels: Catholic, charismatics, Holy Spirit, Latin America, Pentecostalism, Pew Forum, protestants, renewalists

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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Young adults aren't sticking with church

TO GO OR NOT TO GO

Seventy percent of Protestants age 18 to 30 drop out of church before age 23 and give multiple reasons for their departure.
Why they leave

• Wanted a break from church: 27%

• Found church members judgmental or hypocritical: 26%

• Moved to college: 25%

• Tied up with work: 23%

• Moved too far away from home church: 22%

• Too busy: 22%

• Felt disconnected to people at church: 20%

• Disagreed with church's stance on political/social issues: 18%

• Spent more time with friends outside church: 17%

• Only went before to please others: 17%

Reasons cited by the 30% who kept attending church:

• It's vital to my relationship with God: 65%

• It helps guide my decision in everyday life: 58%

• It helps me become a better person: 50%

• I am following a family member's example: 43%

• Church activities were a big part of my life: 35%

• It helps in getting through a difficult time: 30%

• I fear living without spiritual guidance: 24%

Source: LifeWay Research survey of 1,023 Protestants, conducted April and May 2007. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points

By Cathy Lynn Grossman,
USA TODAY

Protestant churches are losing young adults in "sobering" numbers, a survey finds.
Seven in 10 Protestants ages 18 to 30 — both evangelical and mainline — who went to church regularly in high school said they quit attending by age 23, according to the survey by LifeWay Research. And 34% of those said they had not returned, even sporadically, by age 30. That means about one in four Protestant young people have left the church.

The statistics are based on a survey of 1,023 Protestants ages 18 to 30 who said they had attended church at least twice a month for at least one year during high school. LifeWay did the survey in April and May. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Few of those surveyed had kind words for fellow Christians when they reflected on how they saw church life in the four years after high school.

Just over half (51%) of Protestant young people surveyed (both the church dropouts and those who stayed on in church after age 22) saw church members as "caring" or had other positive descriptions, such as "welcoming" (48%) or "authentic" (42%).

Among dropouts, nearly all (97%) cited life changes, such as a move. Most (58%) were unhappy with the people or pastor at church. More than half (52%) had religious, ethical or political reasons for quitting.

Dropouts were more than twice as likely than those who continued attending church to describe church members as judgmental (51% for dropouts, 24% for those who stayed), hypocritical (44% vs. 20%) or insincere (41% vs. 19%)

The news was not all bad: 35% of dropouts said they had resumed attending church regularly by age 30. An additional 30% attended sporadically. Twenty-eight percent said "God was calling me to return to the church."

The survey found that those who stayed with or returned to church grew up with both parents committed to the church, pastors whose sermons were relevant and engaging, and church members who invested in their spiritual development.

These findings fit with findings by other experts.

"Unless religious leaders take younger adults more seriously, the future of American religion is in doubt," says Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow in After the Baby Boomers, due in stores in September.

The proportion of young adults identifying with mainline churches, he says, is "about half the size it was a generation ago. Evangelical Protestants have barely held their own."

In research for an upcoming book, unChristian, Barna Research Group director David Kinnaman found that Christians in their 20s are "significantly less likely to believe a person's faith in God is meant to be developed by involvement in a local church. This life stage of spiritual disengagement is not going to fade away."

About 52% of American adults identify themselves as Protestant or other non-Catholic Christian denominations, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey. That's down from 60% in 1990.

Labels: Cathy Lynn Grossman, church, LifeWay Research, protestants, youth

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

Survey: Muslim Americans, White Evangelicals Similar in Religious Fervor

By
Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jul. 10 2007 04:37 PM ET

The religious intensity of Muslim Americans is most similar to white evangelicals and black Protestants, according to a recent analysis of a landmark survey.

Although believers of Islam and Christianity are often portrayed as polar opposites or even antagonists, the new study on how Muslims compare to mainstream Americans showed that in many aspects Muslims and white evangelicals in America share many commonalities.

The Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Muslim Americans, 80 percent of white evangelicals, and 87 percent of black Protestants say religion is “very important” in their lives.
These high percentages stand in contrasts to Catholics, only 49 percent of which said religion was “very important” in their life, and white mainline Protestants, only 36 percent of which responded likewise.

Moreover, Muslim Americans are similar to white evangelicals and black Protestants in their tendency to personally identify themselves first by their religion before their nationality.

Sixty-two percent of evangelicals, 55 percent of black Protestants and 47 percent of Muslims think of themselves first as a follower of their religion before describing themselves as an American.

In comparison, only 31 percent of Catholics and 22 percent of white mainline Protestants said they foremost consider themselves Christian before an American.

Religious holy books are also regarded highly by Muslims and the two Christian groups. They are more likely to regard their holy book as the word of God to be taken literally, word-for-word than Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

The majority of white evangelicals (66 percent) and black Protestants (68 percent) said they take a literal view of the Bible, while half of Muslim Americans consider the Koran as the literal word of God.

The percentage of those believing the Bible should be taken literally as the Word of God dropped under 30 percent for both Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

“None of this is to suggest that Muslims and Christians do not have distinctly different religious beliefs and practices,” commented the analysis’ authors Robert Ruby and Greg Smith.

“Nevertheless, the resemblance in religious intensity of Muslims to many groups that might think of themselves as wholly unlike Muslims is striking.”

However, Muslims and white evangelicals are markedly different when it comes to their political orientation. Muslim Americas are more politically liberal than evangelicals and are similar to black Protestants, secular Americans and white mainline Protestants.

Only 11 percent of Muslims say they are Republicans or lean Republican - a figure similar to black Protestants (10 percent). In contrast, 57 percent of white evangelicals responded that they are Republicans or lean politically right.

Muslim American’s left-leaning political stance was displayed during the 2004 presidential election where eight of ten Muslim voters (85 percent) supported John Kerry – a value similar to black Protestants (86 percent) and secular voters (67 percent).

Yet on the issue of homosexuality, Muslims take a similar position to white evangelicals with 61 percent saying the lifestyle should be discouraged by society. Similarly, 63 percent of white evangelical are oppose to homosexuality, according to Pew Forum.

“In many ways, Muslim Americans seem like a mosaic of many other American groups, sharing certain traits with these other groups while not being identical to any of them,” concluded the study’s authors. “They are anything but wholly apart; indeed, in important respects, Muslim Americans reflect the religious and political values held by most other Americans.”

Labels: Americans, evangelicals, God, Jennifer Riley, Muslims, Pew Research Center survey, protestants, religion

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Sunday, July 08, 2007

God Is In The Details

The Washington Post summarized a new Pew Research Center survey that shows there are significant foundational shifts in Americans’ understanding of what constitutes marital happiness and success.

In a front-page story on Sunday, reporter Donna St. George looked at the most substantial attitudinal change over previous years:

Children rank as the highest source of personal fulfillment for their parents but have dropped to one of the least-cited factors in a successful marriage, according to a national survey to be released today.

In a study that shows how separately marriage and children are viewed, Americans expressed great passion for their sons and daughters but clearly did not see them as the glue of their adult relationships.

On a list of nine contributors to success in marriage, children were trumped by faithfulness, a happy sexual relationship, household chore-sharing, economic factors such as adequate income and good housing, common religious beliefs, and shared tastes and interests, the nonprofit Pew Research Center found.

The article is very interesting and shows just how rapidly Americans are separating sex, marriage and children. As you might expect — along with a reader who passed along the story — there are some dramatic religious ghosts lurking inbetween the paragraphs of this story.

You’re probably not as nerdy as I am, by which I mean I like to read every survey, Supreme Court opinion and piece of legislation I can get my hands on. So you may not want to read the 91-page report [PDF] on which St. George wrote her story. But if you did, you would find that religious differences correlate with major differences of opinion recorded in the survey.

White evangelical Protestants and people of all faiths who attend religious services at least weekly hold more conservative viewpoints on pretty much the whole gamut of questions asked on the Pew survey. This is true across all age groups. For example, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than other religious groups to consider premarital sex morally wrong.

They are more likely to consider the rise in unmarried childbearing and cohabitation bad for society and more likely to agree that a child needs both a mother and father to be happy. They also are more likely to say legal marriage is very important when a couple plans to have children together or plans to spend the rest of their lives together. Further, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than white mainline Protestants to say that divorce should be avoided except in extreme circumstances and to consider it better for the children when parents remain married, though very unhappy with each other. In sum, white evangelical Protestants have a strong belief in the importance of marriage and strong moral prescriptions against premarital sex and childbearing outside of marriage.

The pattern is the same among those of any faith who attend religious services more frequently, compared with less frequent attendees.

Another interesting division in the survey was between white evangelicals and white mainline Protestants. Seventy-three percent of evangelicals consider it important for couples to legally marry compared with only 35 percent of white mainline Protestants, 43 percent of Roman Catholics and 20 percent of seculars. Of those who attend church more regularly, 69 percent say marriage is very important compared with 36 percent of the less religious and 27 percent of those who never or almost never attend church services.

The Pew report tried to paint a picture of people with traditional marriage views and, again not surprisingly, the religious angle appears:

Compared with other parents, they’re more likely to be white, well-educated and well-off economically. They also have a distinctive religious profile. They are more likely to be Catholic (32% vs. 21%) than other parents. They also are more observant; some 47% attend church weekly or more often compared with 38% of other parents. Politically, they’re more inclined to be Republican than other parents, and, ideologically, they’re more inclined to be conservative.
A majority are happy with their lives — some 55% report being “very satisfied” with their lives overall, compared with just 40% of the rest of the population.

That last sentence is interesting. The headline for the Washington Post story is “To Be Happy In Marriage, Baby Carriage Not Required.” That headline may be eyecatching for the aging baby boomers who make up the paper’s audience, but I’m not sure it’s quite right.

Stories about surveys tend to have a very short shelf life, but perhaps other reports will look into some of the religious ghosts.

Labels: children, Donna St. George, evangelicals, happiness, marriage, Pew Research Center survey, protestants