Analyzing the Unchurched
The alienation of moderates and liberals from conservative Christian political positions is a key reason why the percentage of Americans who claim no religion doubled during the 1990s, two UC Berkeley sociologists say.
Michael Hout and Claude Fischer analyzed data from annual public opinion surveys on religion taken by numerous organizations to reach their conclusion, published as an article in the American Sociological Review.
The surveys showed that the proportion of Americans who said they have “no religious preference” rose from about 7% in 1990 to about 14% by the end of the decade--a significant change after remaining stable for most of the previous two decades.
However, the increase does not necessarily signal a decrease in faith, the researchers said. The majority of those who claim no religious affiliation continue to hold conventional religious beliefs. Most of the increase in people with no religious preference in the 1990s was composed of believers, not atheists or agnostics.
“One of the points we’re trying to make is that most people who have no church still are likely to say things like ‘God is real. Heaven and hell are real. Me and my kids will go there when we’re dead,’” Hout said.
Though blacks and Latinos are more likely to claim a religious affiliation than the wider population, they too saw the same statistical doubling of people with no religious preference. The only exception to the trend was people of Jewish ancestry.
The researchers’ principal data came from analysis of the General Social Survey, taken since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center, a nonprofit group affiliated with the University of Chicago. That survey included the question: “What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion or no religion?”
Hout and Fischer also analyzed data from the National Election Study, affiliated with the University of Michigan, which conducts national surveys of the American electorate in presidential and mid-term election years.
Hout and Fischer said they considered three possible explanations for the growing numbers of self-styled believers with no formal religious affiliation: demographic changes, religious skepticism and the mixture of politics and religion, the latter of which played an increasingly influential role in American society during the 1990s.
Religiousness typically follows a family life cycle: People often leave organized religion when they leave the family they grew up in, then return about the time they begin a family of their own, Hout and Fischer wrote.
The extended schooling and delayed family formation of more recent years may have contributed to the growth of the “no preference” category. Also, recent generations are more likely to have been raised with no religion; people who became adults after 1973 expressed much less attachment to organized religion than those who reached adulthood before then, Hout said.
The two sociologists discount suggestions that new-age influences and America’s secular culture weaken ties to organized religion. They note survey data indicating that piety persists even among people who claim no religion.
For example, 93% of the people avoiding organized religion continue to pray on occasion--and one-fifth of those pray daily. Also, the percentage of people with no religious preference who agreed with the statement that “God is concerned about people” actually rose from 22% to 32%.
It was against this background that the researchers decided that the rise in people with no formal religious affiliation was most strongly linked to the influence of religion in politics.
An institutionalized connection between religion and political party is relatively new to the U.S., and one of two key political shifts in the past half century, Hout and Fischer say. A similar one, according to Indiana University sociologist Clem Brooks, occurred with the dramatic liberalizing of attitudes regarding civil rights of African Americans, women and, more recently, gays and lesbians.
In the civil rights era, race became a determinant for political party: Liberals and moderates who supported an end to segregation tended to be Democrats, and conservatives less supportive of federal legislation found a home among Republicans, Brooks said. Race polarized politics, and feminism began to have the same effect in the 1980s, reflected in the political “gender gap.”
Although the Hout and Fischer article does not address specific controversies behind the rejection of organized religion, issues such as abortion and gay and lesbian civil rights are the likely subtext to the shift, said Fischer, who is editor of Contexts magazine, a new social sciences publication.
Answers to several survey questions illustrate not just apathy toward organized religion, but antipathy, Fischer and Hout said.
They cited a 1998 General Survey Study that asks people whether they agree with three statements: (1) “Looking around the world, religions bring more conflict than peace; (2) People with very strong religious belief are often too intolerant of others; and (3) the U.S. would be a better country if religion had less influence.” Those with no religious preference were more than twice as likely as others to agree with the items.
These people leaving organized religion, Hout said, “is the story of somebody who is of slightly below-average level of devotion who goes from Holyville to Secularville and raises the level of belief in both places. They leave behind the most devout and raise the level of spirituality in the new group.”
Even those who do claim a specific religion express dissatisfaction with churches and church leaders. Fewer than half of those surveyed expressed a “great deal” of confidence in church leaders and their organizations, and that number dropped to about 10% among those with no religious preference.
The lack of faith in religious leaders, Hout and Fischer point out, does not take into account the current molestation scandal engulfing the Catholic Church and its possible long-term effects. Although one of the most dramatic fall-offs in the last generation was largely among Catholics (church attendance sagged from 1950 to 1970) the root cause then was disaffection with the Vatican. It is too early to tell what if any effect the current scandals will have, but Hout doubts that there will be much. “The scandal for Catholics is in the cover-up, not the crime. The crime is something they’ve been aware of for 15 years,” he said.
Fischer also cautions against inferring too much spiritual sophistication from the number of people who believe in God but do not affiliate with a religion. Though some may have developed philosophies by which they live, others in the “no religious preference” category may simply not know enough about religion to answer.
“Some of these people are unsophisticated about the differences between Catholics and Protestants ... and maybe say, ‘Oh, to heck with it,’” Fischer said.
Sociologists have long taken exception to the notion that the U.S. was founded with deeply religious sensibilities. “There were an awful lot of settlers and farmers in Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York who had very little interest in the practice of religion,” Hout said. “They weren’t anti-religion, but they weren’t interested. Levels of interest on the American frontier were particularly low.”
Mark Chaves, a University of Arizona sociologist, sees American religiousness as historically broad, rather than deep. An independent streak has always run through it, with Americans being less apt to strictly adhere to doctrine or submit to firm leadership. If a generalized belief in God has not diminished over the years, the nature of that belief has altered, he said.
For example, in 1963, two-thirds of Americans said the Bible is the actual word of God, to be taken literally. Today fewer than one-third say that. Also, though 80% say the Bible is the inspired word of God, only about half can name its first book and only a third know who gave the Sermon on the Mount.
Chaves cautions against viewing matters of faith through an intellectual lens. “It is a mistake to think of participation in religion as a cognitive exercise,” he said. “It’s an exercise in identity and cultural expression and socializing that has a cognitive component.”
