There’s another Pew Research Center paper examining religion in America. Since they employ something that resembles reliable, rigorous methodology, I’m interested. With each report summary, I come away with some insightful observations – usually something completely off my radar. It’s great glib assumption repellent.
…the U.S. actually does present a very unusual environment for religion in that it simultaneously combines three things. First of all, Americans are religiously devout. We are also a country that is religiously diverse. And yet in spite of those two things, we are also a country that is religiously tolerant. Now, the third of those three is the one that often causes audiences to sit back and say, What? Americans are religiously tolerant? (emphasis mine)
These findings are detailed in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us. All this post’s quoted text is from a conversation with Dave Campbell (a co-author of the study) and you can either watch the following video or skip past it to my highlights.
Incidentally, here’s the summary and full transcript. Buy the book here.
Shocks, Aftershocks, and Revivals
The main puzzle addressed by the study is how can Americans be religiously devout, religiously diverse and religiously tolerant?
If you go back to the 1950s, you find a high point of Americans’ religiosity. In fact, some historians would argue that it was the most religious period of all of American history. And yet, in a very short period of time, by the time we hit the mid-’60s, America was in the throes of this huge societal transformation, what we refer to as the shock of the ’60s. By 1966, TIME magazine is asking on its cover, famously, “Is God Dead?”
What do we mean by the shock of the ’60s? Well, this was a period of great tumult as sexual mores in the country, in particular, changed. And as those sexual mores changed, religiosity in the United States began to fall.
Now, there are lots of different ways that we can represent that shock. But one of the more interesting ones is just simply the fact that when you plot what Americans, themselves, were saying about religion in American society beginning in the 1950s and continuing forward in time, based on Gallup polls, you find that Americans in the 1950s said, yeah, religion has a huge influence in our society. But then by the time you hit the ’60s, that drops off dramatically. That’s the shock. But it was followed by two aftershocks.
The first aftershock that took place was the corollary movement after the arrival of the 60′s counterculture. The second was the 80′s evangelical movement, the harbinger of the forthcoming culture war. In both instances, revivalist Christianity flourished in response to a national character not to their liking.
As a child in a deeply spiritual Christian family, I have a certain familiarity with the tone and dogma of 80′s evangelicalism. It felt powerful, vibrant, alive. Good for us. I certainly couldn’t have known (and certainly wouldn’t have cared) that while our movement’s attendance rolls were increasing, the rest of American Christianity was slowly deflating.
…The second aftershock consisted of a dramatically increasing percentage of Americans who report, when asked, that they have no religious affiliation. For a long stretch of time, between 5% and 7% of the American population would say they had no religion, and then bam, beginning in the late 1980s, early 1990s, we begin to see this rapid increase of people who say they have no religion — the “nones.”
Clearly, something was happening, but what?
Poisoning Jesus with Politics
I’ll just mention briefly here that we have good reason to believe that the growth of the nones — that second aftershock — is a direct reaction to the intermingling of religion and politics in the United States. Increasingly what’s happened is that many Americans who are themselves somewhat moderate, maybe on the left side of the political spectrum, when asked today, are you of a particular religion, think, well, wait a second, religion — that equals a particular brand of politics. That’s not my politics, and if I say that I’m of a particular religion, this person’s going to think that I also have those politics and I don’t. Ergo, they report, oh, I don’t have a religion. (emphasis mine)
This slide confirms what we’ve all suspected, which is that beginning in the late 1980s, early 1990s, we began to see a strengthening of the connection between religiosity and conservative, particularly Republican, politics. The height of this bar shows the strength of that connection — what is, of course, sometimes called the “God gap.” You’ll notice that that happens in the same period that we begin to see the growth of the nones. That’s only one piece of evidence for that. We have much more as well.
Cross-branding appears to have worked wonders for Republicans, but not so much for Christianity. Unintended consequences, anyone?
My Big Surprise
But perhaps what’s even more remarkable is what happens when you ask Americans, do you believe someone who is not of your faith can go to heaven? Across the board, overwhelming percentages say, yes: 98% of Mormons, 93% percent of Catholics, even 83% of evangelicals say, yes, people who are of another faith or good people can go to heaven.
This is the where you need to picture me lunging forward in my chair and executing a perfect spit-take. Over the past decade, I have been discovering this very expression among those with faith. Since I hadn’t seen any data, I assumed it was some local, liberal Seattle thing. But, my gut would have been right, had I trusted it. More and more faithful have accepted the notion that their God should do the judging. It gets even better, though.
Now, how can this be? How is it that Americans can combine their devotion, their diversity and their tolerance? The answer, we suggest, is your Aunt Susan. Who is your Aunt Susan? Aunt Susan is that relative of yours — we all have one — who is the sweetest, kindest, nicest person you know. Aunt Susan is the one who brings the casseroles to people when they’re sick. She’s the one you call when you’re in trouble.
But your Aunt Susan, or whoever your Aunt Susan might be — in my case, it’s actually Uncle Harry — your Aunt Susan is of another religion. And your religion, you know, teaches you, theologically, she’s not supposed to be able to go to heaven. But you know that if there’s anybody who’s destined for heaven, it’s Aunt Susan. Heaven was made for Aunt Susan. And when faced with that choice between Aunt Susan and their theology, most Americans choose Aunt Susan.
I grew up thinking the rapture would happen any minute now, and if you didn’t have a very particular faith, you were hell-bound. I was actually taught that Catholics were no better than Satanists. For damaged Gen-X’ers like myself, I’ll admit to feeling a bit cheated. But, whatever. This new-found reasonableness is a trend I can get behind. All of this change speaks of good ol’ fashioned adaptation. Maybe it’s what happens in a nation with great diversity and a highly mobile population. All I can say is yay.
The Continuing Cycle
I’m still betting there’s a generational component. In the broadest read, America’s religious traditions have stretched away from the dogmatic and toward the community-minded. Maybe if the economic outlook gets worse, some of that loud minority of FOXy Christians can get back to that whole compassion for the poor thing. This would increase their faith’s credibility among the “nones” and all those embarrassed secret-Christians.
Rod Dreher in the Dallas Morning News wrote the following in an essay about our book: “But it should be remembered that a religion that makes no demands on people other than that they follow their bliss and be nice to everybody else is a religion that has no power to change minds and hearts. It will not inspire people to heroic deeds of self-sacrifice for the greater good, nor is it likely to endure.”
Campbell isn’t convinced by Dreher’s sentiment, but I’m not so sure. Periods of America spiritual renewal happen with such frequency that you can set your watch by them. The pendulum will swing again. Still, I like what I’m reading. It tells a story of an America that includes a dose of spiritual humility. If you have any interest in this, do yourself the favor and read the summary.
