Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference, Part 2

In my last blog post I looked at the beginning of the article “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2011”.

Here is a link to the article:

http://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-24-423/

And here is a link to my last blog post:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-more-americans-have-no-religious.html

The main takeaway from the introduction to the article was that the increase in “Nones” (those with No Religious Preference) in America was 7 percent between 1987-2000. 3 percent of this change was from political backlash, 3 percent was from generational shifts, and 1 percent was from children coming of age who were not raised in a religious home.

The authors of the article came to these conclusions (of changes in 1987-2000) through cleaning up previous work that they had done. The next part of the article will cover the changes in Nones from 2000-2011.

The first thing they did was change the time series of the data, adding the years 2000-2011. The trend that they saw was that the increase in Nones was steady, that it was neither increasing or decreasing relative to previous 13 years studied. Next, they recalibrated the reasons for the increase in Nones, now that the number was a 13 point increase (for the 1987-2011 time frame) instead of a 7 point increase (for the 1987-2000 time frame). What they found was that political backlash was still important, but a larger percent of the increase comes from generational succession. There was still limited weight given to secularization. Finally, they did some work on modeling of generational cohorts to see if there could be some clarity for the reasons of the changes.

With these changes, the final conclusion reached by the authors of the paper is “Americans decreasingly identify with organized religions despite still holding religious beliefs because political backlash and generational succession, both rooted in cultural changes and conflicts in the 1960s, continue.”

So, as I read this, I would suspect that religious beliefs, for example opinions on God, heaven and hell, the role of the church, the search for meaning and purpose, etc. are really not all that changed across generations. However, due to political backlash, which I discussed in my previous post and will discuss soon, and cultural changes, including the general acceptance of people being able to identify as None, America is seeing people move away from organized religion.

The next sections of the paper are as follows:

-Updating the Time Sequence

-Explaining Trends I: Political Backlash

-Explaining Trends II: Generational Replacement

-Explaining Trends III: Beliefs

-Explaining Differences Among Cohorts

-Politics and Personal Change

-Conclusion and Discussion

I will dig into each of these sections in this post and in the subsequent posts following.

Updating the Time Sequence:

I have touched on this already in this post. The authors changed the time sequence of their data from 1987-2000 to 1987-2011. The background for this is that the percent of those who identified as Nones increased from 5.5 to 6.2 percent between 1972 and 1973 and remained relatively stable at around 6.2% until some time in the late 1980s. At this point, which is the beginning of the study, there seemed to be the start of a steady increase in those who identify as Nones.  From some point in the late 1980s until 2012, there seemed to be an approximately 0.5% increase each year in those who identify as Nones, seen as 8% in 1990 to 20% in 2012.

While I don’t have a graph on the blog, this is a relative consistent increase each year, which is why they concluded that there has not been a increasing or decreasing rate in the growth of Nones.

The two initial explanations offered by the authors, which will be fleshed out more, are the fact that political debates have not subsided over this time frame. In fact, the timeframe of 2000-2012 have seen an increase in not only the political debates, but seemingly a more active engagement from religious institutions on a specific side of the debate. The issues that are mentioned are abortion, gay marriage and legalizing marijuana. Religious organizations are seen as generally oppose all three, and their positions are leaking from outside the religious institutions into the public political discourse. Also, religious organizations that oppose all three do seem to flock to a specific political party. This is again an example of the corruption of conjoining the church and state.

This corruption plays out in two fascinating ways in my mind, one from the “conservative” side and one from the “liberal” side. I put those in quotes because I think it is difficult to completely box in political beliefs. I like to think that people are a little bit more complicated than two buckets of political views, no matter what our political system seems to offer. But, in many ways, these three issues represent the current culture wars that the church has inserted itself into.

I do want to keep abortion somewhat to the side, because that is a much more complicated issue as far as general trend is concerned. While no doubt the political party in power has some impact on abortion policies in a wide range of ways, the general attitudes on abortion are relatively unchanged over the past several decades, in the sense that the same percentage of people have maintained relatively similar views on abortion across generations, and even the younger generations do not hold positions, unlike on gay marriage and marijuana, that are significantly different from older generations. Also, the debate on abortion very much precedes the scope of this study in a way that the debates on gay marriage and marijuana do not.

Also, from a personal perspective, and this is admittedly anecdotal, but I really haven’t encountered people who are upset with the church (or other religious organizations) for their position on abortion, or see a position on abortion as a reason to join or leave the church when compared to the other two issues (and especially gay marriage, which will be covered soon). Perhaps we are reaching a point where the politics of contraceptives will fill in some of this gap, but this is outside the scope of this study, and is probably best left for another day.

(Or if you want, you can check out my blogs on the Hobby Lobby case that deal with contraception:

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/some-thoughts-on-hobby-lobby-decision.html

http://stevenuessle.blogspot.com/2014/07/hobby-lobby-revisited.html )

So, with these caveats, I want to expand my thoughts on the “conservative” and the “liberal” side of the church respectively to these trends.

First, the “conservative” side. I have personally seen an increase in the amount of articles and postings on the idea of persecution. There is a sense that Christianity is under attack and that the cultural movement is away from them. In a sense, they are absolutely correct. Cultural movement is moving away from their beliefs and Christianity, as they understand it, is surely under attack. When Christianity is defined as taking certain positions on social issues, when those issues are starting to be beaten, both at the ballot box and via judges, that is seen as an attack on the faith and persecution. There is always discomfort when things that were assumed and taken for granted are no longer the case, but that does not necessarily mean persecution. There are calls for First Amendment rights, Freedom of Speech, returns to the way it used to be, a Biblical understanding and tradition, and the like.

The problem is that none of these social issues are explicitly addressed in scripture. There are certainly scripture verses and religious traditions that inform positions, but it is not clear. And the other problem is that it really doesn’t matter, as far as political positions are concerned. In a pluralistic society such as the US, things change and things progress. The issue is that when faith is tied to a political position, and that political position is no longer tenable, that results in crisis. That results in feeling that you are under attack, and the easy way out is to scream “persecution” or to start concocting all sorts of fanciful visions of what the future holds.

Take, for example, this video:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152825938584669

The other response is that which comes from the “liberal” side of the debate within the church. They sense an opportunity here as a response to conservative position that is slowly slipping away. They do not need to read reports or crunch data to know that political positions that are being held tightly by the conservatives but are becoming less popular in the general public, especially the younger generations, are a significant cause to people not wanting to associate with the church. They can gather this perfectly well through conversations with people around them and see that the church is not attractive.

The mistake, though, comes in what is offered instead. It is basically the same thing conservatives offer, just in reverse. It is “Christianity with better political positions”. So, the main focus in the debates of the church is pretty much a continuation of the culture wars that are already happening, only now the very fate and identity of Christ becomes wrapped inside of it. The focus is now on what do you have to believe to “really” know Jesus rather than focus on what Christ did for you and what He demands from you in response.

In way too many ways the church is becoming an extension of the culture, and in all the worst ways. I suspect that this, truly, is the heart of the political backlash within the church. As I mentioned before, I genuinely believe that many people are looking for something bigger than themselves and some sort of meaning within their lives, but they are not finding it within the church, and that this is surely a big part of it. Christ and the church can offer so much more, it is up to the people in the church to show that.

My next post will continue this discussion by looking closer at how the article explains the trends it is seeing.

Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference, Introduction

So I am back after a little bit of delay. I always intend to write more but life does get in the way, specifically in three ways for me.

First, I started a new part time job doing sports data at a company called SportsDataLLC. Second, I have been doing s decent amount of work on my house including the basement and exterior work. Third, we had a sudden and unexpected death in our family that has hit many of us hard. The man who was basically my stepfather, Bob McCormick, passed away in Scotland while on vacation with my mom and we have been responding to that for a couple of weeks. I may write about his life in the future.

With that said, I wanted to get back into writing and I thought I would talk about an article that I came across. The title of the article is “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012”. As you might expect from the title it digs into many of the topics that I have written about before, but this is a more academic study of phenomenon that is written about in other ways. Here is a link to the article:

http://www.sociologicalscience.com/articles-vol1-24-423/

And I want to start out by quoting the abstract before digging into the article a little bit more:

Twenty percent of American adults claimed no religious preference in 2012, compared to 7 percent twenty-five years earlier. Previous research identified a political backlash against the religious right and generational change as major factors in explaining the trend. That research found that religious beliefs had not changed, ruling out secularization as a cause. In this paper we employ new data and more powerful analytical tools to: (1) update the time series, (2) present further evidence of correlations between political backlash, generational succession, and religious identification, (3) show how valuing personal autonomy generally and autonomy in the sphere of sex and drugs specifically explain generational differences, and (4) use GSS panel data to show that the causal direction in the rise of the “Nones” likely runs from political identity as a liberal or conservative to religious identity, reversing a long-standing convention in social science research. Our new analysis joins the threads of earlier explanations into a general account of how political conflict over cultural issues spurred an increase in non-affiliation.

The political backlash always struck me as pretty self-evident. When media or other public outlets speak of religious faith they often draw from a very narrow view of what that might mean as far as political views are concerned. This has been exacerbated by identifying a specific political party with being a person of faith.

I personally don’t have a problem with the specific political beliefs people of faith have. That is, there is no set of political beliefs that are required for a person of faith, and someone who follows Christ can certainly come to different conclusions of political issues than I do. While the total volume of Christ’s words that are recorded are not as large as we might think, and he certainly does not speak specifically to many of the political issues we debate today, he is broad and cryptic enough to lead to a variety of political positions, especially depending on what the individual wants to emphasize in their own political life. Therefore, it is not surprising to me that people within the church represent a wide range of political beliefs.

However, this is often lost, as religious belief, at least as it is presented in public forms, is correlated with specific political positions. My position has always been that trying to merge state and church (ie political positions and theological positions) will corrupt both. But will corrupt the church much, much more. And data increasingly shows that this corruption leads to people wanting no part of the church, even if, as the article suggests, religious beliefs have not shifted all that much over time.

So, the article starts out by stating that “Nones,” those expressing no religious preference, have shifted from 1 out of 14 in 1987 to 1 out of 5 in 2012. This has happened in an era when religion is in unprecedented prominence in public discussion, as measured by the amount of times that “God” and “Christ” were mentioned by political leaders as a source of inspiration and rationale for their actions and beliefs.

The study found that 3 percent of the 7 percent increase in the rise of “Nones” between 1987 to 2000 were the result of political backlash, specifically liberals not wanting to be associated with a faith espoused by conservative politicians. Another 3 percent of the 7 percent increase was through generational succession. As older generations were being replaced by younger generations, the attachment to religious institutions was weakening. The last percentage point drop was attributed to the decrease in people being raised in a religious home – which resulted in more people entering adulthood with no religious connection.

So, to summarize, from 1987-2000, there was a 7 percent increase in the amount of people who identified as “Nones”. 3 percent was attributed to political backlash, 3 percent attributed to the turnover of generations and weaker connections to organized religion, and 1 percent attributed to people entering adulthood being raised in families with no religious upbringing.

My personal thought on the second point, as far as generations in concerned, is that this might be explained by more of a cultural shift. That for each successive generation it is becoming more acceptable to identify as a “None” so more people are being honest in their self-assessment. There is not so much a change in religious beliefs but instead a more honest accounting for what those beliefs actually are.

The purpose of this paper that I linked was to update the model that produced the data for 1987-2000. Most interesting to me was the hard look that the researchers did in regards to the “secularization” theory, that the “inexorable march of modernization, reason and science would banish traditional (ie religious) explanations of the material world. People would stop consulting traditional authority for guidance and would lose faith, the churches would empty, and religious identification would die out.” While indeed fewer Americans affiliate with organized religion, the research of this paper shows that secularization is hardly the reason. What we see is political backlash is still significant, but it is the generational churn that is most important.

The key here is to understand the difference between secularization and generational shift. Secularization, as explained in the previous paragraph, is the acceptance of modernization, science and reason as the source of truth and guidance over organized religion. While trust in religion has dropped, it is not being replaced by secular sources, but instead a more Agnostic bent, at least officially.

My working theory, as mentioned above, is that there hasn’t necessarily been a rise in this Agnosticism, but instead it is now more cultural acceptable to acknowledge what is true in regards to individual’s beliefs. What is interesting to me is that there hasn’t necessarily been an increase in secularization, which means that a couple of things. The first is that people are not necessarily being modern explanations for sources of truth and meaning, perhaps one of the reasons there is a natural skepticism towards the State/government or any other Utopian solutions.

The second, and perhaps most important to me personally, is that there are a whole bunch of people, especially in my generation, that are out there searching for a sense of meaning and purpose. People are calling themselves “Nones” or “Agnostics” they are not calling themselves “Atheists”. This is a critical distinction, and something that has been backed up continually in conversations that I have with people of my generation that are not all that interested in the church at the moment.

I still believe that ultimate truth and meaning will be found in Christ. As I have written before, I have certainly searched many other places, and I still do, but nothing compares to Christ. However, I say that with a sense that I certainly understand why people are not so interested in Christ – or at least not interested in the Christ that is being presented to them at the moment.

This post was based off the first part of the article. My next blog post will start to dig deeper into each of the identified causes for why more Americans have no religious preference. Hopefully throughout I will be able to provide some responses and thoughts on how the church can move from here.