Poll shows religion losing its hold
| • | A look at U.S. religious landscape |
By Cathy Lynn Grossman and Anthony Debarros
USA Today
Americans are big-time believers in God. In survey after survey, most say that religion is important to them and that its influence is growing.
Associated Press
But whose God? Whose influence? Whose flock is increasing or dying away?
Cathy Travis, left, and Marie Faircloth take a break at the Burlington Center Mall in New Jersey after appearing in a nativity scene. Their interfaith ministry, which reaches out to shoppers, reflects the diversity of faith in America.
The U.S. Census is forbidden to ask about religion, but a new, wide-ranging study called the American Religious Identification Survey sheds new light on those questions.
The first survey in 1990, which asked 113,723 adults in the continental United States their religious identity, found two streams diverging from the channels of traditional faith — the trends to solo spirituality and church-shopping consumerism.
Those streams are rivers now.
The 2001 ARIS, based on interviews with 50,281 people, reveals a religious landscape shifting with immigration, interfaith marriage, conversion and the all-American urge to customize everything. A growing number of Americans no longer know — or no longer care — about denominational distinctions, say the two lead researchers, Egon Mayer and Barry Kosmin, in the ongoing study conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Key findings:
Protestants and Catholics still dominate, but their share of souls is slipping. Of the survey respondents, 52 percent identify themselves as Protestant or other non-Catholic Christian denominations, down from 60 percent in 1990, and 24.5 percent say they're Catholic, down nearly 2 percent.
The spirits are restless — 16 percent of adults say they changed their religion at least once in their lives — or turned away altogether. "More people see religious identity as a recreational option," shifting like skiers to snowboarding, Kosmin says.
The number of nonbelievers is rocketing, up from 8 percent in 1990 to 14 percent saying they have no religion, or they're atheist, agnostic, humanist or secular.
Believing does not mean belonging. While 81 percent claim a religious identity, only 54 percent say someone in their household is affiliated with a house of worship. Four in 10 "who call themselves religious don't take their faith filtered through the stained glass of a church, synagogue, temple or mosque," Mayer says.
Families embrace many faiths: 22 percent say their spouse or domestic partner has a different religion. Forty-two percent of the Episcopalian respondents said they belong to mixed households; for Mormons. 12 percent. Among these couples, the majority say they will pick one of the parent's faith for their children, but 13 percent say they will rear their children with no religion or as atheists, says study director Ariela Keysar.
This mix-and-match, come-and-go attitude may be the outcome of America's sanctification of individualism and personal autonomy.
Huge increase in witches
This leads to some eyebrow-raising statistics, such as a 1,575 percent jump in Wiccans, from 8,000 reported in 1990 to 134,000 self-proclaimed witches in 2001. Trailing a long list of familiar denominations are people who call themselves Druids or followers of Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion.
"The U.S.A. is a greenhouse of religion, with the number of options appearing to soar," Kosmin says. "Even if you are cautious about the leap (in rate of growth) because groups like Wiccans are still very small numbers of people, we can still see that people don't feel embarrassed or frightened about saying who they are."
Or changing who they are. The study shows the depth of those two streams first identified in 1990. Millions of people are moving toward religious groups that require a high level of community commitment or, at the opposite pole, toward a personally defined spirituality.
Of the 33 million adults who say they have turned over a different religious leaf:
• 42 percent of those who now call themselves evangelical or "born again" say they started out life in another religion.
• 37 percent of current non-denominationals switched into this category.
• 23 percent of adults who claim no religion today say they once identified with a particular religion.
And they may still be believers. Questions about the divinity found that almost all "say God exists and helps me," Mayer says. Even 78 percent of people with no religion agree "God performs miracles."
Age, gender matter
Still, there are distinctions by age, gender, education, even geography. A person whose worldview is religious, Kosmin says, is "likely to be a woman in a small town or rural area, likely the South, likely an African-American high school graduate. Or it might be an elderly white farmer in the Midwest."
The most secular is likely to be "urban, male, in his 20s or 30s, and living in the West or Pacific Northwest or someplace with mountains that provide inspiration other people get in church. He's also more likely to be of Asian or Jewish background, single, with a postgraduate education," Kosmin says.
These mountaintop meditators might call themselves "spiritual but not religious," but there's no mention of "spiritual" in the survey because, Kosmin says, "when we tested two or three questions on 'spirituality' with focus groups, people kept coming back and saying 'What do you mean by that?' "
Some critics say changing the original 1990 question in 2001 to ask "religion, if any" enticed many more people to say "no religion." A recent Gallup survey, which asks "religious preference" and lists five examples, finds only 9 percent saying no religion or atheist.
But Mayer contends, "America is a religious country, more so than any other industrialized nation. The norm to name a religion is so strong here, people feel pressured to give an answer. We think that asking an open-ended question and adding 'if any' gave people permission to say anything they wanted."
Limits of survey
The survey has other limitations, and some controversial choices were made in analyzing findings.
The survey was conducted only in English both in 1990 and 2001, leading to a potential undercount of newcomers from Asia or Central America who may be Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims or Catholics. Immigration also may be a factor in the rising rate of those who refused to answer the survey, up from 3 percent in 1990 to 5 percent in 2001.
"Many immigrants come from places where freedom and religious openness are dangerous to your health. They may be more suspicious of answering questions about faith on the phone," Kosmin says.
Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are grouped with Christian religions, although some Christian clergy dispute this. And singles who co-habit — 5 percent — are counted in with married couples.
The touchiest issue may be the tallies of Muslims and Jews. Both groups claim they were undercounted while the other was overcounted.
The ARIS found 1.1 million Americans 18 and older say they are Muslims. However, a profile of American mosques, released last spring, tallied 6 million, including children.
Objections aren't surprising when so much is at stake.
"Leadership of all faiths exaggerate or manufacture their numbers," Kosmin says. "At least this (survey) is a standardized, even playing field where people describe themselves."
