Education and religion

Education and religion April 28, 2017

graduation-1177256_640Does having more education mean being less religious?  That has been the conventional wisdom in academic circles.  But a new Pew Research study has found that the relationship between education and religion is much more complicated than that.

In general, according to the report, highly educated people are less religious.  But this effect does not hold true for Christians.

Highly educated Christians are actually more likely to go to church regularly than less educated Christians.

Read the findings after the jump.  How do you account for them?

From In America, Does More Education Equal Less Religion? | Pew Research Center:

The idea that highly educated people are less religious, on average, than those with less education has been a part of the public discourse for decades, but some scholars of religion have called this notion into question. 1 And a new analysis of Pew Research Center surveys shows that the relationship between religion and education in the United States is not so simple.

On one hand, among U.S. adults overall, higher levels of education are linked with lower levels of religious commitment by some measures, such as belief in God, how often people pray and how important they say religion is to them. On the other hand, Americans with college degrees report attending religious services as often as Americans with less education.

This analysis looks at measures of religious identification and commitment among Americans with different levels of education. Pew Research Center has previously published data from the opposite perspective, looking at levels of education among people in different religious groups. In the U.S., Hindus and Jews are among the most highly educated religious groups. Worldwide, Jews have the most years of formal schooling.

Moreover, the majority of American adults (71%) identify as Christians. And among Christians, those with higher levels of education appear to be just as religious as those with less schooling, on average. In fact, highly educated Christians are more likely than less-educated Christians to say they are weekly churchgoers. 2

[Keep reading. . .]

For the complete study, go here.

Illustration by cdbme at Pixabay, CC0, public domain

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