{"id":7840,"date":"2017-12-17T08:25:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-17T14:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7840"},"modified":"2017-12-18T09:18:51","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T15:18:51","slug":"american-religious-exceptionalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/12\/american-religious-exceptionalism.html","title":{"rendered":"American (Religious) Exceptionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Church<\/p>\n

Well, what do you know?\u00a0 I\u2019m not the only one staring at GSS data on religious observance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a paper out that came to my notice by means of a link in an article somewhere, \u201cThe Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of<\/a>
\nAmerican Religion: A Response to Recent Research<\/a>,\u201d by Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock, which, as its title suggests, proposes that religion on America remains exceptionally more intense than elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Given that this is a scholarly paper, it references a thesis among scholars, the \u201csecularization thesis\u201d:<\/p>\n

The secularization thesis asserts that as a result of ongoing modernization and the advance of science, religion will become increasingly irrelevant in public and private life.\u00a0 This pattern appears to be borne out in several advanced industrial societies where religion has grown increasingly irrelevant in the public sphere and in people\u2019s everyday lives, but whether the United States fits this pattern is less clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This thesis is likely something that you\u2019ve heard before, as have I, just not with the scholarly language surrounding it.\u00a0 But what Schnabel and Bock\u00a0 propose\u00a0is that, rather than religion in general declining, what\u2019s really happening is that<\/p>\n

the politicization of American religion in the late 1980s following the rise of the Christian Right . . . may have, as Hout and Fischer (2002, 2014) suggested, driven moderates out of religion but not necessarily decreased the intensity of American religion.<\/p>\n

In fact, moderates leaving religion in America could be, at least in part, a reaction against high-intensity American religionists, strict religion, and the contemporary link between religion and right-wing politics in the United States (Djupe, Neiheisel, and Sokhey 2017; Hout and Fischer 2002, 2014).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They look at the General Social Survey on the most intense displays of religion, without regard to particular religious group.\u00a0 They find that, while the percent of Americans saying they had \u201cno affiliation\u201d increased, and those saying \u201cnot a strong affiliation\u201d decreased, the percent of Americans reporting a \u201cstrong\u201d affiliation stayed constant.\u00a0 In fact, looking at the source data<\/a>, the rates at the beginning and end of this date range were exactly the same, at 37%.\u00a0 For the younger set, it\u2019s always been lower than average, but, again, in 1990, it was 29% and now it\u2019s 26%.\u00a0 Do those three percentage points mean something crucial?\u00a0 Is 1990 the right year to start measuring?\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

Likewise, they report that the percent of those reporting that they pray \u201csometimes\u201d is decreasing, but that those who pray \u201cmultiple times a day\u201d is increasing, from 23% to 29% in that time period.\u00a0 Among the kiddos, 18 \u2013 34, the figure increased from 14% to 19%.<\/p>\n

They also report that sometimes-attenders are decreasing, never-attenders are growing, but the percent attending multiple times a week is increasing \u2014 though this isn\u2019t as impressive a piece of evidence, as this is only 7% of the population.\u00a0 But they report that belief in the literalism of the Bible, and similar markers have stayed constant.<\/p>\n

They further compare the U.S. to various other wealthy historically Christian countries.\u00a0 In 2008, twice as many Americans reported praying multiple times per day as the next most \u201cprayerful\u201d country, the Netherlands.\u00a0 Similar differences were found in all similar categories, and in many instances, when compared over time, the other countries saw dramatic drop-offs \u2014 e.g., in Ireland, the percent praying multiple times per day dropped from 22.4% in 1991 to 10.5% in 2008; in Norway, the rates dropped from 8.7% to 0%.<\/p>\n

The data comes from a survey called the International Social Survey Programme, and the data is accessible online<\/a>.\u00a0 Going back to the church attendance statistic, in 2008, the most recent available year, 25.5% of Americans attended weekly or more, and 7.8% attended more than once a week according to the GSS, and 29.4%\/7.9% according to the ISSP.\u00a0 The comparable figures were 7%\/1.5% in Germany, 12.4%\/4.7% for the Netherlands, 3.2%\/1.2% in Sweden, and 8.4%\/0.8% in France \u2014 all of which includes their respective Muslim populations, which increases attendance rates, as the responses include 14.8% weekly+ attendance in the Netherlands, 30.8% in Sweden, and 16.7% France, among Muslims.\u00a0 (One caveat:\u00a0 this is contingent on my having interpreted the data correctly \u2014 but, on the other hand, it looks like a pretty cool data set to explore.)<\/p>\n

Now, this paper was already in the process of being published when the Roy Moore scandal erupted.\u00a0 How this will impact perceptions of evangelicals is anyone\u2019s guess \u2014 but, on the other hand, as the Babylon Bee reported<\/a> in satirical form, modern evangelical churches are keeping their denominational identity hidden, so it may well be that even Christians who meet the objective definition of \u201cevangelical\u201d perceive of Roy Moore support as an issue with \u201cthose other Christians\u201d and not \u201cChristians like them.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s all very interesting food for thought.<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, Philadelphia (public domain via Wikipedia)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, what do you know?\u00a0 I\u2019m not the only one staring at GSS data on religious observance. There\u2019s a paper out that came to my notice by means of a link in an article somewhere, \u201cThe Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research,\u201d by Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock, which, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":2735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92,805],"class_list":["post-7840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-attendance","tag-religious-decline"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerican (Religious) Exceptionalism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Well, what do you know?\u00a0 I'm not the only one staring at GSS data on religious observance. 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