The difference between being religous and being a believer

One of the big news stories from last year was the revelation that Americans are leaving their churches and religious institutions in droves. They are becoming "unaffiliated", although there was a lot of debate over what that meant. Are Americans losing religion, or is it simply that they are disillusioned with what they're being offered?

A new analysis, using data collected over the last three decades by the General Social Survey, sheds some light on this - and also tells us more about just who is religious in the USA these days. Some of the answers are quite surprising.

First a little bit about how they framed the questions on religion in the General Social Survey - it's not straightforward. First, they asked "what is your religious preference". Those who said "none" were counted as unaffiliated and weren't asked any further questions. Those who gave a religious preference were then asked how often they attended religious services and how strong was their faith.

So the data on strength of faith and religious attendance relate only to the dwindling number of people who are affiliated. That's important to remember.

The new analysis (Kevin Flannelly and colleagues from the Spears Research Institute, New York) confirmed that religious affiliation has dropped off over the years of the survey (since 1972). Now, you might think that this happens because those who are lukewarm in their religion have dropped out. If that were so, then the average 'religious strength' of those left in would go up.

In fact, that hasn't happen. Even those still affiliated to a religious faith go to services less often than they used to. And people still in religion are no more fervent than the religious of 30 years ago.

But there are some interesting differences between the affiliated and the non affiliated. For example, the unaffiliated are, on average, better educated than the affiliated. Yet, among the affiliated, the better-educated actually have stronger faith and go to Church more often.

Perhaps that's because those educated people who remain in religion do so as an active choice.

It works the opposite way around for income. After adjusting for all the other factors, richer people are more likely to be affiliated. However, among the affiliated, wealth means weaker faith.

The last anomaly is children. Previous research suggests that religious people tend to have more children than the non-religious. And, indeed, this new research shows that the unaffiliated have fewer children than the affiliated. But, among the affiliated, those with stronger religious faith actually have fewer children those whose faith is weaker.

Now, the effect is tiny. However, it does suggest something interesting about the connection between religion and fertility. It suggests that families join (or remain in) a religion for the religious congregations - a social structure in which to raise their children - rather any particular religious zeal.

It's the classic demonstration of the difference between being religious and being believer.

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Flannelly KJ, Galek K, Kytle J, & Silton NR (2010). Religion in America--1972-2006: religious affiliation, attendance, and strength of faith. Psychological reports, 106 (3), 875-90 PMID: 20712176

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Young evangelicals are greener... but no more liberal

During the last US presidential campaign, there was a flurry of excitement when pundits caught hold of the idea that some young Christian evangelicals might possibly vote for Obama (despite the fact that he is, apparently, a Muslim, or perhaps not even a Christian, or something). This would not be so surprising. After all, there is nothing set in stone about what the political and even moral beliefs of an evangelical should be. There would be nothing in principle to stand in the way of a bit of revisionism.

Well, it turns out that no, young evangelicals are just as likely to vote Republican as their parents. That's according to a new analysis, by Buster Smith and Byron Johnson, of the Baylor Religion Survey (which was conducted back in 2007). That's even more surprising given that non-evangelical youth tend to be more liberal than their parents.

Not only that, but young evangelicals are similar to their old folks on a number of other moral questions - most of them think that abortion is wrong, even in the case of a rape. They're against smoking dope, and also embryonic stem cell reseach. And they have a particular beef about allowing homosexuals to marry.

So much for issues of personal morality. What about broader political issues? Well, here it gets a little more interesting.

Here they found the only significant difference between young and old evangelicals - on green issues. Young evangelicals were more likely to think that the government should spend more to protect the environment. They were also more likely to think that climate change will be disastrous, and that we're going to run out of fossil fuel.

But that's it. The only difference. Young and old thought similarly about government health and welfare spending.

There's a couple of things that fascinate me about this analysis. It doesn't surprise me that views on personal morality are shared between young and old. I guess that means these are a core feature of evangelical identity. If you drop them, then you are no longer part of the gang. Although I don't see the religious link to maijuana use, I can see how religious ideals of purity (homosexuality confuses gender), procreation (abortion reduces fertility), and essentialism (embryonic stem cell research means changing one thing into another) are essential building blocks of evangelism.

Similarly, I can see how green issues could be up for grabs. The Bible doesn't really have a lot to say about anthropogenic climate change, but I'm guessing (I'm no expert here) it does have some bits that talk about looking after your patch.

But the results for health and welfare suggest that these, too, are a core part of the evangelical identity. Why should that be? Why should rejection of state welfare be linked to evangelism? Is this an inheritance of the old (and probably mythical) 'Protestant Work Ethic'?

The second thing that strikes me is that these evangelicals - young and old - actually support more government spending on the environment and health. I suspect that's not a view shared by many non-religious, fiscal conservatives.

Good evidence, all-in-all, of issue bundling. What we are lookgin at is poor, ill educated people who want the government to spend more on their health (if not welfare), but who vote Republican because their religious views on personal morality take priority.

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Smith, B., & Johnson, B. (2010). The Liberalization of Young Evangelicals: A Research Note Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 49 (2), 351-360 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2010.01514.x


This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Praying and staying together - and away from those infidels

Here's a conundrum for you. In the USA, religious couples report higher satisfaction with their relationship. African-American couples are more religious than white couples. Yet African-American couples report lower relationship satisfaction than White couples. What's going on here?

The answer, according to a recent analysis of the National Survey of Religion and Family Life (NSRFL), is that African-Americans would have even worse relationships if it weren't for their religion.

The graphic shows how different groups map out in terms of average family religious activities - "praying together" - and relationship satisfaction. African-Americans are the most religious, yet report the lowest relationship satisfaction.

Teasing these data apart, the researchers (led Chris Ellison at the University of Texas) conclude that family religious activities have a positive effect, and that African-Americans would have even worse relationships if it wasn't for the fact that they are so religious.

The details are a little bit technical, but basically when they chucked a whole bunch of variables into the model, which took account of differences in education, income, marital status and other things (but not religious activities), they found that African-Americans did not, in fact, have lower relationship satisfaction.

Then they added family religious activities in, and suddenly being African-American was linked to worse relationship quality. They concluded that the higher family religious activities of African-Americans were bumping up their relationship quality. Here's W. Bradford Wilcox, one of the study co-authors:

"Without prayer, black couples would be doing significantly worse than white couples. This study shows that religion narrows the racial divide in relationship quality in America," Wilcox said. "The vitality of African-Americans' religious lives gives them an advantage over other Americans when it comes to relationships. This advantage puts them on par with other couples." [Press release]

Now, although this is a reasonable conclusion, it is also something of a statistical sleight-of-hand. They didn't actually show a statistical interaction. They're inferring one, which is a bit dangerous. It's also a weak effect - going all the way from 'never' to 'more than once a week' on the religious activities scale would only shift relationship satisfaction by 0.6 points on a 6-point scale. Even with all their variables in the model, they only explain 10% of the variation in satisfaction. And, of course, we don't really know which way cause-and-effect is running. 

But think about what it means if they are right. It means that the surest way to relationship satisfaction is to enjoy whatever it is that Whites have apart from education and money - high social status, I guess. But for African-Americans, religion acts as a kind social support to help them deal with their allotted place in society.

The researchers did also show one other effect of religion. When partners shared religious beliefs, they tended to be more satisfied. On the face of it, that's not too surprising. You'd expect partners that shared beliefs and attitudes to have more in common, and so to get on better.

But turn it around, and you can see that couples who belong to different beliefs systems are inherently less likely to be happy together. And the effect is potent - partners whose beliefs are strongly different score 1.3 points lower in relationship satisfaction. They may be a great match in every other way, but those different beliefs about an intangible thing like your choice of god is enough to drag them down.

In other words, what we have here is strong, incontrovertible evidence of the fracturing effects that religious beliefs have on society. But somehow that conclusion didn't seem to make it into the press release!

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Ellison, C., Burdette, A., & Bradford Wilcox, W. (2010). The Couple That Prays Together: Race and Ethnicity, Religion, and Relationship Quality Among Working-Age Adults Journal of Marriage and Family, 72 (4), 963-975 DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00742.x

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.