Agent J is prone to emit a wail of dismay when yet another copy of Newsweek arrives with some religious theme on its cover. This week the headline story was "Spirituality in America". I have to confess I didn't bother reading it - I usually don't read Newsweek anyway, but actually I'm usually more likely to read it when its about religion. However later in the week I heard someone mention that the Newsweek story tells how diverse and very non-Christian the beliefs of America are, at least compared to what you might think they are. So I rescued the issue from the trash and gave it a butchers (look) last night.
It turns out the article is basically an interpretation by Jerry Adler, of statistics from a survey carried out by Newsweek and Beliefnet. A key point this article is trying to make is that religion is booming in the United States. Early on it points out that in 1966 Time Magazine famously published an issue with the cover asking "Is God Dead?". At that time apparently people felt that science had just about cleaned up and answered all those difficult "Why" and "How" and "What" questions that were usually left to religion. In the Newsweek article's conclusion it says:
"So, a generation after the question was posed, we can certainly answer that God seems very much alive in the hearts of those who seek him. We have come a long way, it would appear, from that dark year".
However reading what Newsweek says in between the start and end I don't see any evidence at all that "we have come a long way", quite to the contrary it seems to indicate a burgeoning dissatisfaction with mainstream religion, a youth that is increasingly atheist, and strong support for the idea that America just isn't as religious as its always purported to be.
Until recently the only statistic I heard or knew was that 85% of Americans believe in God. I've no idea where that statistic came from other than from the mouth of George Bush. Newsweek's statistic puts it 79% (their margin of error here is +-4%) - this is the figure they put in a big font so it grabs you. So only 1 in 5 don't believe in God you say. But then you see that they derived the figure to include those people who say that they are spiritual but not religious. If you exclude the 15% of only spiritual people you get their figure for people who are only religious but not spiritual, that figure is 64% which means fully one third of the American people do not consider themselves religious, only "spiritual" or atheist/agnostic. I'll call that one third number the "non-religious" Americans.
Now it so happens I know a good number of people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious - some of them definitely never go to a church, and some of them even call themselves atheists or agnostics. In fact to me "I'm an atheist but consider myself spiritual" seems a perfectly reasonable thing to say especially when you look at the definition of spiritual. Of the five definitions only two mention anything to do with God or religion, the others are all about the nature of the spirit, soul, or supernatural. These are things that interest even me, a staunch atheist (more accurately my position is that of a strict agnostic).
Unfortunately the statistics cited by Newsweek don't study at all what those people who are spiritual believe. From the answer to the question "What is your current religion?" it appears that only 13% said "Other non-Christian", atheist/agnostic/no religion or did not indicate their religion. Since they also said that 12% of all people are "Not spiritual/not religious or don't know" it would seem that a good number of people who are spiritual are identifying with a major religion but not calling themselves religious. Might it be that those people are just thinking "well I have Christian values" so I'm a Christian, or I was raised by a Jewish family so I'm Jewish even though they later identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious" ???
Also it turns out that fully one third of people surveyed think there is no heaven or hell which seems to further confirm the number of non-religious Americans. Their survey also finds that 45% of Americans say they attend worship services weekly, which they mention is virtually identical to the 44% figure Time cited in 1966. That strikes me as a pretty weak case for saying "we've come a long way from that dark year" in their conclusion. But they also say that 45% is probably wishful thinking and when you study actual church attendance figures you get a figure more like 20%. This ties in later data they give that puts shows that 55% of Americans belong to a house of worship (see below). In general religious people I know don't just pop into a church every week, if they worship regularly they find and join a specific one. Even then they probably don't go every week so I too find the 20% weekly attendance figure much more believable.
In a break down of religion by race they supply figures based on the groups don't know/refused, religious, somewhat religious, somewhat secular, and secular. What is interesting is that no racial group has more than 50% claiming to be religious, in fact in the majority "White" group only 37% of people did so. Based on the 2000 Census proportions of the various racial groups I calculated from Newsweek's figures that only 38% of the total adult population identifies themselves as religious. So fully 62% of Americans are in the class "somewhat religious", "somewhat secular", "secular" or a don't know/refused. Wow.
Again there is corroboration for this based on their chart of "What Americans call themselves and how they worship". It turns out that 19% of the estimated 29.5 million people practicing "no religion" belong to a house of worship (huh?), 49% of 7.7 million people practicing a non-Christian religion belong to one, and 63% of the 159 million people practicing Christian religions do. That adds up to about 200 million adults, of which only 55% belong to a house of worship - which is about one in two - exactly what I'd expect from people identifying themselves as religious vs. somewhat religious or something else. If you don't belong to any church you're probably not worshiping regularly, not in contact with people of your faith regularly and probably just doing your own sweet thing with your religion vs. following any particular heard mentality of religion. In fact I would guess such people are most likely to feel disenfranchised with mainstream religion, and are least likely to want to be identified with it or represented by it - hence the only "somewhat religious" answer.
Anyway I find what the Newsweek article tells us to be very interesting. To recap: one in three Americans identify themselves as not religious but spiritual or not religious at all, but fully 62% of Americans, the majority, identify themselves as only "somewhat religious" or even less religious than "somewhat".
These conclusions seem completely and alarmingly in contradiction to the usual inference that almost all Americans are strongly religious based on the commonly quoted "85% of Americans believe in God" figure. In a nation that is painted to be very religious, and is increasingly being ruled by leaders with a religious agenda, and by religious interpretations of its constitution and laws, just remind yourself that fully one in three Americans are don't consider themselves religious at all, and a clear majority of Americans identify themselves as being less than completely religious.
Finally, if you want a true view of where religion in America is going check Newsweek's statistics for the 18-39 age group vs the 40-59 age group. 9% of the former identified themselves as atheists, vs only 5% of the later (and 3% of 60+ Americans). And while 36% of the 40-59 group say they are evangelicals, only 28% of younger people do so. So across the demographic groups we see the trend that since 1966 (39 years ago) atheists have almost doubled their numbers while the percentage of evangelicals has declined by over 20%.
So to conclude, while there may be lies, damn lies and statistics the real problem is who is interpreting them and what you want your readers to believe. Isn't that just exactly the problem with religion throughout the ages - its always the interpretation that is the problem, and so often, the devil is to be found there, lurking in the details :-) So how about this, why don't you go look at the figures and draw your own conlcusions.
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