Research questions secular America

WASHINGTON – In the ever-intensifying push by politicians, journalists and marketers to analyze Americans’ religiousness down to its last molecule, did 10 million people get misplaced?

That’s the argument posited by sociologists at Baylor University, who released research today saying that the past 15 years of polling overestimated the percentage of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation.

The unaffiliated – people who check “none” or “no religion” when asked their affiliation – have been closely eyeballed since 1990, when major surveys showed they doubled, from 7 percent of the U.S. population to 14 percent, reflecting, sociologists say, increasing secularization that is occurring at the same time American society is becoming more religious.

But the Baylor survey, believed to be one of the most detailed ever done about religion in America, found that a tenth of people who picked “no religion” out of 40 possible religious groups did something interesting when asked later where they worship: They wrote down a place.

Taking that into consideration, Baylor researchers say the percentage of people who are truly unaffiliated is more like 10.8 percent. The difference between 10.8 percent and 14 percent is roughly 10 million Americans.

“People might not have a denomination, but they have a congregation. They have a sense of religious connection that is formative to who they are,” said Kevin D. Dougherty, a sociologist at Baylor’s Institute for the Studies of Religion and one of the survey’s authors.

The finding reflects the new challenges involved in trying to categorize religiosity in America, where people increasingly blend religions, church-shop and worship in independent communities. Classic labels such as mainline, evangelical and unaffiliated no longer have the same meaning.

For example, 33 percent of Americans worship at congregations that are evangelical, which means places that espouse an inerrant Bible, the importance of evangelizing and the requirement of having a personal relationship with Jesus. However, only 15 percent of respondents to the Baylor survey said the term “evangelical” describes their religious identity.

Academics who study religious demographics disagree about the “nones,” and the Baylor study won’t end that debate. Some say they are mostly secular – people who aren’t atheist but don’t consider religion important in any way. Some say they are people in interfaith families who have mixed identities. Some say they are new immigrants, perhaps Chinese, or second-generation Hispanics.

Among the most innovative aspects of the Baylor survey, according to scholars who know about it, are questions that probe how Americans describe God’s personality. Respondents were offered 26 attributes ranging from “absolute” and “wrathful” to “friendly,” and asking if God is directly involved in and angered by individual and worldly affairs.

The researchers separated God’s attributes into four categories: angry, judgmental, benevolent and distant. Researchers found that the largest category of people – 31 percent – was made up of people who believe God is both wrathful and highly involved in human affairs.