Another way to look at age and religion is to look at religiousness as a function of age. A common assumption about religion is that it appeals to the elderly more than the young, and by and large, this assumption is correct. Focusing on Evangelicals, Figure 3.5 plots the percentage of Americans at different ages who are Evangelicals. About 20% of American twenty-year-olds affiliate with evangelical Christianity, and this affiliation rate increases until about age sixty, at which point about 27% are Evangelicals. It decreases slightly in the mid-seventies. Generally speaking, though, older Americans are more likely than younger ones to affiliate with evangelical Christianity.
Why are older people more religious? Previous research has found that young people commonly leave organized religion as they separate from their families, but then they rejoin when they start families of their own.[9] If this is the case, then the young people of any generation are less religious, but this changes as they age. Religion becomes part of the life cycle, along with having kids, buying a house, and whatever else we do as we get older.
Figure 3.5: Percentage of Evangelicals by Age
Here is where things get tricky. How do we know that today’s young people will become more religious as they age? Well, since we don’t have a crystal ball, we can’t know for sure what will happen. We can, however, look at what’s happened to young people in previous generations. For example, what were today’s forty-year-olds like when they were in their twenties? Were they more religious than today’s youth? Did they get more religious with age? Figure 3.6 presents this type of analysis. It divides respondents from the General Social Survey into four categories—those born from 1910–1929, 1930–1949, 1950–1969, and 1970–1989. We can think of each one of these four groups as representing a different generation, and we can track each generation over time.[10]
Obviously we don’t have full information on each group. For example, respondents in the 1970–1989 group are now younger than forty years old, so we don’t know what they will be like after age forty. Likewise, due to data limitations, we don’t know what the oldest group was like in their twenties and thirties, but we can still compare what we see of each generation.
Figure 3.6 plots the relationship between age and evangelical affiliation for different generations, and here’s how to interpret it. There are four lines on it, and each line represents a different generation. The lines describe the relationship between age and evangelical affiliation for that generation. For example, the generation born in the 1930s and 1940s had relatively few Evangelicals when they were in their twenties—about 19%. As they aged, however, the percentage of them who described themselves as Evangelicals increased so that by the time they were in their seventies, 30% of them were Evangelicals.
As shown, the two oldest generations started out with relatively fewer Evangelicals than today’s youth; however, their rates increased substantially with age. The generation born in the 1950s and 1960s had more Evangelicals than today’s youth by a couple of percentage points. Therefore, today’s youth are starting out with more Evangelicals than their grandparents and great-grandparents, but slightly fewer than their parents. In all four generations, however, evangelical involvement has increased with age.
Based on these data, we might expect that this current generation of young people will follow a similar trend as previous generations; however, there may be some dark clouds on the horizon. Acclaimed sociologist Robert Wuthnow points out that married young people today are just as likely to attend church as the married young people of the 1970s, but single young people are much less likely to attend church than single people of the previous generation. This problem is compounded by the trend that fewer people are getting married, and they are often older when they do. As a result, a key challenge for today’s church is reaching young, single people.[11]
Figure 3.6: Percentage of Evangelicals by Age for Different Generations
What Will Happen in the Future?
As you’ve probably figured out, there are a lot of good data about religion in the United States. This raises an intriguing possibility: Can we use this information to predict what will happen to Christianity in the future? The answer is absolutely yes, we can make predictions (and many people have). The real question is whether these predictions are accurate, and my answer is somewhere between maybe and probably not. There are so many factors that affect the size of a religion that it is difficult, if not impossible, to forecast each of them accurately. Among these factors are how many children members have, how long members live, how many members emigrate from other countries, how many people convert into the religion, and how many people leave the religion.
Think of it this way: Can you accurately predict who will win the Super Bowl next year? Do you know what will happen to a company’s stock price? Can you always pick the winner of the reality television shows that you watch? Frankly, if you can answer yes to any of these questions, you have much more profitable things to do than read this book, but I’m guessing not. If we can’t accurately forecast teams, companies, or shows, why do we think we can forecast religion, which is far larger and more complex?
Do you need more reason to be skeptical? Consider previous, failed predictions.[12]
In 1761, Ezra Stiles, before he was president of Yale University, used demographic projection techniques to predict that in 100 years there would be 7 million Congregationalists and less than half a million Baptists. Turns out that, in fact, in 1860 there were 2 million Baptists and only half a million Congregationalists.
In 1822, Thomas Jefferson predicted the imminent demise of Christianity in favor of Unitarianism. He wrote, “There is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” He wasn’t even close. Currently less than .5% of the population is Unitarian.
In the 1800s, social theorist Auguste Comte stated that human society was outgrowing its “theological stage” of social evolution, and sociology would replace religion as the basis of moral judgment. (As someone who has spent twenty years in sociology, I am so, so glad that this did not happen.)
In the 1800s, Frederich Engels predicted that a socialist revolution would cause religion to evaporate “soon.”
Given my skepticism about predictions about the future of religion, I won’t make any myself—there are already enough bad predictions out there. I will, however, review some predictions that have been made. I do this not so much because I think they are correct, but rather to illustrate how researchers think about religion.
A simple-minded approach to prediction is to assume that current trends will continue on into the future. Even if we don’t know why a religion is changing, maybe we can assume that it will continue to change in the same way. The problem here is that social change rarely follows such a simple, linear path. For example, at the start of chapter 2, Figure 2.1 portrayed the percentage of religiously unaffiliated in the country. During the 1970s and 1980s, this number hovered around 6%. If we made a prediction at that point in time, we would have predicted a similarly low rate into the future. Then, however, during the 1990s, the percentage more than doubled, up to about 15%. Projecting that trend into the future, within twentyfive years there would not have been a single religious person in the country. Then, in this decade, the rate of increase has slowed considerably. Who knows what’s next?
Here’s a cartoon, from xkcd.com, that illustrates the pitfalls of using linear projections of the future.
Unfortunately, some people who make predictions do not give much detail about their reasoning, so their predictions are difficult to evaluate. These could be seat-of-the-pants guesses or simple extrapolations of current trends; we just don’t know. What we do know is that they are largely negative:
Pollster George Barna predicts that in twenty years only “one-third of the population will look to churches primarily or exclusively for experiencing their faith.”[13]
Michael Spencer, a commentator on church matters, wrote in the Christian Science Monitor that “within two
generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants.”[14]
David Olson, author of The American Church in Crisis, predicts that Christian church attendance rates will steadily drop such that by 2020 only 14.7% of the American population will attend a Christian church on a given weekend.[15]
David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church, predicts that the Christian church worldwide has at most 250 years before it is “totally overrun” by Islam and secularism.[16]
Another, more sophisticated approach to predictions is to model the various processes that make religions grow or shrink, such as fertility, conversions, and immigration. These predictions strike me as more thoughtful, but they are only as accurate as the assumptions they make. Interestingly, they tend to predict a more stable religious future than do the seat-of-the-pants predictions described above. Perhaps the most ambitious predictions are made by sociologist Erik Kaufmann.[17] He predicts that in the United States through 2043, the number of religiously unaffiliated will remain stable at its current levels, but there will be shuffling around among religions and denominations. The big winner will be Hispanic Catholics due to continued high levels of immigration. Conservative Protestants will drop a few percentage points in the coming decades as will non-Hispanic Catholics. In about a decade, Kaufmann predicts that the United States will have more Muslims than Jews.
So what conclusions can we draw? Christianity in the United States will grow, shrink, or stay about the same. We really have no idea. That said, there seems to be no compelling evidence—based on the data we have about our young people—that the church in America is on the verge of collapse.
CHAPTER 4
Are Evangelicals All Poor,
Uneducated, Southern
Whites?
Evangelicals are largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.
—Michael Weisskopf, Washington Post
Why do men hate going to church?
—David Murrow, Christian author
The idiosyncrasies of history and geography cause Christianity to be expressed very differently in the . . . major regions of the country.
—David Olson, The American Church in Crisis
This chapter examines two related questions: Who is in the church? and How did they get there? To answer the first question, I will describe the personal characteristics of churchgoers, starting with the holy trinity of sociology—gender, race, and social class.
Figure 4.1: Gender Composition of Religions in the United States
Gender
Regarding gender, it’s a common perception that women are more religious than men. Is this true? Well, no and yes. In terms of religious affiliation, men are just about as likely to affiliate with religion as are women. Figure 4.1 graphs the percentage of men in the major religions in the United States. Forty-eight percent of survey respondents were men, and we see little difference with the major Christian groups—Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics—of whom 46 or 47% are men, though Black Protestants have only 40% male affiliation. Other world religions, in contrast, have higher rates of male adherents. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists each have more than 50% males. The two religious groups with the most men, Muslims and Hindus, are also comprised of many immigrants. This is no surprise, since immigrants are more likely to be men.[1] The religiously unaffiliated are also disproportionately male, with 59%.
But the real difference with gender occurs with religious beliefs and practices. Figure 4.2 graphs the gender difference among Evangelical Christians on various measures of participation, and women score substantially higher on every one of them. Evangelical women are more likely than men to think that religion is very important in their lives, to have an absolutely certain belief in a personal God, to attend church at least weekly, and to pray outside of religious services. Evangelical women are more active in their faith, and this seems to be why evangelical religious services attract more women. The prevalence of women in Christian practice is not a recent phenomenon. Historians have provided similar data for the 1800s, and they have estimated that church membership in the United States from the mid-1600s to the early 1800s was two-thirds female.[2]
This gender difference in religious practice has been defined as a significant problem for the church. In the book Why Men Hate Going to Church, David Murrow notes that 60% or more of attendees at Christian church services are women, and he argues that Christian churches cater to women rather than men by creating a safe, quiet, female-oriented environment—one that calls for ceremony, control, and conformity. He offers various remedies to attract men by incorporating challenge, risk, and shorter sermons, making church more suitable to them.
Figure 4.2: Evangelicals’ Beliefs & Behaviors by Gender
Sociologist Rodney Stark, in his book The Rise of Christianity, argues that in fact the gender imbalance in Christianity might be one of its greatest assets, at least historically. He posits that the early Christian church grew quickly precisely because of its high number of female participants. Several factors worked to increase the number of women in the church. Christianity from the start prohibited infanticide—the killing of babies. This made an impression on women, since it was usually the girls, which were seen by society as less valuable, who were killed. The church also offered important benefits to women by prohibiting divorce, incest, marital infidelity, and polygamy. Christian women could marry later in life and have more of a choice in their marriage. Pagan women, in contrast, were sometimes forced into marriage before they even reached puberty.
Furthermore, according to Stark, as the church established a surplus of women, Christian women enjoyed higher social status, more power (at least within the church), and greater freedom. This, in turn, attracted even more women into the faith. Due to a dearth of Christian men, women would marry outside the church. This brought a steady stream of men into the church, because in a religiously mixed marriage, it was usually the less religious person who joined the religion of the more religious person.
The women of the early church also had relatively high fertility rates for that era. The Greco-Roman world had low fertility rates because it was a male culture that did not favor marriage. It also practiced infanticide, birth control, and abortion—the latter using crude and dangerous methods. Christians, in contrast, were commanded to “be fruitful and multiply.” They placed a greater emphasis on marriage by emphasizing the obligations of the husband to the wife. They condemned promiscuity, and they prohibited abortion and infanticide—classifying them both as murder. Christian children grew up to be Christian adults, and so the high fertility rate of Christian women in the early church became a driving force in the rapid growth of the church overall.
In short, according to Stark, Christianity became a world religion by having a lot of women adherents.
Race
In a 1950s Reader’s Digest article, Billy Graham lamented that eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most racially segregated hour in America. This statement was repeated by Martin Luther King Jr. in his call for racial diversity within the Christian church.[3] Is the observation that religion is racially segregated still true? Unfortunately, yes, for the most part. An easy way to demonstrate this is to compare the racial composition of different religious traditions. If there were no segregation, they would have a similar racial makeup.
As shown in Figure 4.3, however, the racial composition of religions in America varies quite a bit. Here’s how to interpret this chart: Each horizontal bar represents a different religious tradition (e.g., Evangelical Christians, Mainline Protestants, etc.). Each bar is divided up into different segments, represented by different shades, to indicate the racial makeup of that tradition. For reference, the top bar indicates that the general population is 71% White, 11% Black, 3% Asian, 3% other, and 11% Hispanic.
At a quick glance, we see substantial racial differences between groups. Jews are almost all White, while members of Black Protestant denominations, of course, are predo
minately, but not exclusively, African-American. Most of the religious traditions have mainly one or two racial and ethnic groups. Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Mormons, and Jews are at least 80% White. Hindus are mostly Asian. Catholics are White and Hispanic, and Buddhists are White and Asian. The most racially diverse group is Muslims, who have large portions of White, Black, Asian, and other groups.
Figure 4.3: Racial and Ethnic Composition of Religious Groups
We see this racial segregation in other data as well. Sociologist Mark Chaves conducted a nationwide study of 1,500 church congregations and found that two-thirds (66%) of them were 80% White.[4] Also, about 1 in 8 is 80% Black. Half of all congregations do not have even one Asian member, and one-third have no Hispanics. Over time, however, racial segregation in congregations is decreasing. Just nine years ago, an earlier version of Chaves’ study found that 72% of American congregations were at least 80% White. In the same vein, the number of congregations with at least one Asian member increased from 41% to 50%.
While evangelical Christianity is still predominately White, it is becoming more racially integrated over time. Figure 4.4 plots the racial identities of Evangelicals since the 1970s. In the early 1970s, 95% were White, and this number has steadily decreased each decade to about 80% currently. Both the number of Blacks and members of other races are increasing.
There are both similarities and differences between White Evangelicals and Black Protestants. They tend to have similar religious beliefs and practices. A nationwide poll conducted by the Angus Reid survey organization found that the two groups have reasonably similar beliefs: (1) that the Bible is inspired, and (2) that Scripture should be interpreted literally. They are also similar in terms of praying daily, reading the Bible, and having a born-again experience. The two groups differ, however, in their social and political attitudes, with Black Protestants being overall more liberal than White Evangelicals. For example, Black Protestants have had more faith in Democratic politicians, thought that the government should spend money on alleviating poverty, and had less trust in law-enforcement.[5]
Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told Page 6
