Chaves - American religion : contemporary trends

AMERICAN RELIGION

Contemporary Trends

MARK CHAVES

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2011 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton,
New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

press.princeton.edu

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chaves, Mark.

American religion : contemporary trends / Mark Chaves.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-14685-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. United States

Religion1960 I. Title.

BL2525.C444 2011

200.97309045dc22 2011007159

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro and Friz Quadrata

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Matthew and Christopher

This book began with a phone call from Peter Marsden asking me to write a religion chapter for a volume he was editing on social trends in the United States. That invitation led me to examine religious trends more systematically than I had before, and I learned that more had changed than was widely known or appreciated, and more had changed than could be described in a single chapter. A book seemed in order.

I have not produced this book alone. Shawna Anderson, co-author of the chapter in Peter Marsdens volume, analyzed data, created tables and graphs, and helped me figure out what was changing and what was staying the same in American religion. Gary Thompson analyzed more data, took account of the General Social Surveys 1984 coding changea job that was more difficult than it sounds.

This book would not have been possible without two major data sources: the General Social Survey (GSS) and the National Congregations Study (NCS). Both of these data sources are publicly available, so it is easy to take them for granted. But it is appropriate for GSS users like me to acknowledge that this extraordinary resource exists in such accessible form only because of the National Science Foundations ongoing support, the foresight of the GSSs founder, James Davis, and the stewardship of its current Principal Investigators, Peter Marsden, Michael Hout, and, especially, Tom Smith. And as Principal Investigator for the National Congregations Study, I am acutely aware that this resource for studying religious change exists only because of generous support from the Lilly Endowment and additional grants (for the NCSs second wave) from the National Science Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Louisville Institute.

Elizabeth Clark, James Davis, Claude Fischer, Curtis Freeman, Hans Hillerbrand, Michael Hout, Wesley Kort, James Lewis, Peter Marsden, Ami Nagle, Melvin Peters, Robert Putnam, Tom Smith, and David Voas offered helpful comments on earlier versions of this material. Gordon Mantler edited early drafts and made useful organizational suggestions, and Dennis Dolan polished remaining rough spots when he copyedited the nearly final manuscript. Fred Appel, at Princeton University Press, encouraged me to write this book when I was still on the fence about doing it. He helped sharpen its message, and he expertly shepherded it from proposal to final manuscript. Terri OPrey, also at Princeton University Press, managed the production process with aplomb.

My wife, Ami Nagle, has been a supportive, loving companion and conversation partner every step of the way, not to mention an insightful and sometimes critical reader of earlier versions of these chapters. Our sons, Christopher and Matthew, bring more joy into our lives than they can possibly know. I dedicate this book to them.

AMERICAN RELIGION

By world standards, the United States is a highly religious country. Almost all Americans say they believe in God, a majority say they pray, and more than a third say they attend religious services every week. Some skepticism is appropriate here. It is not always clear what people mean when they say they believe in God or pray, and many people believe in a God that is quite untraditional. Moreover, people do not really go to church as often as they tell pollsters that they go. But even when we take all this into account, Americans still are more pious than people in any Western country, with the possible exception of Ireland.

We cannot say anything definitive about very long-term trends in U.S. religious beliefs and practices because high-quality The weekly religious service attendance rate implied by the best national survey in 2008 is within that range: 37 percent. This overstates true weekly attendance because people say that they attend services more often than they really do, but it probably represents fairly the proportion of Americans who participate in congregations more or less regularly. The continuity is striking.

Considering the continuing high levels of American religiosity, it is tempting to treat any signs of change as mere footnotes to the main story of continuity. But American religion has changed in recent decades, and it is important to clarify what is changing and what is staying the same. As we will see, recent religious trends mainly are slow-movingeven glacial. But slow-moving does not mean unimportant, and long-term, slow social change still can be profound social change. We should not overstate change, but we also should not allow the considerable continuity in American religion to blind us to the real change that has occurred and is occurring. I will try to strike the right balance between the twin dangers of overstating and understating recent changes in American religion.

Some of the trends I highlight in this book are well known. Others are not. This book documents even the well-known trends in order to provide a stand-alone summary of important religious change in the United States.goal is to provide key facts so those who wish to discuss, explain, or debate the state of American religion over the past few decades can do so knowledgeably.

I keep this book descriptive and aggregate because I want to keep it short. I want to keep it short because I believe this sort of factual summary should be available to the general public. Too often, we develop explanations and interpretations before we are clear about what the facts are. Too often, people interested in basic facts about American religion have to search harder than they should to find an overview they can trust. Too often, teachers who want their students to learn basic facts about American religious change cannot find a source that is inexpensive enough, and short enough, to assign in class. I wanted to keep this book short so that it can inform the maximum number of people about whats changing and whats not in American religion. For the same reason, I have erred on the side of including less rather than more methodological detail.

The trends I highlight are not the only important trends in American religion, but they are the most interesting and best documented. Best documented is an important qualifier. I will draw primarily on the two best sources of information about these trends. One source is the General Social Survey (GSS), a survey of the American adult population that has been conducted at least every other year since 1972. The GSS, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, is by far the best source of available information about continuity and change in Americans religiosity over the last four decades. Of course, no survey is perfect. The GSSs primary limitation is that, while richly informative, it has not asked people about every religious belief, attitude, or practice we might like to know about. But no other high-quality source contains as much information about American religion over as many years, so describing the best documented trends means relying primarily on the GSS.