POLLS APART:

Americans May Be More Religious Than They Realize: Many Without Denomination Have Congregation, Study Finds (Michelle Boorstein, September 12, 2006, Washington Post)

A survey released yesterday posits the idea that the United States -- already one of the most religious nations in the developed world -- may be even less secular than previously suspected.

The Baylor University survey looked carefully at people who checked "none" when asked their religion in polls. Sociologists have watched this group closely since 1990, when their numbers doubled, from 7 percent of the population to 14 percent. Some sociologists said the jump reflects increasing secularization at the same time that American society is becoming more religious.

But the Baylor survey, considered one of the most detailed ever conducted about religion in the United States, found that one in 10 people who picked "no religion" out of 40 choices did something interesting when asked later where they worship: They named a place.

Considering that, 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 about 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 Studies of Religion and one of the survey's authors. Baylor is a leading Baptist university, located in Waco, Tex.

The finding reflects the new challenges involved in trying to categorize religiosity in the United States, where people increasingly blend religions, shop for churches 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 evangelical congregations, which sociologists say are places that espouse an inerrant Bible, the importance of evangelizing and the requirement of having a personal relationship with Jesus. But only 15 percent of respondents to the Baylor survey said the term "evangelical" describes their religious identity.

Likewise, you sometimes hear people say a plurality of Americans believe in Darwinism, but 3 in every four folks who claim to accept natural evolution couple it with the directly conradictory belief that "God guided this process,"

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 14, 2006 6:58 PM