Religion in society - pick two out of three? | 89 comments (89 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Religion in society - pick two out of three? (4.00 / 3)

Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they are? - Slate Magazine

In a more recent study, Hadaway estimated that if the number of Americans who told Gallup pollsters that they attended church in the last week were accurate, about 118 million Americans would be at houses of worship each week. By calculating the number of congregations (including non-Christian congregations) and their average attendance, Hadaway estimated that in reality about 21 percent of Americans attended religious services weekly--exactly half the number who told pollsters they did.

Finally, in a brand new paper, Philip Brenner at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research compared self-reported attendance at religious services with "time-use" interviews in the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Norway, Finland, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Austria, Ireland, and Great Britain. Brenner looked at nearly 500 studies over four decades, involving nearly a million respondents.
Brenner found that the United States and Canada were outliers--not in religious attendance, but in overreporting religious attendance. Americans attended services about as often as Italians and Slovenians and slightly more than Brits and Germans. The significant difference between the two North American countries and other industrialized nations was the enormous gap between poll responses and time-use studies in those two countries.
Why do Americans and Canadians feel the need to overreport their religious attendance? You could say that religiosity for Americans is tied to their identity in a way that it is not for the Germans, the French, and the British. But that only restates the mystery. Why is religiosity tied to American identity?

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Sep 6th, 2012 at 08:54:16 AM EST

Re: Religion in society - pick two out of three? (4.00 / 4)

Brenner found that the United States and Canada were ~~outliers~~outright liars

FIFY.

Social pressure, real or imagined.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Thu Sep 6th, 2012 at 09:04:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Religion in society - pick two out of three? (4.00 / 3)

My own comments on this:

The article fails to properly answer the question asked at the end of the quoted part. They point to the religious "refugees" from Europe at the foundation of the USA, but that ignores what happened since, like the official promotion of religion during the Cold War.
The article focuses on the hypocrites who claim to be religious but are only on the surface as part of national identity. However, an equally significant strand of American religiousity are the hypocrites for whom religiousity and free-market fundamentalism/the seeking of material riches is combined within their church, too (ignoring Biblical stuff like the quasi-communism of the Apostles or Matthew 19:24/Mark 10:25 about the camel and the rich man).
By focusing on church attendance, the article also overlooks the question of how fanatic the religiously active are – another field where American religiousity is special. This goes way beyond a harmless professing of a national identity when it results in silly anti-gay laws, abortion clinic bombings, the destruction of science education, or soldiers in foreign countries who run amok believing they are Crusaders.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Sep 6th, 2012 at 02:53:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Religion in society - pick two out of three? | 89 comments (89 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)