My wad of keys includes my U.S. Army dog tags from my two years with my Uncle Sam in 1969 to 1971, virtually all of it spent at Fort Polk, La. Among the tag’s information is my religious preference: Presbyterian. Two years after my discharge, I married a cradle” Presbyterian, and we have fully kept with that stripe of Christianity these 33 years together. Now after serving six three-year terms as a church officer — elder, deacon and trustee — Im staying with it for a lot of reasons. But, gosh, there are a bunch of other faiths out there I could be very comfortable with.I wonder how many of my GI peers from 35 years ago still subscribe to the faith that was on their dog tags, if one was initially listed at all. Were a nation of seekers and faith wanderers. Faith labeling itself is problematic for many. The experts keep saying denominational identity is in decline, and people would rather be labeled Christian at best.
Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post reports that sociologists at Baylor University have released research showing that religious polling of Americans in the past 15 years has been flawed that perhaps 10 million people should not have been put into a no affiliation category. Under examination are those people who checked none or no religion when asked for their affiliations. Since 1990, that group supposedly grew from 7 percent to 14 percent of the population.
Trouble is those people may have checked those boxes when they looked down a list of 40 possible options, but they also were asked about their worship patterns and to list a place they went for worship. And they wrote down real places. Hmmm. So the Baylor profs conclude that the unaffiliated should be more like 10.8 percent, rather than 14 percent. That comes to about 10 million Americans misplaced, writes Boorstein.
People might not have a denomination, but they have a congregation, said Kevin Dougherty, a sociologist with Baylors Institute for the Studies of Religion. He and his colleagues have thus said religious labeling and categorizing of Americans get more difficult. Thats because people are increasingly blending religions, church-shopping and worshiping in independent communities. Dougherty and his researches find that terms like mainline, evangelical, and unaffiliated lose their meaning to those sorts of folks.
Researchers found that 33 American said they can be found worshiping in congregations that call themselves evangelical, meaning they say the Bible should be taken literally and is inerrant and a “personal relationship with Jesus” is key. Yet only 15 percent of the surveyed said that evangelical described themselves.
The Baylor researchers see a need to tighten the questions and attack from other angles: Does your pastor talk about religion? Have you had a born-again experience? If you are Catholic, are you traditional or Catholic?, Boorstein writes.
In the final analysis, Americans seem to be more elusive and careful about their religiosity, so it creates a minefield for todays scholars trying to measure it. It raises such new questions: Is someone religious if he or she goes to church? Religious if there is a bona fide belief in God? Religious if they, in fact, identify with one group?
Oddly the researchers conclude that a “none” for affiliation more often indicates someone who tends to be a liberal voter, but not belonging to a particular political party. It tends to reflect independence and a maverick spirit. Their conclusion: If you dont belong religiously, you dont belong politically.
As a side note, Baylor surveyors asked about peoples perceptions of God. They were given 26 attributes from absolute and wrathful to friendly. A full 31 percent believed God was both wrathful and highly involved in human affairs. Finally, a lot of the surveying lost meaning to groups like Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims whose religious lives and practices don’t fit the 90-minute Sunday morning model.
