Biblical Orthodoxy

A traditional survey question for those who study religion is to ask about people's perception of the Bible.  Is it literally the word of God?  Inspired by God but written by men?  Or merely written by men and full of fables and fairy tales?  Often we use this as a standalone measure or combine it with the "born-again Christian" question to create a measure of doctrinal orthodoxy.

Have beliefs about the Bible changed over time?  Not so much.

Using Gallup data, we can see the following:

• The question was first asked in 1976, with 38 percent professing a belief that the Bible is the literal word of God.
• This climbed to 40 percent by 1980.
• After this peak, it dropped as low as 27 percent and no higher than 34 percent over the next several years.
• The latest poll, in May 2011, pegs it at 30 percent believing literally in the Bible.

Okay, but what about the fables and legends response?  Any change there?  There's been a slow, persistent growth in this position.

• In 1976, only 13 percent believed the book is fables, legends, and moral precepts written by man.
• This peaked at 22 percent thinking so by 2008.
• It's now at 17 percent, according to the May 2011 survey.

What can we take away from this?  Attitudes about the Bible remain relatively stable over the last 35 years, at least as measured by Gallup.  Some change.  Nothing dramatic, but I do think we're seeing a slow, modest shift to secularism, but it's one so small that current events can easily shift it one way or the other.  The campaign of a couple of GOP candidates (Bachmann and Perry) will bring such views in full relief over the next several months.  It'll be interesting to watch.

Changing My Religion

I'm allowed to riff off an R.E.M. song given I live in Athens, home of the band and where you occasionally see the guys downtown, but the point is a new Pew Center study that outlines how religious beliefs in the U.S. are changing.  Becoming less "dogmatic," according to the report, with people mixing a little of this, a little of that, not unlike a Youtube mashup. 

According to the report:

Many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects. And sizeable minorities of all major U.S. religious groups say they have experienced supernatural phenomena, such as being in touch with the dead or with ghosts.

Ever had a mystic experience?  If so, you're not alone.  Can some of this be blamed on the lousy economy?  Probably not.  The trend line is fairly consistent prior to our latest economic meltdown.  The full report is available here.  My favorite question is belief in the "evil eye," which my grandmother can still do.  The older you are, the less likely you believe in it.  No explanation on that one.  Whites believe in it significantly less than Hispanics and blacks. 

The full study is full of cool stuff on what people think or believe or know about religion and mysticism, material I can mine for the next few days if I'm careful and can avoid being too caught up in the library stacks.

Republicans, Democrats ... and Religion

Republicans are perceived by the public as being more friendly toward religion than Democrats, according to this Pew report.

Can I get a Duh! from the congregation?

 The report says:

More Americans continue to view the Republican Party as friendly toward religion (48%) than rate the Democratic Party that way (29%). President Barack Obama's administration, however, is seen as friendly toward religion by more people (37%) than is the Democratic Party as a whole. And all three get higher ratings for friendliness toward religion than the news media (14%), scientists (12%) or Hollywood (11%).

Evil bad news media.  And scientists.  And Hollywood.

The public's perception of Democratic friendliness to "religion" peaked in mid-2008 as Obama was on a roll, but since then it's inched downward -- even among (get this) people who seldom or never attend religious services.  That's saying something, when even the godless heathens see you as unfriendly to "religion."

Why do I keep putting "religion" in quotation marks?  Because they don't really define what they mean by religion.  Here's the survey question:  As I name some groups, please tell me whether you feel each one is generally FRIENDLY toward religion, NEUTRAL toward religion, or UNFRIENDLY toward religion?

The all-caps are to remind the reader to be clear on the labels and to match them up with the response alternatives on the CATI system where the survey worker enters data.  The interesting part is every respondent can interpret "religion" as he or she wants.  I'm not saying I have a better solution, but it does raise some fascinating methodological issues.  The Pew folks -- who are very good at this sort of thing -- were smart in asking this question before asking respondents about their specific religious affiliations (Catholic, Prod, etc.) or how often they attend religious services.  If you asked about religious beliefs and practices first, you'd get some kind of confounding priming effect.  But that's an issue for another day.

Pew and Headlines

I love the headline of a recent Pew Center report:

An End to Religion, Newspapers
and the American Way of Life

Just about sums it up for me, an unrepentant newspaper guy, but what this reflects is what bloggers were discussing in a week of content. As the report says:

As the economy struggled, a major newspaper shut down and a survey highlighted the diminishing appeal of organized religion, bloggers and social media pondered the dramatic social changes that might be taking place and what the implications could be.

Below is a graphic display:

Obama and Religion

Polls tend to show about 1 in 10 Americans think Obama is a Muslim. Of course, about 1 in 10 also think cows can fly, but that's another post for another blog. One poll went as high as 15 percent, one as low as 8 percent, who thought Barack Obama was a Muslim.

He sure doesn't help himself with slips like the one below:



What people know about a candidate is in part created and crafted by the candidate, in part the product of the various media (news and entertainment) and in part the product of the opposition. This won't play a huge role in the election, though it'll be interesting to see if religion comes up a lot in the debates. Kerry got religion in 2004, Gore ignored it in 2000, Obama is all about it in 2008, so the Dems have kinda figured it out. The Republicans have never had a problem with talking about faith and I expect Palin to showcase this in her VP debate.

Be interesting if "Muslim" comes up in the Prez debates. I don't see McCain raising it, so that'll leave it to the moderators.

What Religion, Part II

Just stumbled across an Associated Press-Yahoo poll that asks more or less the same religion question I blogged about below. Respondents were asked, what's the religion of various candidates?

Hillary Clinton: 33% have her as Protestant, 8% as Catholic, 2% as "some other," 3% say "none," and just over half don't have a clue.

Barack Obama: 27% have him as Protestant, 2% identify him as Catholic, 1% as Mormon (that's fascinating), 15% as Muslim, 8% as "some other religion," 1% as no religion and the rest, nearly half, don't know.

So one poll has 12% saying Obama is a Muslim, the other has 15%. More or less in the margin of error, suggesting (1) people want to believe he's Muslim for partisan reasons, or (2) his name confuses them and they offer Muslim as a likely response, or (3) they don't attend to the news, or (4) they're just plain suspicious of this guy who came, more or less, out of nowhere to capture the Democratic nomination, or (5) they're just plain dumb.

In the story, which doesn't offer a lot of detail, there's an interesting intereview with a respondent:

Randi Estes, a Democrat from Ada, Okla., said she prefers Clinton but feels Obama is likely to win the nomination. "He's gotten very strong media coverage, and Bill Clinton's not helping her a bit," said Estes, 36, who has four children under the age of 6.

Speaking of Obama, she said, "I have a sense he's a Muslim."

It's that sense I find fascinating, and I suspect the Obama people may find troubling. But they can't find it too troubling, because that suggests there's something wrong with being Muslim (which there isn't). It's an interesting problem. As I like to say to my department chair when he wants to discuss some problem: "Good luck with that."

What Religion is that Guy?

The folks at the Pew Center asked in a recent survey a simple question: Do you happen to know what Barack Obama's religion is?

Good timing, given The New Yorker magazine cover (see below). So how'd we do? As if you had to ask.

Despite recurrent media attention to the issue -- including extensive coverage of his association with the controversial Protestant cleric, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- the incorrect perception that the Democratic presidential candidate adheres to the Muslim faith or to another non-Christian faith has remained remarkably constant over the course of the 2008 election campaign.

Twelve percent of respondents say Obama's a Muslim, despite that fact he's not -- he's Christian. One percent have his as Jewish, which is kinda interesting and strange and not altogether understandable. But hey, what the heck. Some 25 percent don't know and 3 percent refused to answer. Of the "don't know" types, 10 percent said they've heard lots of different things. That's the Muslim whisper effect, hidden in the data, and is interesting as well.

I published a piece some time back that looked as the ability to identify the religions of four candidates (Gore and Lieberman, Bush and Cheney). Those who shared a religion with that person were more accurate. Everyone could identify Lieberman's religion, very vew could correctly place Cheney. And lots of Baptists said Bush was Baptist when, instead, he's Methodist (though a flavor that looks awfully like Southern Baptist, so understandable).

Overall, this fuzzy sense of Obama's religion may play a role later. You can be sure it'll come up as a question in the debates, which I'm sure he'll welcome, but I doubt his answer, no matter how sincere, will solve nothing. He'll do the "I'm not a Muslim, not that there's anything wrong with that!" approach that serves him well among some, but does nothing with a few crazies out there.

Gender Revisited

Some time back I blogged about research in gender and political knowledge. The short version is this: studies repeatedly find guys do better than gals on tests of public affairs knowledge. One explanation? Men answer questions even when they don't know the answer and sometimes get it right, while women do not.

Here's another theory tested. Unfortunately I can only point to an abstract, not the full text, but the upshot is you can improve how women do when you ask questions that include female politicians.

This makes perfect sense.

One of my own studies explored with conservative Christians do so poorly on tests of political knowledge. In part it's demographics, but when you ask religious questions about candidates (their affiliation) versus what state they are from, the conservative Christians do not fare so poorly. The upshot? Ask people what they know, in a certain domain, and they do better than previous research suggests.

This has a lot to do with cognitive accessibility and all that rot. Fun stuff if you're into research, but translated it just means we have certain things that are important to us and when questions are posed in such a way as to tap those interests (versus those of scholars and news junkies) then we do okay. Better. Not great, mind you, but better.

Religion and Knowledge

A study of mine will soon be published that asks a fairly straightforward (and maybe obvious) question: shouldn't people with strong religious beliefs be better able to answer questions about a candidate's religion than those without strong religious beliefs?

Let me explain, hopefully without too much theory stuff.

The argument is simple. When something matters to you a great deal, you are primed to pick up on that information. I taught at Oxford last summer, so when Oxford pops up in the news, I am primed to attend and recall that info. Same way with religion.

I looked at two sets of questions from the presidential election, whether people could correctly answer questions about a candidate's religious affiliation and his state of residence. I figured people with strong religious invovlement would be more accurate about various candidate's religious affiliations. They'd know Bush was a Methodist, etc. Keep in mind that people with strong religious involvement generally do pretty lousy on tests of political knowledge.

The results? Kinda okay. While generally strong religious people do awful on tests of knowledge, they managed to not do so badly when asked for the candidate's religious affiliation. They sucked at regular knowledge questions that we traditionally ask, so there was some support for my idea that religion, for these people, is a ( PhDweeb alert! ) chronically accessible construct. Simply put, religion matters to them and they pick up on the religion of candidates, even those they do not plan on supporting.

The article will be published soon in the Journal of Media and Religion.