Sadly not included in General Social Survey questions and thus not in your religious behavior widget is "How often to you read and comment on religion/theology debates on Substack?" This omission is the only reason why your readers here are not scoring at the 99th percentile in religious engagement.
The "How often do you share your religious views with others?" is an interesting question; it could really bump up the score for Zealous Secularists™️.
Good to read this the day after Rosh Hashanah. There are perhaps some other ways to measure religious behavior, now that I see how low we Jews perform on the metrics of the Pew questions. Many of the people who built the modern State of Israel never attended synagogue or read Bible, but their commitment to community expressed their religion. They'd score zero. We had mediocre attendance at synagogue. People who never go often give generously of their time and treasure to charitable and advocacy initiatives. They'd score pretty low too. No doubt other religions have parallel behavioral opportunities that do not involve worship or scripture. Catholic families who never attend mass supporting Catholic Charities, serving on the Boards of Catholic hospitals, or insisting that their children attend a Jesuit college. Evangelicals who spend Sundays at brunch but help campaign for the candidates who promote their doctrinal positions. We could probably find some form of engagement for any religion, from advocacy to social affiliation, that affirms their identity with the religion, imposes some action on their part, but does not require them to enter a sanctuary.
Some of the criteria for determining religiosity seem skewed towards evangelical culture—which partially explains some of the distribution by religious affiliation. Watching services online, small groups, (whether Bible studies or prayer groups) and evangelizing in a more direct way are all things that skew towards Evangelical understandings of what it means to be a Christian in ways that don’t necessarily line up with other traditions.
I don’t quite know how you can compare religiosity across traditions without giving a preference to a specific group, but this quiz seems more like an understanding of religiosity across various traditions as understood through the lens of Evangelical Christianity.
And this is the major flaw in all this kind of work -- you can't write a religious behavior battery that is not completely neutral across the full range of traditions.
It doesn't have to. Scoring low is still a score, but one embedded in tradition. Being Jewish, we don't promote our religion. Being a visible minority, we often find our work or school colleagues curious about us so we respond to them, much like Muslims or Hindus would approach majorities who express interest in their customs. Our services are now streamed, so people could watch online. When I do this occasionally, the number of viewers rarely exceeds 200, even in the most prominent synagogues. It's just not something we do, unless housebound, as being in community is part of the culture.
The statistics don't really give a preference, but they weight in favor of the larger groups when taken as a composite. They also break down into subgroups, which Ryan presents so expertly.
I was wondering the same thing. Last Friday(9/11) my wife was outside the local mosque, showing support to another faith that is under attack here in my southern state. We would call that religious expression. On the other side of the street were counter protestors, one man dressed as a knight, who yelled sexually explicit profanity at women and children. He likely would consider that an expression of his Christianity.
Much like when I was growing up, I never remember hearing a sermon disparaging another group or religion, now that's a weekly occurrence at many "Christian" churches. So the idea of expression is really all over the map.
I find this newsletter fascinating and frustrating. It tells me a lot of what but very little of why. It reminds me of the difference between physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. The former has a high degree of scientific validity and the latter is often based on considerable supposition. But I find the latter more of interest.
I enjoyed your book but still when people say they pray every day what do they mean by that. Is it talking with God, saying a set of words someone else wrote, or meditation. At Rosh Ha Shonah services our rabbi said something interesting. People sometimes ask him what are they suppossed to do when they are praying. Here is what he said. If you dont know what to do take 3 steps back and ask yourself what are you stepping out of and then take 3 steps forward and ask what are you stepping into. So is this too a form of prayer?
Would LOVE more along these lines. Been in formal, parish ministry a quarter-century now and the declines you quantify are certainly noticeable. My anecdata agrees 100% and some of your stats may very well end up in another sermon of the "many say they don't see God working in our world, but how much are we developing the spiritual vision to see it?" variety.
Worship attendance is a fairly good stand-in for putting faith into practice. I do wonder at some of the others metrics. During the (debatable) "Youth Revival" of the late 1980s I went to Urbana, where an entire day was spent learning how to not proselytize American identity rather then the Gospel. We were asked to let some of the many international students share their views of U.S. Christianity, and in our group they basically said we suck at it. We don't pray, we don't study, we want to go out and tell others what to believe without doing the self-development work.
What kind of ministry/missionary activities do U.S. residents do? We're the nation that produced Naturalism. Building outward-facing ministries has been an effective part of my ministries as it seems to attract people across generations. Might there be higher numbers when asking, "how many service activities did you take part in as an expression of your faith?" and "How many organizations do you support as an expression of your faith?" Probably no data on that? Americans just really seem to hate prep work and love numbers and bottom lines.
Am I missing something? The plot for the distribution of religious behavior index among Nones isn’t visible to me in the post. The rest are. I see the code for it, but not the plot.
Sadly not included in General Social Survey questions and thus not in your religious behavior widget is "How often to you read and comment on religion/theology debates on Substack?" This omission is the only reason why your readers here are not scoring at the 99th percentile in religious engagement.
Ha! You make a good point, though.
There is a definitely a self-selection effect happening among folks who are paid subscribers to my newsletter.
The "How often do you share your religious views with others?" is an interesting question; it could really bump up the score for Zealous Secularists™️.
Good to read this the day after Rosh Hashanah. There are perhaps some other ways to measure religious behavior, now that I see how low we Jews perform on the metrics of the Pew questions. Many of the people who built the modern State of Israel never attended synagogue or read Bible, but their commitment to community expressed their religion. They'd score zero. We had mediocre attendance at synagogue. People who never go often give generously of their time and treasure to charitable and advocacy initiatives. They'd score pretty low too. No doubt other religions have parallel behavioral opportunities that do not involve worship or scripture. Catholic families who never attend mass supporting Catholic Charities, serving on the Boards of Catholic hospitals, or insisting that their children attend a Jesuit college. Evangelicals who spend Sundays at brunch but help campaign for the candidates who promote their doctrinal positions. We could probably find some form of engagement for any religion, from advocacy to social affiliation, that affirms their identity with the religion, imposes some action on their part, but does not require them to enter a sanctuary.
Some of the criteria for determining religiosity seem skewed towards evangelical culture—which partially explains some of the distribution by religious affiliation. Watching services online, small groups, (whether Bible studies or prayer groups) and evangelizing in a more direct way are all things that skew towards Evangelical understandings of what it means to be a Christian in ways that don’t necessarily line up with other traditions.
I don’t quite know how you can compare religiosity across traditions without giving a preference to a specific group, but this quiz seems more like an understanding of religiosity across various traditions as understood through the lens of Evangelical Christianity.
And this is the major flaw in all this kind of work -- you can't write a religious behavior battery that is not completely neutral across the full range of traditions.
It doesn't have to. Scoring low is still a score, but one embedded in tradition. Being Jewish, we don't promote our religion. Being a visible minority, we often find our work or school colleagues curious about us so we respond to them, much like Muslims or Hindus would approach majorities who express interest in their customs. Our services are now streamed, so people could watch online. When I do this occasionally, the number of viewers rarely exceeds 200, even in the most prominent synagogues. It's just not something we do, unless housebound, as being in community is part of the culture.
The statistics don't really give a preference, but they weight in favor of the larger groups when taken as a composite. They also break down into subgroups, which Ryan presents so expertly.
I was wondering the same thing. Last Friday(9/11) my wife was outside the local mosque, showing support to another faith that is under attack here in my southern state. We would call that religious expression. On the other side of the street were counter protestors, one man dressed as a knight, who yelled sexually explicit profanity at women and children. He likely would consider that an expression of his Christianity.
Much like when I was growing up, I never remember hearing a sermon disparaging another group or religion, now that's a weekly occurrence at many "Christian" churches. So the idea of expression is really all over the map.
I find this newsletter fascinating and frustrating. It tells me a lot of what but very little of why. It reminds me of the difference between physical anthropology and cultural anthropology. The former has a high degree of scientific validity and the latter is often based on considerable supposition. But I find the latter more of interest.
Here's a fun story.
I wrote a bunch of books that just answered the "what" question. They were read by some folks.
But I was regularly told by folks, "I enjoyed your book but I wish you would have a stronger argument and why things were happening."
So I wrote a book called The Vanishing Church, which did have a strong thesis.
A lot of those same people read that last book and told me, "Yeah, I wanted you to make an argument but not THAT argument."
I am going to stick with descriptive work.
I loved that book. It's a great statement about the church today.
I enjoyed your book but still when people say they pray every day what do they mean by that. Is it talking with God, saying a set of words someone else wrote, or meditation. At Rosh Ha Shonah services our rabbi said something interesting. People sometimes ask him what are they suppossed to do when they are praying. Here is what he said. If you dont know what to do take 3 steps back and ask yourself what are you stepping out of and then take 3 steps forward and ask what are you stepping into. So is this too a form of prayer?
Would LOVE more along these lines. Been in formal, parish ministry a quarter-century now and the declines you quantify are certainly noticeable. My anecdata agrees 100% and some of your stats may very well end up in another sermon of the "many say they don't see God working in our world, but how much are we developing the spiritual vision to see it?" variety.
Worship attendance is a fairly good stand-in for putting faith into practice. I do wonder at some of the others metrics. During the (debatable) "Youth Revival" of the late 1980s I went to Urbana, where an entire day was spent learning how to not proselytize American identity rather then the Gospel. We were asked to let some of the many international students share their views of U.S. Christianity, and in our group they basically said we suck at it. We don't pray, we don't study, we want to go out and tell others what to believe without doing the self-development work.
What kind of ministry/missionary activities do U.S. residents do? We're the nation that produced Naturalism. Building outward-facing ministries has been an effective part of my ministries as it seems to attract people across generations. Might there be higher numbers when asking, "how many service activities did you take part in as an expression of your faith?" and "How many organizations do you support as an expression of your faith?" Probably no data on that? Americans just really seem to hate prep work and love numbers and bottom lines.
Am I missing something? The plot for the distribution of religious behavior index among Nones isn’t visible to me in the post. The rest are. I see the code for it, but not the plot.
Of course, with the code I can just generate the plot myself, haha. I might just do that.