Education is empowering. The more education people have, the more social capital they have. They vote at a higher rate, they are more involved in community organizations, they average larger, more diverse social networks. Religion is one of those networks. A while back I was talking with a friend who was then a local elected official, who said he regularly went to church, not because he necessarily believed in the religious tenets of his denomination, but because of the social benefits.
I should have been clearer. The point of the example wasn't to emphasize the relative importance of religious belief to the better educated, but the importance of social connection regardless of religious belief.
Ryan has written about the "nones" before and how a substantial number of them has dropped out of everything: School, work, church, etc. That seems to be the largest factor at work here. Government programs or family members have enabled this along with inexpensive sophisticated entertainment options (from drugs to games to videos) and the result is an increasingly large number of people who are not well socially, mentally, emotionally or financially. This does not describe all "nones" but an increasing number of them.
This sounds like given the option, the "nones" would rather drop out, and removing government programs or family members enabling this would only potentially coerce them back to an option they are not currently choosing when they have other options, no?
Coerce is a good word. If you are starving, you are highly motivated/coerced to work. This would not move them to church or education. It would just motivate them to work enough to eat so they can play their games, do their drugs or watch their screens. Because drugs are more expensive it seems to be a greater motivator for work than games and screens. I feel the pull of screens and games myself... I am on one now. Sigh.
A fun fact is that GLP-1s work on the brain's reward center, so providing cheap GLP-1s widely might be enough to disengage drug seeking behavior (and most addictive behaviors in general). Is it going to make people form couples and work? That's a harder challenger that hinges on stable, well paying work and affordable housing (per the governance.fyi substack and their robust citations on this matter).
Now we are talking about a real social science experiment! If the American Time Use Study would include a question about GLP-1 usage, that would be a gold mine.
Surprising, but makes sense: more educated people have developed the habit of "showing up" which includes showing up for class, for study sessions, for weekly worship. Sometimes we may wonder, "Was that a waste of my time?" but, for people of curiosity and the capacity to find applications, usually something "happens" that adds value to our experience.
Going to church requires discipline, either self-discipline or communal discipline.
- People who go further in education, on average, have more self-discipline.
- People in denominations with communal discipline attend church the most regularly, even though they often lack education. The classic example is Jehovah's Witnesses.
I think that this is the one finding of Charles Murray's work that's really insightful. There's a class of people who can continue to thrive despite the lack of externally-imposed systems of meaning or social norms (i.e. without a culture). Then there's everyone else who can't. Church attendance is one metric for this, and there are many others.
Pretty tough comment section, where I see the non-attenders with less education are just too lazy to get up to maybe they are drug users. Maybe I'm more adjacent to some of these groups, so I'll try to throw out a theory that Ryan can debunk.
Educated folks statistically make more money. Life tends to go better for them, so a weekly celebration time could seem warranted. Less educated may find that life is harder, often due to factors beyond their control, so maybe worshiping a deity they may feel has let them down or doesn't exist doesn't make sense. And why would they want to spend time with people that by vast majority vote for politicians that aren't interested in addressing systemic issues that harm them, such as lack of access to affordable healthcare, housing, etc.
As the late, great Annie Dillard wrote, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Ryan, as you note, we wish that this choice were intentional--but we know that it mainly is not.
Whether through self-selection for folks who were already intentional in their choices, or whether through the reinforcing effect of employment or education on intentionality, those who are intentional about how they spend their days are more likely to be employed and/or go to school. I think this is why the church attendance gap between education levels collapses once we control for employment--and, as you and others have shown elsewhere, why attending church positively correlates with all sorts of other intentional social behaviors.
I noticed in the voiceover you said, and quickly corrected, “Protestant Worth Ethic” instead of ‘work ethic’. Without getting to Freudian about our verbal slips, “worth ethic” may be one of the better descriptors (unintentional or otherwise) I’ve heard, of what really lies at the core of our particular American flavor of workaholism, especially in a secular age. If my ‘self’ is buffered from the world, and that world is disenchanted anyway, what available means do I have to make/have value, contribute, or even exist, other than by what I do/produce?
And to the main focus of this piece, how does this affect people’s assumptions and posture towards regular church attendance? I wonder if the default framing is to view it as “doing/getting” something, an exchange, and if the ‘return’ of attending doesn’t justify the investment (or at least remain competitive with other options), folks will opt for the better deal.
No lectures on taking a break here, just wanted to highlight that on this substack, even the flubs are insightful!
Thanks for taking the time to address this common question, and some of the spin-off questions that might arise! I found the insights about religiosity particularly interesting. I think that does suggest that the main difference is an impulse towards/against joining in, especially in institutional functions. As other comments have suggested, there's probably a feedback loop here: people who don't have much mental/emotional capacity to join in are less likely to get very deeply involved in education and religious institutions, and people who get deeply involved in them develop greater capacity to continue.
As per other people in the comments I wonder if this is a general disengagement factor. Are more educated people more likely to just be motivated to go out and be involved in more things - religiously related or not? I wonder if there's any way to see that from the data you have Ryan?
Not directly addressing that question, but if you haven’t read his post about those who are dropping out of everything, you might like it. I think there’s another one that specifically looks at civic engagement.
This is helpful; I'm very interested in the link between increasing demands on two-earner (2 FT) households and decreasing time spent/attendance at church. It seems to me the two have tracked - the average workweek for exempt employees is now something like 48 - 55 hrs/wk including commutes. In the 1970s, male employees often received extended lunches to take part in civic activities, including church administration. Today professionals are expected to respond to work messages 7 days/wk.
I asked you this question when interviewing you, and you answered with the stats in this report. Helpful stats, but not the same thing. Given that college-educated adults are more likely to be in church, how much has expanded work demands impacted participation in faith communities? Feel like I missed that connection in decades of sermons.
I'm thinking of all the people I know, including church goers and nones, highly educated and high school graduates. The primary difference i see is whether or not their parents were religious. I think everything else is almost irrelevant
"Grad degree" is a real mix of education, including it would seem many professional degrees that are unlikely to select for or instill lower levels of belief, unlike "academic" degrees especially in the natural sciences. Larson & Witham (1998) replicated a much earlier study showing the levels of disbelief in scientists. Their conclusion? "In 1996, we repeated Leuba’s 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba’s 1914 survey to gauge belief among “greater” scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents." If available, it would be nice to see attendance for graduate degree holders by discipline, or even separately for professional vs academic programs.
Short summary: It's the arts majors who are the least religious. Nursing and finance are pretty close to tied for most religious. Pre-med, biology, neuroscience, and molecular biology are all much, much more likely to be religious than English majors.
Thanks, good start. Need something like this for grad programs. But several of the graphs (e.g., disaffiliation by major) do suggest applied/professional vs academic distinction even at the undergrad level.
Education is empowering. The more education people have, the more social capital they have. They vote at a higher rate, they are more involved in community organizations, they average larger, more diverse social networks. Religion is one of those networks. A while back I was talking with a friend who was then a local elected official, who said he regularly went to church, not because he necessarily believed in the religious tenets of his denomination, but because of the social benefits.
I can't find the graph now, but the question of whether the most educated attend church for less religious reasons is something that I've looked at.
Among weekly attendees, the share who say religion is very important to them doesn't really vary across the education spectrum.
Not saying that this refutes the idea completely but the "I only go for the social benefits" crowd just can't be that large
I should have been clearer. The point of the example wasn't to emphasize the relative importance of religious belief to the better educated, but the importance of social connection regardless of religious belief.
Ryan has written about the "nones" before and how a substantial number of them has dropped out of everything: School, work, church, etc. That seems to be the largest factor at work here. Government programs or family members have enabled this along with inexpensive sophisticated entertainment options (from drugs to games to videos) and the result is an increasingly large number of people who are not well socially, mentally, emotionally or financially. This does not describe all "nones" but an increasing number of them.
This sounds like given the option, the "nones" would rather drop out, and removing government programs or family members enabling this would only potentially coerce them back to an option they are not currently choosing when they have other options, no?
Coerce is a good word. If you are starving, you are highly motivated/coerced to work. This would not move them to church or education. It would just motivate them to work enough to eat so they can play their games, do their drugs or watch their screens. Because drugs are more expensive it seems to be a greater motivator for work than games and screens. I feel the pull of screens and games myself... I am on one now. Sigh.
A fun fact is that GLP-1s work on the brain's reward center, so providing cheap GLP-1s widely might be enough to disengage drug seeking behavior (and most addictive behaviors in general). Is it going to make people form couples and work? That's a harder challenger that hinges on stable, well paying work and affordable housing (per the governance.fyi substack and their robust citations on this matter).
Now we are talking about a real social science experiment! If the American Time Use Study would include a question about GLP-1 usage, that would be a gold mine.
Surprising, but makes sense: more educated people have developed the habit of "showing up" which includes showing up for class, for study sessions, for weekly worship. Sometimes we may wonder, "Was that a waste of my time?" but, for people of curiosity and the capacity to find applications, usually something "happens" that adds value to our experience.
Nice post thanks!
Going to church requires discipline, either self-discipline or communal discipline.
- People who go further in education, on average, have more self-discipline.
- People in denominations with communal discipline attend church the most regularly, even though they often lack education. The classic example is Jehovah's Witnesses.
I think that this is the one finding of Charles Murray's work that's really insightful. There's a class of people who can continue to thrive despite the lack of externally-imposed systems of meaning or social norms (i.e. without a culture). Then there's everyone else who can't. Church attendance is one metric for this, and there are many others.
Pretty tough comment section, where I see the non-attenders with less education are just too lazy to get up to maybe they are drug users. Maybe I'm more adjacent to some of these groups, so I'll try to throw out a theory that Ryan can debunk.
Educated folks statistically make more money. Life tends to go better for them, so a weekly celebration time could seem warranted. Less educated may find that life is harder, often due to factors beyond their control, so maybe worshiping a deity they may feel has let them down or doesn't exist doesn't make sense. And why would they want to spend time with people that by vast majority vote for politicians that aren't interested in addressing systemic issues that harm them, such as lack of access to affordable healthcare, housing, etc.
As the late, great Annie Dillard wrote, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Ryan, as you note, we wish that this choice were intentional--but we know that it mainly is not.
Whether through self-selection for folks who were already intentional in their choices, or whether through the reinforcing effect of employment or education on intentionality, those who are intentional about how they spend their days are more likely to be employed and/or go to school. I think this is why the church attendance gap between education levels collapses once we control for employment--and, as you and others have shown elsewhere, why attending church positively correlates with all sorts of other intentional social behaviors.
I noticed in the voiceover you said, and quickly corrected, “Protestant Worth Ethic” instead of ‘work ethic’. Without getting to Freudian about our verbal slips, “worth ethic” may be one of the better descriptors (unintentional or otherwise) I’ve heard, of what really lies at the core of our particular American flavor of workaholism, especially in a secular age. If my ‘self’ is buffered from the world, and that world is disenchanted anyway, what available means do I have to make/have value, contribute, or even exist, other than by what I do/produce?
And to the main focus of this piece, how does this affect people’s assumptions and posture towards regular church attendance? I wonder if the default framing is to view it as “doing/getting” something, an exchange, and if the ‘return’ of attending doesn’t justify the investment (or at least remain competitive with other options), folks will opt for the better deal.
No lectures on taking a break here, just wanted to highlight that on this substack, even the flubs are insightful!
“Protestant Worth Ethic”
HAHAHAH. I always "one take" these. So you get all the fun slip ups like that.
(Writing this after getting up at 4:30am to fly back from Connecticut only to teach a class at WashU this afternoon)
Thanks for taking the time to address this common question, and some of the spin-off questions that might arise! I found the insights about religiosity particularly interesting. I think that does suggest that the main difference is an impulse towards/against joining in, especially in institutional functions. As other comments have suggested, there's probably a feedback loop here: people who don't have much mental/emotional capacity to join in are less likely to get very deeply involved in education and religious institutions, and people who get deeply involved in them develop greater capacity to continue.
As per other people in the comments I wonder if this is a general disengagement factor. Are more educated people more likely to just be motivated to go out and be involved in more things - religiously related or not? I wonder if there's any way to see that from the data you have Ryan?
Not directly addressing that question, but if you haven’t read his post about those who are dropping out of everything, you might like it. I think there’s another one that specifically looks at civic engagement.
This is helpful; I'm very interested in the link between increasing demands on two-earner (2 FT) households and decreasing time spent/attendance at church. It seems to me the two have tracked - the average workweek for exempt employees is now something like 48 - 55 hrs/wk including commutes. In the 1970s, male employees often received extended lunches to take part in civic activities, including church administration. Today professionals are expected to respond to work messages 7 days/wk.
I asked you this question when interviewing you, and you answered with the stats in this report. Helpful stats, but not the same thing. Given that college-educated adults are more likely to be in church, how much has expanded work demands impacted participation in faith communities? Feel like I missed that connection in decades of sermons.
I'm thinking of all the people I know, including church goers and nones, highly educated and high school graduates. The primary difference i see is whether or not their parents were religious. I think everything else is almost irrelevant
"Grad degree" is a real mix of education, including it would seem many professional degrees that are unlikely to select for or instill lower levels of belief, unlike "academic" degrees especially in the natural sciences. Larson & Witham (1998) replicated a much earlier study showing the levels of disbelief in scientists. Their conclusion? "In 1996, we repeated Leuba’s 1914 survey and reported our results in Nature. We found little change from 1914 for American scientists generally, with 60.7% expressing disbelief or doubt. This year, we closely imitated the second phase of Leuba’s 1914 survey to gauge belief among “greater” scientists, and find the rate of belief lower than ever — a mere 7% of respondents." If available, it would be nice to see attendance for graduate degree holders by discipline, or even separately for professional vs academic programs.
Happily, Ryan's already got that covered:
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/finance-majors-go-to-church-english
Short summary: It's the arts majors who are the least religious. Nursing and finance are pretty close to tied for most religious. Pre-med, biology, neuroscience, and molecular biology are all much, much more likely to be religious than English majors.
Thanks, good start. Need something like this for grad programs. But several of the graphs (e.g., disaffiliation by major) do suggest applied/professional vs academic distinction even at the undergrad level.
That's sort of the dirty secret underlying the graduate degree category -- the vast majority are those with an MBA or a master's degree in education.
Those with a grad degree in philosophy or political science are just motivated by something much different than the more professional grad degrees.