Particularly with agnostics, it may be worth noting the wording of “Which of the following comes closest to expressing what you believe about God?” An agnostic who does not know if God exists and does not know if there is a way to find out will have to pick an option that doesn’t exactly express their beliefs. Exactly which imperfect option they pick could depend on any number of fuzzy personal factors.
Interesting thought about Threads! I have loved being on Threads and have found incredible Christian thinkers and community on there. But you’re right, some very anti-religion thinkers come out of the woodwork real quick and can’t resist commenting on things that really don’t even pertain to them. It’s an interesting dichotomy for sure, but I still enjoy the Christian conversations and community that has been active (variety of different types of Christian thought too).
I think part of that is how Threads algorithm works - it feels like they suggest things in your feed that is contrary to your views. If you comment on something once your whole feed gets flooded with that sort of content. In my feed, I see a lot of posts from religious people that disparage atheists because Threads thinks it’s a good way to generate engagement/clicks.
Unfortunately I think it is essential to the business model - social media is designed to be as addictive as possible by feeding into rage/hate. I think you see this sort of thing in news media as well. They aren’t focused on reporting the news so much as they are generating content related to the news that encourages consistent viewership.
Re: "For what it’s worth, I am fairly convinced that there are major problems with the 2021 sample of the GSS that relate to how the survey was conducted that picked up a larger share of non-religious Americans. I have a lot more confidence in that 2022 number. It makes sense from a trend line perspective."
I'd agree... and yet when you address the "other-side," i.e., the religious Americans (in all three dimensions), you don't express a similar concern about how the survey was conducted. As I look at the trend line for the 3-D religious Americans, it sure looks plausible: I'd agree with your conclusion.
Could you explain— or link to?— what you perceive as the "major problems" with the 2021 GSS?
This is helpful! I want to follow up on my PhD research, but am wondering about the mode effects related to both web-based surveys and using Zoom for interviews. Thanks.
Fascinating. I wonder if the ease of Americans switching between different denominations impacts the nones. As for myself if asked if believe in God my answer would depend. I don't believe in an omnipotent God but I do think that there is some spiritual force out there that is beyond our materialist understanding. I think that religious founders can sometime pierce this veil but our words fail us.
Interesting data! but I wonder if these data really captures how belief in God can change overtime especially with people who have ambivalent feelings toward the existence of (a) God and show a variation between religiousity and periods of disbelief. Any info on that?
In regards to which of the 3 B's is most important, I would say that Belief is the most important from the standpoint of the various religions, but Belief will conform to Behavior overwhelmingly. So, for example, if a person is a weekly attender, they'll probably have strong belief. If they stop attending, they may claim strong belief for longer than they really do until their non-practicing erodes their sense of belief.
I also would like to see what trends there might be per faith on the Belief and Belonging. This might be harder to identify, since not all faiths require weekly attendance or have similar enough beliefs (beyond theism vs atheism) for easy comparisons...
As for the nature of Threads, I think part of your impression of the user base being "anti-religious" is that it is primarily delivering you content based on the algorithm and it makes it pretty difficult to go with just your curated list of people. Thus, the "any engagement is engagement" factors come in and your content gets delivered to just as many people that disagree with you no matter what you say as people that are following your content on purpose. So to blame the platform for that is fair, but to say the user-based is anti-religious is jumping to conclusions.
Great post! As far as I know, there’s no broadly accepted definition of religion. Is Buddhism a religion? How about the term “civil religion?” Are we participating is religion when we watch fireworks on the 4th of July? What about a non-believing, non-behaving, non-belonging citizen of Saudi Arabia, a country governed by Sharia law? Is that person, in some sense, participating in “religion?”
When people make broad statements about religion, they seem to think everyone shares their understanding of the term. Life is more complicated.
I think Reddit has to be the least religious social media platform from my experience. Of course it is somewhat unique in that there are subreddits to divide people into groups of similar people, but even on the main subreddits it seems there is a strong anti-religion bias. Threads seems to be a left leaning Twitter, which makes sense considering what Musk has done to Twitter. I follow a variety of people on the religious spectrum on Threads and do see a range of views that I don’t quite see on Reddit, but that’s just my personal experience.
As far as the 3 B’s go, do you think that these hold the same weight in terms of determining religiosity or would you rank these in terms of importance? Personally I would say belief is the most important, followed by belonging and then behavior. Belief seems to be the most personal and therefore least affected by outside factors. Belonging and behavior can be influenced by family/community in a way that contradicts personal beliefs (thinking of how I attended mass events after I stopped believing). Curious what others think, though.
I think it’s that extra layer of anonymity with Reddit - people feel more willing to attack others knowing there are even fewer possible consequences. I will say there are conservative spaces on Reddit as well and they tend to police themselves very heavily to counteract the inquisitorial tendency you point to.
Interesting thoughts on the three B’s - specifically intrinsic vs extrinsic. Intrinsic vs extrinsic religiosity is actually a really good way to think about it - I would say when the two align ie. a non-attending atheist you have a clear view of their religiosity. When they do not align there is more investigation that needs to be done. Is the weekly attending atheist attending because they see value in mass, because they fear how their community would view them if they did not attend, or something else?
Your example of the atheist who attends mass weekly made me wonder: is there a meaningful difference between a non-believing weekly attender who IDs as Christian vs a non-believing weekly attender who IDs as Atheist?
And if so, I wonder if that difference is larger or smaller as the difference between a non-believing, Atheist-identifying weekly attender and a a non-believing, Atheist-ID never attender (and, if the distance between those two is similar/different to that between a non-believing, Christian-ID weekly attender vs non-believing, Christian-ID never attender).
Or, taking belief, how does the difference between a non-believing, weekly-attending Christian and a certain-of-God, weekly attending Christian compare to those other matchups. I tend to think those two hypothetical people might be *more* different than a believing vs non-believing never attender Christian. But I think the biggest difference between believing and non-believing would be among never-attending Atheists, just because being an Atheist who is certain that God exists is so unlikely.
I'm not sure I have a good sense of this, myself (and I also recognize the limits to this exercise since I'm not sure we can sum up differences of faith or experience this neatly) but I would be curious what others think!
Yes, this strikes me as a good breakdown. I would maybe add one more: people who attend for ethnic/cultural reasons rather than belief. This could overlap with #2 on your list but in my experience these people aren't necessarily reluctant--they just view religious identity as referring more to background than belief.
When I read Tyler's initial question about which B is most important, my first instinct was behavior--I come from a Plain church tradition that puts more emphasis than some on the practical aspects of Christian life (not as a mechanism for salvation, but as ways that a person lives/shows/experiences faith) so that's perhaps biasing my answer here. But, reading through your list here has made me think about how important belief is to being religious (at least in my opinion). The people on this list have 2/3 Bs (most of them - I could imagine some in #2 and 4 who wouldn't ID as Christian on a survey) and yet they don't sound that religious to me because they lack the belief component. Of course that's just my opinion, but it's all I have to offer! :)
The Three B's are measurable by surveys. And on Yom Kippur morning, our Holiest assigned time, there are a lot of tushes in those pews, a lot of pledges of significant dinero for Israel Bonds and the local synagogues, and a Torah reading that describes the most solemn of rituals performed annually by the High Priest. But our sages had the wisdom to question whether that is really religiosity. For the prophetic portion that follows the Torah reading they chose one of Isaiah's more iconoclastic chapters. He acknowledges the people who observe the Sabbath each week but he sets the bar a little higher. He takes the position that you cannot really believe in a God as King of the Universe if your behavior towards other people does not measure up to multiple commandments that we treat people kindly. He notes in the text leaving widows and orphans to fend for themselves or cutting corners on tithing to support communal projects. The sages were familiar with the contents of the Bible's OT array of Prophetic books and chose that chapter for a reason. Behavior is a lot more than just showing up. Belief is a lot more than faith in a deity. Belonging is a lot more than standing when everyone stands and sitting when everyone sits or paying membership dues. No doubt the child molesting clergymen and the advocates for antebellum slavery who cited a Biblical mandate for slavery from the story of Ham after recovery from The Flood checked off each of their Three B's as fulfilled.
One of my favorite TV interviewers, the late Rabbi Mark Golub z'l, founder of Jewish Broadcasting Service, would invariably ask his distinguished Orthodox guests if they every had to deal with observant men who were personally schmucks. They all did. To this day, we have congregations known teasingly as Beth Sodom's. My Jewish organizations do not have a monopoly on this. The Epistles of the New Testament and portions of The Gospels also cite gaps between meticulous observance and behavior that is a blight on interpersonal conduct.
Since Ryan's professional mission, however, is to analyze measurements that others have taken, or maybe take some of his own, he is stuck with some of the limitations and assigned language. The essence of my religion, and integral to all the other religions, is how you treat people in the honorable and sensitive ways that all religious texts mandate. It is much harder to measure this, but Isaiah, Paul, the Buddha, and Mohammed all knew and described their religions as based on deferential behavior, of which ritual was one component but not an exclusive component.
With the None-None-None's, the number is reduced quite a bit, so we'd expect it to jump around more year to year. I should know about that more clearly. If we sampled NNN's and had 10 each year and looked at the male percentage, it would jump from year to year randomly. The Survey samples everyone. If it had 100 people each year and a population average of 5% NNN, would we expect to see 10% one year? A good test question that I will not answer here.
Particularly with agnostics, it may be worth noting the wording of “Which of the following comes closest to expressing what you believe about God?” An agnostic who does not know if God exists and does not know if there is a way to find out will have to pick an option that doesn’t exactly express their beliefs. Exactly which imperfect option they pick could depend on any number of fuzzy personal factors.
Interesting thought about Threads! I have loved being on Threads and have found incredible Christian thinkers and community on there. But you’re right, some very anti-religion thinkers come out of the woodwork real quick and can’t resist commenting on things that really don’t even pertain to them. It’s an interesting dichotomy for sure, but I still enjoy the Christian conversations and community that has been active (variety of different types of Christian thought too).
I think part of that is how Threads algorithm works - it feels like they suggest things in your feed that is contrary to your views. If you comment on something once your whole feed gets flooded with that sort of content. In my feed, I see a lot of posts from religious people that disparage atheists because Threads thinks it’s a good way to generate engagement/clicks.
Gotta love the algorithms that always want to emphasize division and feuds.. 🫠
Unfortunately I think it is essential to the business model - social media is designed to be as addictive as possible by feeding into rage/hate. I think you see this sort of thing in news media as well. They aren’t focused on reporting the news so much as they are generating content related to the news that encourages consistent viewership.
Re: "For what it’s worth, I am fairly convinced that there are major problems with the 2021 sample of the GSS that relate to how the survey was conducted that picked up a larger share of non-religious Americans. I have a lot more confidence in that 2022 number. It makes sense from a trend line perspective."
I'd agree... and yet when you address the "other-side," i.e., the religious Americans (in all three dimensions), you don't express a similar concern about how the survey was conducted. As I look at the trend line for the 3-D religious Americans, it sure looks plausible: I'd agree with your conclusion.
Could you explain— or link to?— what you perceive as the "major problems" with the 2021 GSS?
Yup. This paper is the one: https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article-abstract/85/4/429/7640314
This is helpful! I want to follow up on my PhD research, but am wondering about the mode effects related to both web-based surveys and using Zoom for interviews. Thanks.
Fascinating. I wonder if the ease of Americans switching between different denominations impacts the nones. As for myself if asked if believe in God my answer would depend. I don't believe in an omnipotent God but I do think that there is some spiritual force out there that is beyond our materialist understanding. I think that religious founders can sometime pierce this veil but our words fail us.
Interesting data! but I wonder if these data really captures how belief in God can change overtime especially with people who have ambivalent feelings toward the existence of (a) God and show a variation between religiousity and periods of disbelief. Any info on that?
In regards to which of the 3 B's is most important, I would say that Belief is the most important from the standpoint of the various religions, but Belief will conform to Behavior overwhelmingly. So, for example, if a person is a weekly attender, they'll probably have strong belief. If they stop attending, they may claim strong belief for longer than they really do until their non-practicing erodes their sense of belief.
I also would like to see what trends there might be per faith on the Belief and Belonging. This might be harder to identify, since not all faiths require weekly attendance or have similar enough beliefs (beyond theism vs atheism) for easy comparisons...
Thanks for reading this carefully for us.
As for the nature of Threads, I think part of your impression of the user base being "anti-religious" is that it is primarily delivering you content based on the algorithm and it makes it pretty difficult to go with just your curated list of people. Thus, the "any engagement is engagement" factors come in and your content gets delivered to just as many people that disagree with you no matter what you say as people that are following your content on purpose. So to blame the platform for that is fair, but to say the user-based is anti-religious is jumping to conclusions.
Great post! As far as I know, there’s no broadly accepted definition of religion. Is Buddhism a religion? How about the term “civil religion?” Are we participating is religion when we watch fireworks on the 4th of July? What about a non-believing, non-behaving, non-belonging citizen of Saudi Arabia, a country governed by Sharia law? Is that person, in some sense, participating in “religion?”
When people make broad statements about religion, they seem to think everyone shares their understanding of the term. Life is more complicated.
"I've Googled an answer and come across an article I've written and forgotten about"
I feel seen by this
I think Reddit has to be the least religious social media platform from my experience. Of course it is somewhat unique in that there are subreddits to divide people into groups of similar people, but even on the main subreddits it seems there is a strong anti-religion bias. Threads seems to be a left leaning Twitter, which makes sense considering what Musk has done to Twitter. I follow a variety of people on the religious spectrum on Threads and do see a range of views that I don’t quite see on Reddit, but that’s just my personal experience.
As far as the 3 B’s go, do you think that these hold the same weight in terms of determining religiosity or would you rank these in terms of importance? Personally I would say belief is the most important, followed by belonging and then behavior. Belief seems to be the most personal and therefore least affected by outside factors. Belonging and behavior can be influenced by family/community in a way that contradicts personal beliefs (thinking of how I attended mass events after I stopped believing). Curious what others think, though.
I think it’s that extra layer of anonymity with Reddit - people feel more willing to attack others knowing there are even fewer possible consequences. I will say there are conservative spaces on Reddit as well and they tend to police themselves very heavily to counteract the inquisitorial tendency you point to.
Interesting thoughts on the three B’s - specifically intrinsic vs extrinsic. Intrinsic vs extrinsic religiosity is actually a really good way to think about it - I would say when the two align ie. a non-attending atheist you have a clear view of their religiosity. When they do not align there is more investigation that needs to be done. Is the weekly attending atheist attending because they see value in mass, because they fear how their community would view them if they did not attend, or something else?
Your example of the atheist who attends mass weekly made me wonder: is there a meaningful difference between a non-believing weekly attender who IDs as Christian vs a non-believing weekly attender who IDs as Atheist?
And if so, I wonder if that difference is larger or smaller as the difference between a non-believing, Atheist-identifying weekly attender and a a non-believing, Atheist-ID never attender (and, if the distance between those two is similar/different to that between a non-believing, Christian-ID weekly attender vs non-believing, Christian-ID never attender).
Or, taking belief, how does the difference between a non-believing, weekly-attending Christian and a certain-of-God, weekly attending Christian compare to those other matchups. I tend to think those two hypothetical people might be *more* different than a believing vs non-believing never attender Christian. But I think the biggest difference between believing and non-believing would be among never-attending Atheists, just because being an Atheist who is certain that God exists is so unlikely.
I'm not sure I have a good sense of this, myself (and I also recognize the limits to this exercise since I'm not sure we can sum up differences of faith or experience this neatly) but I would be curious what others think!
Yes, this strikes me as a good breakdown. I would maybe add one more: people who attend for ethnic/cultural reasons rather than belief. This could overlap with #2 on your list but in my experience these people aren't necessarily reluctant--they just view religious identity as referring more to background than belief.
When I read Tyler's initial question about which B is most important, my first instinct was behavior--I come from a Plain church tradition that puts more emphasis than some on the practical aspects of Christian life (not as a mechanism for salvation, but as ways that a person lives/shows/experiences faith) so that's perhaps biasing my answer here. But, reading through your list here has made me think about how important belief is to being religious (at least in my opinion). The people on this list have 2/3 Bs (most of them - I could imagine some in #2 and 4 who wouldn't ID as Christian on a survey) and yet they don't sound that religious to me because they lack the belief component. Of course that's just my opinion, but it's all I have to offer! :)
The Three B's are measurable by surveys. And on Yom Kippur morning, our Holiest assigned time, there are a lot of tushes in those pews, a lot of pledges of significant dinero for Israel Bonds and the local synagogues, and a Torah reading that describes the most solemn of rituals performed annually by the High Priest. But our sages had the wisdom to question whether that is really religiosity. For the prophetic portion that follows the Torah reading they chose one of Isaiah's more iconoclastic chapters. He acknowledges the people who observe the Sabbath each week but he sets the bar a little higher. He takes the position that you cannot really believe in a God as King of the Universe if your behavior towards other people does not measure up to multiple commandments that we treat people kindly. He notes in the text leaving widows and orphans to fend for themselves or cutting corners on tithing to support communal projects. The sages were familiar with the contents of the Bible's OT array of Prophetic books and chose that chapter for a reason. Behavior is a lot more than just showing up. Belief is a lot more than faith in a deity. Belonging is a lot more than standing when everyone stands and sitting when everyone sits or paying membership dues. No doubt the child molesting clergymen and the advocates for antebellum slavery who cited a Biblical mandate for slavery from the story of Ham after recovery from The Flood checked off each of their Three B's as fulfilled.
One of my favorite TV interviewers, the late Rabbi Mark Golub z'l, founder of Jewish Broadcasting Service, would invariably ask his distinguished Orthodox guests if they every had to deal with observant men who were personally schmucks. They all did. To this day, we have congregations known teasingly as Beth Sodom's. My Jewish organizations do not have a monopoly on this. The Epistles of the New Testament and portions of The Gospels also cite gaps between meticulous observance and behavior that is a blight on interpersonal conduct.
Since Ryan's professional mission, however, is to analyze measurements that others have taken, or maybe take some of his own, he is stuck with some of the limitations and assigned language. The essence of my religion, and integral to all the other religions, is how you treat people in the honorable and sensitive ways that all religious texts mandate. It is much harder to measure this, but Isaiah, Paul, the Buddha, and Mohammed all knew and described their religions as based on deferential behavior, of which ritual was one component but not an exclusive component.
One of your best.
With the None-None-None's, the number is reduced quite a bit, so we'd expect it to jump around more year to year. I should know about that more clearly. If we sampled NNN's and had 10 each year and looked at the male percentage, it would jump from year to year randomly. The Survey samples everyone. If it had 100 people each year and a population average of 5% NNN, would we expect to see 10% one year? A good test question that I will not answer here.