|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
National SpotlightBy Terri Jo Ryan
The startling news that more Americans apparently believe in the
reality of hell (73 percent) than in heaven (63 percent) was just one
of many surprising conclusions reached this fall in What Americans Really Believe.
 The book--released by Baylor University's Institute for Studies of
Religion under lead author Rodney Stark with eighteen
colleagues--debuted in September 2008 at the annual conference of the
Religion Newswriters of America.
The book compiles the finding of surveys of more than sixteen hundred
English-speaking adults in autumn 2007 conducted by The Gallup
Organization--which also ran a 2005 poll for Baylor. The Baylor surveys
started in 2005 and will be conducted every two years through at least
2018, researchers noted. The questionnaire used for the study was
labeled "The Values and Beliefs of the American Public: A National
Study," and those taking the survey did not know it was for Baylor.
The book consists of twenty-three chapters with eighty annotated and
narrated tables, and it covers nearly every aspect of spiritual
expression in the United States. In addition to presenting the current
data, the book also compares data based on research stretching back, in
some cases, forty to sixty years ago.
For example, the book points out that, in asking "Do Americans believe
in life after death?" a 1957 Gallup poll found that 74 percent said
yes. A 1964 study conducted by Stark found 79 percent agreeing that
existence endures.
In Baylor's 2005 study, that number had increased to 84 percent--with
women, African-Americans, non-college educated people, Southerners, and
Republicans all more likely to believe in something beyond the grave.
So, who is headed to the realm of the eternal, according to the newest
survey? Researchers found that few Americans think heaven is very
exclusive, although fewer than 30 percent think that even the
irreligious will get entry into heaven.
Even the large numbers of people who offered "no opinion" on who will
or will not be admitted (between 21 and 39 percent, according to
religious identification) are a far cry from the old days, Stark said.
Earlier generations of Americans held very strong views that "narrow
was the way" to the Pearly Gates. For example, the 1954 Gallup poll
noted that slightly more than half of Americans held that people who
did not claim the lordship of Jesus Christ could not be saved.
Researchers in 2007 did not think to ask who is going to hell. "Maybe
next time,” Stark said.
The national media, in reporting some of the results of the most recent Baylor study, found and reported many tantalizing items:
- 20 percent of Americans have said they heard the voice of God speaking to them.
- 44 percent said they felt "called by God" to do something.
- 55 percent said they felt that they had been protected from harm by an angel.
- 23 percent said they had witnessed a miraculous healing.
- 16 percent said they themselves had experienced a miraculous healing.
- 8 percent said they spoke or prayed in tongues.
Spiritual and mystical experiences have been an overlooked aspect
of national religious life, said Stark, a sociology professor at
Baylor. The topic has been neglected by many researchers and ignored by
even leading clerics and seminary scholars.
But these kinds of spiritual experiences are so fundamental to American
faith life that two-thirds of those surveyed reported having at least
one such happening in their lives--results that Stark said "absolutely
knocked me down."
Other findings of the Baylor biennial study of faith included:
-
Congregants find that megachurches (defined as having at least 1,000
members) offer more personal worship and a greater sense of communion
than smaller churches--challenging the conventional wisdom that these
large congregations are too huge to provide a meaningful religious
experience.
-
Megachurch members were twice as likely to have close, personal friends
in their congregation as members of small churches. These believers
also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to their church,
such as attending services and tithing more often than small-church
members.
-
The more literally one reads the Bible, the less likely a white voter
is willing to cast his or her ballot for a racial minority.
Additionally, members of churches that are entirely white are more than
two times less likely to vote for a non-white candidate.
One aspect of the Baylor report that garnered little coverage in the
mainstream media, but much commenting in the blogosphere, were the
findings about atheists, agnostics, the irreligious, and the merely
unchurched. According to the study, 31 percent of people who never
attend worship services expressed strong belief in such things as
Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, advanced civilizations like
Atlantis, haunted houses, and the possibility of communicating with the
dead. Only 8 percent of people who attend a house of worship more than
once a week shared similar beliefs. "Sunday school seems to innoculate
you against such nonsense," Stark said.
Stark said that the current group of findings highlights "The Godless
revolution that never happened." Although the New Atheist movement in
recent years--led by writers Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and
Sam Harris--has generated a lot of buzz on the topic, the numbers don't
show any dramatic increase in their adherents.
The percentage of Americans who say they do not believe in God has
consistently hovered around 4 percent for more than sixty years, Baylor
researchers found. It doesn't grow, Stark said, because irreligiosity
is not transmitted from parent to child: most children from such
households grow up to join churches, often conservative ones.
Who are these atheists? Stark said they are overwhelming white, male,
liberal ex-protestants of any age who have attended college. Stark
described them as "a whole group of little PhDs running around saying
'God is dead.' Their books make them sound desperate, and they should
be."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
.jpg)
