Sightings

Confidence in Religion Drops

by Martin E. Marty

Monday | April 22 2013

Three  ¢â‚¬Å“War College ¢â‚¬  scholars, in the Spring 2013 issue of Daedalus (see reference), discuss some of the reasons why the military wins more confidence than other American institutions. The military is not our subject; those authors may be biased because of their vocation and location, and we may lack full confidence in Harris and Gallup and Pew and other measurers of opinion. Still, even if statistics strung out in editorials can weary the eye, they do tell us something. In our case, the “War College” authors drew on a Harris poll conducted two years ago. Let’s look at what this poll turned up about  ¢â‚¬Å“Organized Religion ¢â‚¬  to see if there are insights or lessons for those who care about religion in American life.

In the Harris poll, 57% of those questioned had  ¢â‚¬Å“a great deal of confidence ¢â‚¬  in the military, and only 10% had hardly any.  ¢â‚¬Å“Small business ¢â‚¬  came in second, while  ¢â‚¬Å“major companies, ¢â‚¬   ¢â‚¬Å“Law firms, ¢â‚¬   ¢â‚¬Å“The press, ¢â‚¬   ¢â‚¬Å“Wall Street ¢â‚¬  and  ¢â‚¬Å“Congress ¢â‚¬  evoked least confidence; they came in twelfth to fifteenth. We keep our eye on  ¢â‚¬Å“Organized Religion ¢â‚¬  which came in sixth. As for  ¢â‚¬Å“leaders in institutions, ¢â‚¬  the military rated highest, while religious leaders attracted  ¢â‚¬Å“a great deal of confidence ¢â‚¬  among 22%. But here ¢â‚¬â„¢s a slide: in 1966 religious institutions inspired high confidence among 41% of the people, that  ¢â‚¬Å“high ¢â‚¬  figure dropped to 22% by 1980, near where it still hovers today.

These instruments are not sufficiently fine-tuned to be used to ascertain what factors contributed to declines in confidence shown the favored or the unfavored. So one cannot find here what the usually highlighted features in each decline were. Look elsewhere to see what  ¢â‚¬Å“clergy abuse ¢â‚¬  has done to inspire loss of confidence. We can speculate about other contributors: mass media focus on frailty, some financial criminality or sloppiness, sharpening suspicion among  ¢â‚¬Å“nones ¢â‚¬  and  ¢â‚¬Å“secularists ¢â‚¬  and  ¢â‚¬Å“drop-outs, ¢â‚¬  distorted vision among the cultured observers, etc.

What religious leaders and members should take from surveys like this is a renewed awareness of the fact that publics are watching. True, some people are remote from the exercises of life in religious institutions and thus their conclusions are born of ignorance. Some may want to find reasons to distance themselves from the efforts and effects of  ¢â‚¬Å“organized religion. ¢â‚¬  View it negatively, or draw only on the observations and conclusions of those who focus on the weaknesses and wrongs of religious institutions, and your case is made. The much-noticed  ¢â‚¬Å“social media ¢â‚¬  certainly contribute, because images mediated through them are unmonitored, unfiltered, undisciplined, and thus, in their  ¢â‚¬Å“raw ¢â‚¬  form they can spread negative images more readily than they can positives.

It is much more difficult to project images of what goes on among serious seekers, sacrificial givers and workers, agents of charity or quiet care for others, than it is to feature scandalous public expressions. All this does not mean that religious institutions simply have to do better jobs of public relations, though most of them could certainly do better then they characteristically do now. The point of these comparisons is this: there is no place to hide. Religious institutions cannot be at home in the public sphere to serve in it and expect to be given special treatment, if they ever could. There is no reason to expect that they can run for cover now and go unnoticed. Christians among them cite words of Jesus:  ¢â‚¬Å“Woe to you if all speak well of you. ¢â‚¬  They evidently don ¢â‚¬â„¢t have to worry as much about  ¢â‚¬Å“woe ¢â‚¬  as do military leaders, because so few people these years speak well of them and their institutions.

Reference

Andrew Hill, Leonard Wong, and Stephen Gerras,  ¢â‚¬Å“The Origins & Lessons of Public Confidence in the Military, ¢â‚¬  Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring 2013.

Author Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

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The Infidel and the Indifferent

by Martin E. Marty

Monday | April 29 2013

Fifty-two years ago ¢â‚¬”can it be? ¢â‚¬”I published The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion, and have been tracking  ¢â‚¬Å“the infidel ¢â‚¬  ever since. Whether he or she was dubbed  ¢â‚¬Å“free-thinker, ¢â‚¬   ¢â‚¬Å“agnostic, ¢â‚¬â„¢  ¢â‚¬Å“atheist, ¢â‚¬   ¢â‚¬Å“secularist ¢â‚¬  or many things more, the infidel thrived on the reaction of the  ¢â‚¬Å“religious ¢â‚¬  majority. By publishing date in 1961, the infidel had gone off center stage, and scholarly colleagues and I had to ponder what  ¢â‚¬Å“the religiofication ¢â‚¬  (as scholar Eric Hoffer called it) of American culture would mean. Infidels not only  ¢â‚¬Å“went, ¢â‚¬  from time to time, they  ¢â‚¬Å“came. ¢â‚¬  Again.

In recent years opinion surveys, pop culture, and scholarly literature have discovered the unmistakable presence of the current round of  ¢â‚¬Å“infidels. ¢â‚¬  The term of choice currently is  ¢â‚¬Å“the religiously unaffiliated, ¢â‚¬  a very relaxed term which suggests that  ¢â‚¬Å“religion ¢â‚¬ = ¢â‚¬ affiliation. ¢â‚¬  Unsatisfied with that big-tent designation, opinion surveyors have helpfully studied and redefined sub-groups in the category. One of the most popular sources finds and names three sub-categories. The American Values Survey (see source at end of this column) looked at the 19% of the population which was  ¢â‚¬Å“unaffiliated ¢â‚¬  and found that almost one-fourth of these were  ¢â‚¬Å“unattached believers, ¢â‚¬  over one-third were  ¢â‚¬Å“self-identified atheists and agnostics, ¢â‚¬  and almost forty percent were simply (well, sometimes maybe complexly)  ¢â‚¬Å“unaffiliated secular Americans, ¢â‚¬  not  ¢â‚¬Å“secularists. ¢â‚¬ 

Columnists like authors of Sightings mine these surveys and use their findings to assess spiritual life in today ¢â‚¬â„¢s America, often as a step in comparing these to other situations around the globe, especially in the southern world ¢â‚¬”Africa, Latin America, and the Asian sub-continent ¢â‚¬”where religious affiliation grows. The most recent mining was by Daniel Cox in the Huffington Post (April 24, see source). Cox and others turned the question into one of class, and dozens of posts were written by people who took it from there.

Needless to say, connecting  ¢â‚¬Å“class ¢â‚¬  with affiliation or religious involvement/ non-involvement is difficult, as Cox himself recognizes. He and other surveyors and commentators have to make guesses or pursue correlations to other surveys to do some identifying, especially of the  ¢â‚¬Å“atheist and agnostic ¢â‚¬  minority. Many private post-ers, as is often the case on the internet, are not given to nuance or dialogue. They blast. Some are sure that the number of agnostics and atheists has grown because the population of the higher-educated camp has grown, and ¢â‚¬”doesn ¢â‚¬â„¢t everyone know? ¢â‚¬”higher education purges ignorance. Thus the ranks of the unbelievers grow. Cox and the authors of the American Values Survey do share the understanding that higher education, as now pursued, does cut into the ranks of believers. But they and others do not find simple and consistent correlations, and they adduce other evidences for- and against- religious belief and practice in a complex culture. In our current cultural episode, debates will increase.

Were I an opinion surveyor, I ¢â‚¬â„¢d try to assess the degree to which something as simple as  ¢â‚¬Å“indifference ¢â‚¬  to theological, religious, philosophical, and communal claims and commitments prevails. Thoughtful religious leaders have to work to promote affiliation and commitment as they seek and sometimes find company among the non-religious who would stir interest in the deeper things of life. This is a mission for them in a time of when gloss is favored in many sub-cultures.

References:

2012 American Values Survey.  ¢â‚¬Å“ ¢â‚¬â„¢Nones ¢â‚¬â„¢ on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation, ¢â‚¬  http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx, (accessed 27 April 2013).

Cox, Daniel.  ¢â‚¬Å“Is Atheism Only for the Upper Class? Socioeconomic Differences Among the Religiously Unaffiliated.” Huffington Post, April 24, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-cox/is-atheism-only-for-the-upper-class-socioeconomic-differences-among-the-religiously-unaffiliated_b_3146894.html?utm_hp_ref=religion.

Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Author Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.