Academic Discipline as Predictive of Faculty Religiosity

Abstract

Data from a probability sample of a state university faculty are analyzed to determine whether academic discipline is predictive of faculty religiosity. Wide variations observed on four of Glock's proposed dimensions of religiosity are compared to the scientist-nonscientist dichotomy of fields and to distance from a construct delineated in the paper. scientist-nonscientist scheme is not predictive of religiosity scores. Scholarly distance from religion successfully orders the scores. A relationship between scholarly distance from religion and religiosity seems to be interpreted partly by the effect of scholarly distance from religion on cognitive differentiation of religion and on social support for religiosity, especially the former. Selectivity of discipline and present religiosity appear to be based on childhood religious background, but controlling for childhood religiosity does not alter the original relationships greatly. D iscussions of religion and the American university usually dwell on the questions of possible conflict between science and religion and whether a person can adhere to traditional religion and still be an intellectual.1 While the early approach to these issues was highly polemical,2 recent studies concentrate on the more analytical problem of discovering conditions under which persons are more or less likely to participate in religion. These investigations typically compare academicians with nonacademicians to test the hypothesis that involvement in higher education is predictive of irreligiosity.3 present study seeks to investigate variations amiong academicians rather than to make gross comparisons of collegians with noncampus persons. Here the specific problem involves a search for conditions associated with academia under which academicians themselves are more or less likely to be religious. Reliable data on this question are relatively scarce. few relevant studies to date tend to concentrate on type of school (parochial or secular) and quality of undergraduate and graduate education.4 variable with which this paper deals is *The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Washington University Computing Facility through its National Science Foundation Grant G-22296, the assistance of the Faculty Research Committee of the University of Missouri at St. Louis in the form of a Summer Research Fellowship and a Research Grant, and the Experimental Study of and Society, Raleigh, North Carolina, operating under a grant from the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. 1 Rodney Stark, On the Incompatibility of and Science: A Survey of American Graduate Students, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 3 (Fall 1963), pp. 3-20; Andrew M. Greeley, The Religious Behavior of Graduate Students, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 5 (Fall 1965), pp. 34-40, Religion and the Intellectuals, Partisan Review (PR Series #3, 1950); and Fred Thalheimer, Continuity and Change in Religiosity: A Study of Academicians, Pacific Sociological Reviezv, 8 (Fall 1965), pp. 101-108. 2 Leuba, for example, a psychologist who first studied the problem empirically in 1914, felt that no self-respecting scholar would be involved in traditional religion, an orientation which unfortunately shows rather clearly in his analysis of data. See James H. Leuba, Belief in God and Immortality (Boston: Sherman, French & Co., 1916), esp. p. 213 et passim. For general discussions of the controversy, see A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (New York: Dover Press, 1960); and Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966). 3 For a summary of the basic issues involved in this research, see Thalheimer, loc. cit. 4 Supra, footnote 1. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.131 on Sat, 15 Oct 2016 04:22:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms