Mark Chaves American Religion: Contemporary Trends (review)

Abstract

American Religion: Contemporary Trends Peter Heinegg This handy summary of the best available data on patterns of religious thought and behavior in the United States from roughly 1972 to 2008 is little short of indispensable for anyone who wants to understand or comment sensibly on the most pious country in the First World. Chaves is a triple‐threat professor of Sociology, Religion, and Divinity at Duke, and he has mined vast amounts of material from the University of Chicago's GSS (General Social Survey), which has examined the lives of American adults at least every other year since 1972. His broadest finding sounds rather unsexy: Over that stretch of time, we as a nation have kept up our unusually high degree of attachment to, and involvement in, religion. But within that fairly steady flow run all sorts of interesting currents, some which bid fair to make dramatic waves. First of all, the country is getting more religiously diverse (like society as a whole). Believers are more accepting of outsiders, including non‐believers. From 1998 to 2006–7, the percentage of predominantly white congregations with at least some black members went from 27 to 36. For Hispanics, the percentage rose from 24 to 32 and for Asians from 17 to 20—the first of many slowly‐but‐surely trends that Chaves calls attention to. Protestants are on their way to being a religious minority for the first time in our history; and interdenominational marriages are increasing even faster than inter‐racial ones. Seventy‐five percent of all Americans now agree that religions other than their own also “offer a true path to God,” and people with no religion (though often they are not atheists) are the fastest growing individual group. Many others now describe themselves as “spiritual, but not religious” (from 11 to 18% among young people over the last 10 years measured), even if it is hard to say exactly what that means. Americans still believe in heaven (86%) and hell (73%) about as much as they did in the 1970s; but belief in the literal inerrancy of the Bible has taken a hit, presumably because of more college education. Believers still believe, but they are “less tolerant of intense religiosity of any sort” (the fundamentalist carryings‐on parodied in Bill Maher's Religulous?). Percentages of traditional faith are either steady or slightly declining, with the single exception of belief in life after death. (Most stunningly, the percentage of Jews who say they believe in the afterlife has soared over the 36‐year period from 20 to 63. Go figure.) Forty percent of Americans declare that they go to church services every week, but the real number is closer to 25, which is roughly where it is been for some time. Yet there is been a marked drop in involvement with other church activities (down about a third since the 1990s). More Protestant congregations are breaking free from their denomination (one of five churchgoers is now an “independent,” a spurt of over 25% in less than 10 years). Congregations are using the Internet a lot more; services are more informal and jazzed up, with drums, jumping and shouting, overhead projectors, raising of hands, applause, and cries of “Amen!”; congregants are older (aging more quickly than the population as a whole), richer, better educated, and attending ever‐larger churches (not just megachurches)—the latter a process known as “increasing concentration.” Along with the mounting suspicion of other professionals such as lawyers, politicians, business executives, and bankers, the perceived desirability of a clerical career has plummeted. From 1966 to 2008, the number of college freshmen headed to the ministry dropped from 10 to 4 per 1000. Interest has plunged most markedly among students who take (and do well on) the Graduate Record Examinations (GREs)—down to zero among winners of Rhodes scholarships—and the performance of seminarians on that test has slipped, although women consistently outscore their male counterparts. The clergy, especially Catholics and liberal Protestants, are also aging faster than the American population as a whole. Women are entering seminaries at a much higher rate; currently they make up around 31% of the whole (as compared with 5% in 1972), which...