Social Indicators and Religious Indicators

Abstract

Building on the work of the United Methodist Task Force on Religious Indicators, this paper reviews developments in the field of social indicators and makes some suggestions for religion. In the area of social indicators, brief mention is made of the work of NASA, the Russell Sage Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, the Social Science Research Council, and several federal agencies, concluding with funding by the National Science Foundation of several research projects. Attention is called to a new interest in the study of religion and to developments in organized religion which may favor work on religious indicators. A progress report on the work of the task force includes a review of several unpublished papers dealing with such topics as social indicators of religion, religious institutions, interfaith indicators, black church, national sample data, psychological factors, and theoretical considerations. Some specific suggestions are made looking toward more adequate religious indicators in the 1970's. It is altogether fitting that this topic be treated in a lecture in honor of H. Paul Douglass. His work in the Interchurch World Movement, the Institute of Social and Religious Research, and the National Council of Churches involved major pioneer efforts to identify, collect, and interpret statistical data about organized religion. The 48 research projects published in 78 volumes and summarized in a single work (Douglass and Brunner, 1935) stand as historical benchmark material for those who would develop more adequate religious indicators in the 1970's. During the 1960's, the concerns of a few social scientists and policy makers grew into, what may be called a social indicators "movement." In the fall of 1971, a Task Force on Religious Indicators' was set up by an agency of The United Methodist Church. The purposes of this paper are to review briefly some of the developments in the area of social indicators and to suggest some implications for religious indicators and for a religious report in the 1970's.