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Conversations: Rodney Stark

Last week, we reviewed a recent book by Baylor University sociologist Rodney Stark, America’s Blessings. In the book, Stark (left) critiques public opinion surveys that purport to show the decline of religion in America and an increase in Americans without a religious affiliation, the so-called “Nones.” This week, Stark kindly agrees to answer some questions. He talks about church attendance in America, now at an all-time high; the surprisingly traditional beliefs of the Nones; and the reasons why the media and academy often ignore the socially beneficial effects of religion–lower crime rates, for example. He also explains why regular church goers may report greater satisfaction in their marriages, and talks about his future projects.

CLR Forum: Rod, we’ve heard a great deal in the past year about the rise of the “Nones.” According to reports, about 20% of Americans, the highest percentage ever, tell surveyors that they have no religious affiliation. Yet in America’s Blessings you note that 70% of Americans, also the highest percentage in our history, belong to religious congregations. What explains these two, apparently contradictory, developments?

Stark: First of all, few of the “Nones” aren’t religious.  Most of them even pray. What they mean when they say “None” is that they do not belong to a specific church. As for the increase in their numbers over the past 20 years, that probably is mostly caused by the decline in the percentage of Americans willing to take part in a survey. Those who do are very disproportionately the less affluent and less educated. Believe it or not, repeated studies going back to the 1940s always show that this is the group least likely to belong to a local church—the more educated Americans are the more religious segment (excluding PhDs). Meanwhile, partly because Americans move less often than they used to, and many more remain in their home towns as adults, membership in local churches has been rising—now estimated at 70 percent, the all-time high.

CLR Forum: You point out that the large majority of the Nones are rather religious, in their own way. How would you describe the religion of the religiously unaffiliated? What are its salient features?

Stark: The unaffiliated are religious in the traditional ways. They believe in God and in life after death–many believe in guardian angels. But, since they do not attend a local church (and probably never attended Sunday school) their faith is unsophisticated and often includes non-Christian supernaturalism—belief in ghosts and the like.

CLR Forum: You criticize the academy and media for ignoring many reliable surveys that suggest the socially beneficial aspects of religion, while focusing on unreliable surveys that show the anti-social impact of religion. Why is this, do you think? How do you think these academics would respond to your criticisms?

Stark: Surveys have demonstrated the irreligiousness of the media and of academics (especially social scientists and at the elite schools).  I am Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Robert Bellah, RIP

Word comes that sociologist Robert Bellah (left) has passed away at the age of 86. Bellah was famous for his work on American civil religion–indeed, he reintroduced that concept to American law in the 1960s–and the magisterial Habits of the Heart, a book he co-authored in 1985. Habits remains remarkably relevant today, particularly in its famous discussion of “Sheilaism,” the thoroughly individualist spirituality that appeals to so many Americans, particularly the growing number of “Nones.” When he died, he was working on a new book, Religion in Human Evolution. Matt Schmitz has a tribute on the First Things site. RIP.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Stark, “America’s Blessings”

I spent last weekend reading Baylor University sociologist Rodney Stark’s most recent book, America’s Blessings: How Religion Benefits Everyone, Including Atheists (Templeton Press 2012). I’ve benefited greatly from Stark’s work in the past; the book he wrote in 2005 with Roger Finke, The Churching of America, is a must for anyone interested in the history of American religion. America’s Blessings is very helpful, too. It puts into context the results of some recent surveys on religion in America.

For example, Stark explains that, although the number of persons who tell pollsters they have no religion has increased since 1990–the much-discussed Rise of the Nones–the number of people who belong to religious congregations has gone up as well. In fact, about 70% of Americans now belong to religious congregations, the highest percentage in our history. (One possible explanation: some Evangelical Christians who are members of free-standing congregations, without denominational ties, do not think they belong to a “religion”). Many of the Nones are quite religious; they pray frequently. Only a small group of Americans, around four percent, say they are atheists–a percentage that hasn’t changed in several decades.

Stark also shows that the academic literature routinely ignores evidence of religion’s beneficial social effects. For example, he says, reliable statistical studies show that religious people are much less likely to commit crimes, much more likely to contribute to charities, including secular charities, and more likely to say they have satisfying marriages. Findings like these almost never appear in the scholarly literature–or in the media, for that matter.

Some of these claims do seem stronger than others. For example, the claim about the lower propensity of religious people to commit crimes seems robust, as it is based on objective data about crime rates.  The claim about marital happiness, in contrast, doesn’t seem so compelling, at least to me, since it relies on what people tell surveyors about their marriages. It’s true that people who attend church regularly are more likely than non-churchgoers to say their marriages are “very happy,” but perhaps that’s because of social pressure. The churchgoers may feel they’re expected to say positive things about their family lives. In Stark’s defense, regular churchgoers also have a much lower divorce rate than people who never attend church, and that is an objective measure.

In any event, Stark’s new book is a valuable contribution to the burgeoning empirical literature on religion in America. Worth reading.

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Nones Across the Globe

Image from Patheos

The third largest religious affiliation in the United States is “None.” Roughly one-fifth of adult Americans tell surveyors that they have no religious affiliation at all. The rise of the Nones, which began in the 199os, is perhaps the most important development in American religious life today, raising difficult questions for traditional religious institutions and the legal system as well.

We shouldn’t think of the Nones as a uniquely American phenomenon, though. (Only Americans would be tempted to do so, probably). Here’s an interesting report from The Weekly Number, a religion website, on the percentages of Nones worldwide. The overall percentage of Nones across the globe is lower than in the US: 16%. They are distributed very unevenly. Almost 80% live in the Asia-Pacific region. About 60% live in one country, China. The entire continent of North America, by contrast, accounts for only five percent of Nones worldwide. In sub-Saharan Africa, Nones make up about two percent of the population. In the Middle East and North Africa, religiously unaffiliated people are even scarcer, comprising less than one percent of the population.

One might expect that, as China continues to rise, Nones will become an even more powerful global force. But here’s another interesting statistic. Unlike in the US, where Nones are disproportionately young, as a global population, the Nones skew old. The median age of Nones (34) is significantly higher than the median age of the overall global population (28). Who knows? Perhaps the rise of the Nones among America’s youth will be offset by the much-noted rise of Christianity among young people in the global South.