George Carlin & religion

Flying to Fresno

I fly to Fresno, California ("The Big Raisin) today, and I took a 6:30 am flight which means that I'll arrive at noon. The problem with this flight, of course, is that I have to get up at 3:30 am to catch it. I was wondering why in the world I would schedule such an early flight, and then it hit me:

The flight gets me to Fresno in time to eat lunch at In-N-Out hamburger.

Sweet...

Review of UnChristian: Should research on Christianity be primarily useful or accurate?

(Part 13 in a series)

I think I'll wrap up this series today, and I want to use this post to raise an issue that I have been mulling over for awhile now. What is the purpose of applied research on Christianity? Is it first and foremost to be useful or is it to be accurate?

In giving the backstory to writing UnChristian, the authors recount Gabe Lyons initial interest in pursuing this project. As told on page 13, Lyons writes that before the project, he believed that the "image young people have of the Christian faith is in real trouble." These perceptions are "incredibly negative."

Fastforward: Kinnamon and Lyons collect a bunch of data and conclude that, lo and behold, young hold a series of negative images of Christians. They use these data to prompt the church and its members to do better on various counts.

Frankly, I'm a little suspicious of someone "knowing" the answer to their research question before they even collect data, and then finding data the confirm their expectations. That almost never happens to me, for I am constantly surprised by what I find. Suppose that's why I'm in the business.

As such, the emphasis of UnChristian is using data to illustrate ideas already held by the authors, and using these data to bring about useful change. Emphasis is on useful.

What about another approach. Say Lyons started out with the question, rather than answer, of whether Christians have an image problem. If so, this empirical agnosticism might have lead UnChristian to a different survey with a different conclusion--one perhaps more in line with existing research literature. Emphasis is on accuracy.

Obviously we would like both useful and accuracy, but if we had to let one go, which would it be?

I can understand why people want to emphasize the useful. Why not use statistics, as well as anything else we can find, to advance the Kingdom?

And yet... if we're not 100% accurate in our creation or use of research, then that starts to eat away at the credibility of our work.

(This is not to imply that UnChristian is not accurate or that its authors do not care about accuracy, rather its a difference in emphasis.)

Here's an example of how this might play out. Suppose an author is concerned about Christians having some moral problem. S/he then finds all the statistics consistent with this "problem" hypothesis, ignoring ones that might contradict it. The end result: A skewed presentation of who the world works, but a presentation designed to get Christians to do the right thing.

I suppose this issue revolves around questions of the ends justifying the means. I would even say that some of the egregious misuse of statistics about Christianity are done with the best of intentions. Here's an example, and here's another one.

Me, I want to go wherever the data lead me, though I realize that I have my own biases and limitations that can get into the way. Ultimately, if it is truth we're after, cutting corners on our means of getting there isn't going to help.

Intellectuals' stereotypes of Evangelicals

From an article on CNN.com:

"For decades, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger says, American intellectuals have looked down on evangelicals.

Evangelicals say people often see them as Bible-banging, evolution-hating caricatures.

Educated people have the notion that evangelicals are "barefoot people of Tobacco Road who, I don't know, sleep with their sisters or something," Berger says.

It's time that attitude changed, he says.

"That was probably never correct, but it's totally false now and I think the image should be corrected," Berger said in a recent interview.

Now, his university's Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs is leading a two-year project that explores an "evangelical intelligentsia" which Berger says is growing and needs to be better understood, given the large numbers of evangelicals and their influence."

Sounds like an interesting study...

Routed by a generation gap

Gus is spending several weeks on a backwater canoe trip, but before he left we had one of those father-son conversations that, well, makes me feel old.

He asked me what a router is, and I smiled, happy to impart some of my woodworking wisdom. I don't do so much anymore, but I used to do woodworking as a hobby, so I explained to him what a router does. Basically, it hollows out a piece of wood.

About 2 or 3 minutes into the explanation, he looked at me really funny and said, "no Dad, like a computer router." Oops... I had no idea.

Blue laws and church attendance

A recent study found that church attendance dropped when states repealed blue laws that prohibited liquor sales on Sundays.

Maybe they were just showing up for the communion wine?

Serenity prayer revised

A new prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept other people taking credit for my work.

(Thanks for the link, David)

Review of UnChristian: Evangelicals embrace of negative stereotypes

(Part 12 of a series)

Negative group stereotypes are a sad fact of life.

Pick any group, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, English, French, Arabs, men, women, gays, Southerners, and you'll find some negative stereotype. They are criminal, dishonest, dirty, ditsy, drunkards, immoral, unintelligent, greedy, rude, scheming, or have bad teeth. (For decorum, I am not matching the stereotype to the group).

Certainly Christians have negative stereotypes about them, and that's one way of thinking about the book UnChristian--a catalog of stereotypes of Christians. These stereotypes include being hypocritical, judgmental, anti-gay, sheltered, and too political.

What's interesting is how the Christian church responds to these stereotypes (as well as to other negative characterizations). We seem to embrace them--see it as a prompting for us to do better. This is the tone of UnChristian--that these stereotypes harm the work of the church, so the church should act better to avoid the stereotypes and thus be more effective.

The problem with this approach is that there will always be negative stereotypes about the Christian church (as well as other religions and probably any other large group). Sorry, stereotypes happen, and if they aren't these seven, they'll be another seven.

Another problem with this approach is a disconnect between reality and stereotype. For example, no matter how well girls do at math, they are thought of as less inclined at math. If statistics came out today indicating that girls score higher on math (and these stats probably exist), it wouldn't change the stereotype.

As such, changing behavior to change stereotypes seems to be an unhelpful approach for the Christian church--especially since we have no idea if the stereotypes themselves are accurate.

It remains curious, however, that we embrace these stereotypes. Go tell some group that society thinks they are criminals, and that group will be outraged at the unfair characterization--rather than tell its members to be more lawful to avoid the stereotype.

In a way, Evangelicals response to negative characterizations is akin to medieval flagellantism--accepting the painful as a way of increasing godliness. If nothing else, we sure seem to like bad news about ourselves.

My sister, acclaimed gardener

A story about my sister Susan's gardening. She's doing a community garden this year, and she is growing heirloom everything.

Dancing around the world (video)

A very joyful, rather goofy video...

Sadly, despite his just being "silly" with his his dancing, he still dances substantially better than I do.

Brad Wilcox on religion and men in the family

Brad Wilcox, sociologist at the University of Virginia, studies religion and the family. He recently published this research summary in which he asks:

"Is there any evidence that religion is playing a role in encouraging a strong family orientation among contemporary American men?"

His answer is yes. He found that religion associated with happier marriages, fewer out-of-wedlock births, and more involvement in kids' lives.

I believe these are cross-sectional data, so these analyses leave open questions of causality, but they are encouraging for those who think that involvement in Christianity leads to good things.

Evangelicals as misunderstood?

An interesting, and useful quote, from D. Michael Lindsay:

"Evangelicals are the most discussed but least understood group in American society. Observers often assume that they are in lockstep with the Republican Party, but the sociologist Christian Smith has shown that 70 percent of evangelicals do not identify with the religious right.

The power of surveys

I received the following communication in response to a blog post from some time ago:

"Having met many many evangelical pastors, and knowing the high rate of evangelical divorce, and knowing how many of the pastors now, most of them wrongfully counsel divorce, I next had rightfully concluded that most evangelical pastors are sex maniacs, also confirmed in the light that 70 percent of them in reliable survey had admitted to having committed adultery" (emphasis mine).

My point is not to give this person a bad time but rather to point out how we use survey references as a marker of what is really true. Simply saying that most pastors have affairs (which, by the way, is something that I sincerely doubt) is not that believable, but saying that this information comes from a survey somehow makes it seem more creditable.

Tired of having regular old opinions? Say that you get them from a survey--that will get you listened to!

Review of UnChristian: Age vs. cohort effects

(Part 11 in a series)

Today's topic isn't so much a critique as a clarification of issues. It seems that a common source of panic among Christians is the idea that we're losing the young people, with the implication being that soon there will be no church.

Other writing by Christians have put a lot more emphasis on this issue (for example), though it is a subtext of UnChristian--if young, outsiders think ill of Christians, and they are growing in number, what then is to become of the church? For example, on p. 18, UnChristian presents a table indicating that there are more "outsiders" to the church in the younger generations.

A worthwhile distinction here is between the effects of age, generations, and history. Maybe some things happen as people get older, regardless of when in history. There's other things that happen to particular generations. A historical effect is something that affects everyone at that time. For example, getting taller is an age effect--happens in all generations. The depression deeply affected people who grew up at that time, and this marked them for the rest of their lives. Global warming would be a history effect--something that affects us all.

Here's the question. If we observe that young people today are less religious than old people, is this an age effect (i.e., happens every generation) or a generation effect (i.e., we've lost today's youth) or a history effect (everyone is less religious).

Various studies have looked at this more in depth, and I'll probably be posting on them in the future, but for now I ran some quick analyses using the GSS, and the answer seems to be both aging and history. Young people less religious than older people, and people are, in general, becoming less religious.

As shown below, in every decade, older people are more likely to define themselves as Christian than younger people. However, as shown below, the percentage of people affiliating with Christianity is dropping.


To explore these patterns among young people, I distinguished between those who did not define themselves as Christians, those who did but did not attend church often, and those who did and attended church often (e.g., 2x or 3x a month).

As shown below, over time there are fewer young people who infrequently attend church, and this is where most the loss has come from. There's been less change in the percentage of those who regularly attend church.

Not sure what to make of this, but it's kind of interesting.

Sociologists getting more moderate?

A recent New York Times article chronicled the changing politics of academics. It turns out that the senior professors, those who went through the 1960s, are more liberal than younger professors. As such, as the senior professors retire, the academia is becoming more moderate (or, perhaps more accurately, slightly less liberal).

This is something that I've noticed, that those who went through the 1960s are different than those of us who didn't.

Makes me wonder what variation of this theme will be written in 20 years when my cohort is ready to retire.

Thanks David for the link.

Was Jesus from California?

Funny jokes in today's paper:

Three equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:

1. He never cut his hair.
2. He walked around barefoot.
3. He started a new religion.

But then there are three really, really good arguments that Jesus was a woman:

1. He fed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was virtually no food.
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it.
3. And even after he was dead, he had to get up because there was still work to do.

It also suggests that he might be African-American because he didn't get a fair trial....

A summertime Freudian slip

Cathy and Gus have been talking about the rock band Coldplay recently. Now, you would think that with all the publicity they get and all the records they sell that I could remember their name.

Nope... I usually end up mistakenly calling them Coldstone. Hm-m-m-m, wonder where my mind is at.

Review of UnChristian: Have attitudes toward Christianity changed over time?

(Part 10 in a series)

A theme of UnChristian is that not only do non-Christians have a negative image of Christianity, but this image is getting worse over time. They write: "One of the general differences is a growing tide of hostility and resentment toward Christianity" (p. 24).

To test this idea, one would need to collect a measure of attitudes towards Christians at different points in time and then compare them. Unfortunately UnChristian doesn't have such data available. Fortunately, the GSS does. It asked the thermometer- feeling question (that I blogged about yesterday) back in the 1980s as well. As such, it's possible to compare if attitudes toward Christianity have changed over time.

Shown below are the attitudes of non-Christians toward Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism in the 1980s versus 2004. As indicated, there is a slight drop in preference for all three groups, of 2-3 points on a 100-point scale.
It appears that there is slightly less favor of religious groups over time, but no particular focus on Protestant Christianity. Furthermore, the average score is still above average, suggesting overall an average of slightly warm feelings toward Christianity among non-believers.

As with yesterday's post, I didn't analyze the young non-believers because of sample size limitations. Still, it's hard to image much of a change for them, because if their attitudes became dramatically negative, then the older non-believers would have to become substantially more positive to produce the findings given above.

Review of UnChristian: Comparing the image of Christianity to other groups III

(Part 9 in a series)

This post continues a series of analyses of whether Christianity has an image problem relative to other religions. Here I use data from the General Social Survey, perhaps the most commonly used data source in sociological research. The GSS asks a series of questions using a "feeling thermometer" in which respondents rate their feelings toward a social institution from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the more favorable the feelings toward that institution. According the directions given to respondents, a score of "50" means that they don't feel particularly warm or cold toward the group.

The GSS also asks questions about the respondents religious affiliation, and so I could separate out the temperature feelings toward different religions by whether the respondent was Christian themselves. (Note: the sample wasn't big enough to separate out young non-Christians).

As shown below:
- Christians rate all four religion groups more favorable than do non-Christians (though this is especially true for Protestantism and Catholicism).
- Non-Christians rate Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism slightly above average, meaning an average slightly warm feeling toward the religion. (Note: the non-Christian respondents include Jews, of course, which may account for the slightly higher rating of Judaism).
- Islam is the lowest rated religious group, by both Christians and non-Christians.

My conclusion? If we compare Christianity to other religious groups, there seems to be no evidence that Christianity has a particular image problem. In fact, non-Christians have average slightly-warm feelings toward both Protestantism and Catholicism.

Next: Attitudes toward Christian over time

Review of UnChristian: Comparing the image of Christianity to other groups II

(Part 8 in a series)

UnChristian claims that American Christianity has an image problem, especially among young, non-believers.

As part of investigating this claim, I have presented some data that compares the images of different religions in America. My thinking is that "problem" is a comparative term, and that if indeed Christianity has an image problem, it would be thought of more negatively than other religions.

Here are more data suggesting this probably isn't the case. They come from the Mosaic Study

The first survey question represents a measure of public acceptance and trust. It asks: "For each [group], please tell me how much you think people in this group agree with YOUR vision of American society. Below is a graph indicating the percentage of respondents reporting that the group did "not at all" match the respondents vision of America.

As you can see, the groups seen as most outside the American way are atheists and Muslims. Note: The question asks about "conservative" Christians, and that adjective alone should be enough to gain the disfavor of some people. (E.g., Q=Would you like a conservative $100 bill? A=get lost).

conducted by the University of Minnesota Sociology Department. (To be clear, these data bear upon the image of Christianity among the general populace, not just young people outside of the church.)

In another question, the Mosaic project asks about public trust and acceptance. Specifically, would the respondent disapprove if their son or daughter married someone from a particular group.

As shown again, it's atheists and Muslims who are not accepted, presumably due to part to what UnChristian would label an "image problem" (which could also be termed prejudice or stereotypes).

Source of data: Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann, American Sociological Review, April 2006

Thanks Edward for reminding me about these data.