Gen X kids are more loyal to religion

From the Scientific American website: (Thanks Jay!)


***
"Research published this week reveals a surprising trend among the American generation X—the group who came of age in the late 1980s and 1990s and are known for their rejection of all things conventional. It appears that in comparison to the baby boomers, Gen-Xers are significantly more loyal to religion.


Scientists analyzed survey responses from more than 37,000 people between the years 1973 to 2006. Their results are published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. They found that boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely to abandon their religious faith, than gen-Xers.


Interesting to note, from those surveyed, the number of Americans with no religious affiliation doubled in the 1990s and continues to increase through the first decade of this century.


The researchers attribute this drop off to the boomers who were likely to have abandoned religion in young adulthood perhaps due to the rejection of organized authority or what the researchers call the “1960s effect.”


So what’s up with this newfound loyalty in the younger generation X?


Well the authors note that it probably has to do with the expansion of the “religious marketplace” in recent decades, and suggest that instead of this trend watering down religious faith, they say that more choices is influencing the increase in affiliation and commitment to religion."


—Christie Nicholson

Bob and Audrey Meisner

Earlier this summer I had the chance to spend a couple days with Bob and Audrey Meisner, Christian Broadcasters up in Winnipeg, Canada.


I've spent some time thinking about and analyzing Christians' behavior that break their moral beliefs. In talking to Bob and Audrey, I realized that I've missed half the story. It's not just whether Christians act immorally (or, how much, I should say), but how they respond to it.


Bob and Audrey had a very public ministry for years, three kids, and all seemed well, except Audrey had an affair and got pregnant. In response, they fought hard for their marriage and incorporating the child into their lives, and they now use the whole situation to teach others about marriage.


From their website:

"She had an affair,
They kept the baby,
Through pain they were rescued,
Their life now exceeds their wildest dreams"


I appreciate how hard they've worked to bring beauty out of pain.

Why do adults become Christians?

Here's a very interesting article about the adult conversion process.


In it the author, Mike Fleischmann, a pastor from Southern California, sets out to learn how many Christians become so in adulthood (rather than childhood), and what is the process they take.


He speaks of the 85/18 rule which is an axiom that 85% of Christians become so before age 18. He concludes that:


"I must admit that the "85/18 Rule" was partially confirmed in my research. In fact 84.5 percent of evangelicals do accept Christ before that age. However, the statistic only holds true if they were raised in a home where both parents were Christians with either a high or moderate level of spiritual activity. If, however, they were raised without that benefit, the percentage drops by two-thirds. The rest of the unchurched make their faith decisions throughout the course of adulthood and even into retirement."


He also has some interesting observations about the conversion process for adults.


Thanks Ed!

Why I went to the hospital during our family vacation

For the first time in years, we got away for a family vacation. We only had five days, so we took our pop-up camper to the Rhode Island coast, near some fun beaches. (By the way, when we pulled into our camping spot, I noticed that the amazing pop-up camper in the camping spot next to us was a lot nicer than our $500 1970s era off-Craigs-List tent. When I got home, I looked it up, and I estimate that their camper alone cost about ten times more than our camper and car combined. No wonder they looked at us funny when we completed the camper set-up using duct tape.)


Anyway, I managed to spend the last several days of the vacation in the local hospital, and rather than just tell you what happened, I'll make it a multiple choice test (in preparation for the upcoming semester).


I was in the hospital because:
A) The clam cakes we ate were too greasy, so they had to remove my gall bladder
B) We set up our tent at night, so I didn't see the patch of poison ivy that I was crawling around in, and they had to treat me with steroids via an IV drip
C) While swimming I got entangled with a large jellyfish and had to be pulled out by the lifeguards. The hospital treated the second- and third-degree burns I had on my legs.
D) I really wanted some peace-and-quiet.


Give up?  Here's a hint. I'm home now, but very sore, and it may take a couple more years to be ready for another family vacation.

Research on Religion Podcast

Tony Gill, out at U. Washington, has done us a big favor by starting the Research on Religion podcast.  On a regular basis, he uploads extended discussions with religion scholars about their work.  Through good fortune, I got to be one of his guests, and he podcast was just posted recently.  You can listen to it here.

Unlike some of the other interviews that I've done, this one is a conversation with a fellow researcher, so we're able to go into a little more depth about the research.

Enjoy, and check out his other guests too.

Hey, it's me on almost-TV

FoxNews has a web channel called The Strategy Room, and one of their segments is GodTalk.  I got to talk about my book on it this morning, down in NYC. I think it came out okay?



Here's the link for the video

xkcd cartoon, Atheists

Link.  (Thanks Brandon!)

Depressing stats for pastors

I've not studied surveys of Christian pastors, but from the sounds of this article, it's a tough profession. That doesn't surprise me, because it has so many diverse demands. A good pastor has to be a theologian, psychologist, CEO, accountant, speaker, and lots of other things, all with a smile on his or her face.


I think that I'll stick to the cushy life of a professor.

(thanks Eric)

Should survey researchers of religion go to seminary?

Here's an interesting idea: Religious survey researchers should go to seminary to increase the accuracy and usefulness of their survey questions. This idea is put forth in an article by Pete Enns, discussed on Scot McKnight's blog.


Now, after 5 years undergrad, 7 years grad, and 2 years post-doc, there's no way I'm going back to school, but the article makes a good point. My neighbor, who is a retired pastor, has pointed out a couple of theological ambiguities in my book, and it would have been better for me to have known about them.


Maybe there's a market for MDiv consultants in survey research?


(Thanks Ed)

Christian Post article about my book

 
Here's an article in yesterday's Christian Post that does a good job of describing my book. The writer, Lillian Kwon, did well at describing its main themes and capturing the spirit of it.

Hi, I'm Brad and I'm a conehead

There's a reason why we should be patient with others... it helps keep us from looking really stupid.


Several times a week I go to the gym at our town's community center. In front of the center is a fire lane and about 20 feet further a loading zone. Drivers regularly stop in the fire lane to let people out or wait for them, but this blocks traffic and can be dangerous. This has bugged me for awhile now, especially since the official loading zone just yards away.


Earlier this week, I went to the center and, sure enough, a van was parked in the fire lane, making it hard to get into a couple parking spaces. The driver came around the back of the van, and I asked in a polite but firm voice that she not park in the fire lane. She responded kindly and said she would be done quickly, as soon as the gentleman she was dropping off got going. I looked, and saw a very old, disabled man struggling with his walker toward the front door. The exact kind of person who should be let off as close as possible.


I felt so, so dumb (a place that I have been before), and I apologized to the driver. Doh-h-h-h.

Evangelicals vs. Mainline Churches and youth ministry

Mark Chaves, a professor at Duke, studies American churches. He recently wrote about Evangelical vs. Mainline churches in their ability to keep young people in the church, and he found that Evangelicals do a better job, in part due their investing more money and effort into youth ministry.


He also summarized work by James Wellman on different expectations of the church. "For evangelicals, if children and youth are not enjoying church, it is the church's fault and evangelical parents either find a new church or try to improve their youth ministry," Wellman said. "For liberals, the tendency is the reverse; if youth do not find church interesting it is their problem. Evangelicals are simply more interested and invested in reproducing the faith in their children and youth and their churches reflect this priority."


Interesting...


(Thanks Mike)

The moneymaker water pump

Also from Michael Kruse's blog: a fascinating report about an engineer who is trying to help poor people in Africa by selling, and not giving away, water pumps.

Research on religion podcasts

In case you didn't know of it already, there's a great new website, researchonreligion.org, that podcasts of religion scholars discussing their research. It's run by Tony Gill, a political scientist at U. Washington, and it has some very interesting speakers on it, including Rodney Stark. The most recent podcast, for example, covers religion and health. Cool!


Tony kindly interviewed me for an upcoming podcast, and I hope that I don't pull down the curve too much.

One of these things is not like the other....

Do you remember the Sesame Street song... "One of these things is not like the other" in which multiple objects are presented with one being different in some way.


Well, let's play that game now. Here's a picture from the recent Leadership Network newsletter. Which one of these things just doesn't belong.

(Hint: Three of the books are written by famous, clean-cut Christian leaders who remember when they're supposed to be somewhere)

Stupid subconscious!

This week I start teaching a summer school class on social psychology--one of my favorite classes to teach.


Earlier this summer, however, I had a number of dreams about the class, and in all of them I just showed up at class, completely unprepared, not ready to teach it, and otherwise confused. I would wake up from these dreams bewildered because why would I stress out about a small summer school class that I've taught several times before?


Well, I had written down that it's a Tuesday-Thursday class. It's not. It's Monday Wednesday. So, today, about 1:30, I got a call from the department secretary asking why I wasn't in my 1:00 class (a student had called her). I had been outside, so I threw a shirt on, got a quick ride to the classroom, and at 1:40 I was standing in front of the class completely unprepared, not ready to teach it, and otherwise confused. No syllabus, no lecture outlines (which I was going to do tomorrow)--all from memory.


So, I guess that my subconscious was trying to tell me something after all. I figure that it should either speak loud enough to be heard or just let me sleep peacefully.

Guns in church?

Louisiana recently passed a law allowing guns in church.


I suppose, if nothing else, this will keep sermons from going on too long...

A hypocrite comment....

A friend and neighbor of mine, a retired pastor, read my book, and he told me a story about the use of the term "hypocrite" that puts it into good perspective. He wrote:


Over the years I have called on more than one unaffiliated couple who have claimed that my church was full of hypocrites. I have always been tempted but have never replied: "We always have room for one more."

Thoughts from Ortberg

Also from John Ortberg, more ideas of how to do Christianity.

"Instead of making vows about how my spiritual life will be perfectly well organized until I die, I seek to surrender my will for just this day. I look for small graces. I try to engage in little acts of service. I pray briefly to accommodate my limited attention span. I look for ways of being with God that I already enjoy. I try to go for half an hour without complaining. I try to say something encouraging to three people in a row. I put twenty dollars in my pocket that I will give away during the day. I take a five-minute break to read a page of great thoughts." (P. 71).

Wow...

The best laid plans...

This evening I was working hard getting ready for our big fourth of July pool party tomorrow, and at one point I was carrying an old clay pot.  It shattered, and cut my thumb quite well.  Off the emergency room to have it sewn up, and the doctor's instruction: no swimming for a week.  :-(


So, tomorrow, I will watch others enjoy the pool that I got ready....  (I suppose that it would be small of me to cancel the whole party).