Education and Religious Practice
According to an American Sociological Association press release, the least well-educated Americans—people who have not graduated from high school—attend religious services less frequently than do the moderately educated (high school but no four-year college degree), who in turn attend less frequently than do the most educated (at least four years of college). The study, which involves whites only, showed that service attendance has fallen for all groups since the 1970s, but most precipitously for the less educated:
“In the 1970s, among those aged 25-44, 51 percent of college-educated whites attended religious services monthly or more, compared to 50 percent of moderately educated whites, and 38 percent of the least educated whites. In the 2000s, among those aged 25-44, 46 percent of college-educated whites attended monthly or more, compared to 37 percent of moderately educated whites, and 23 percent of the least educated whites.”
The study notes the disturbing implication that less educated people increasingly lack connection to the resources that religious institutions ordinarily provide, such as social networks, and also the moral teachings in support of family and middle class values. Lack of education, which the ASA study considered, of course correlates with lower income.
While these arguments have obvious force, a broader doctrinal issue is involved as well. Ruby K. Payne’s book A Framework for Understanding Poverty, describes spiritual poverty as one aspect of poverty. She observes that many people in poverty have a fatalistic account of the world.
All or nearly all monotheistic religions teach that the universe is governed by a benign ruler. People lacking this belief, I would argue, may view themselves as subject to the vagaries of a chaotic universe. The subject calls to mind a Wall Street Journal article associating poverty in Haiti with the Voodoo beliefs ingrained in the culture there.
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Comments:
Dec '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
This is very interesting stuff. I will have to contact a sociologist friend and get his take on it. I would be interested to see which way the study posits the causal connection between church attendance and life outcome.
Jul '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
From which college did Jesus graduate?
Dec '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
Mount Vernon Nazarene University, where my sociologist friend teaches.
Aug '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
What I find most interesting is that this study would seem to fly in the face of the typical narrative that says religious people are dummies.
Jul '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
Wait, Wait, Wait just a minute there ... I thought all of us Bitter Clingers were too backwards to understand that We are the one that We have been waiting for. So the the lawyer, doctor, cpa, ceo, and entreprenuers sitting in the pews around me may have been imbued along the way with "Values" beneficial to themselves and society? Get Arne Duncan on the phone, how on earth did this research get out? this could be worse that the "hockey stick graph" debacle.
Jul '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
LT,
You missed out on the comedic possibilities here. I clicked through on your source link and discovered this gem:
"The paper, "No Money, No Honey, No Church: The Deinstitutionalization of Religious Life Among the White Working Class," will be presented on Sunday, Aug. 21, at 2:30 p.m. PDT in Caesars Palace Las Vegas, at the American Sociological Association's 106th Annual Meeting."
Ceasars Palace -- the high church of American family values.
Thank you sooooo much for your post. made my day.
May '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
L.T. Rahe:
All or nearly all monotheistic religions teach that the universe is governed by a benign ruler. People lacking this belief, I would argue, may view themselves as subject to the vagaries of a chaotic universe.
I wonder whether Americans lacking this belief see themselves as subject to anything.
Jun '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
katievs
L.T. Rahe:
All or nearly all monotheistic religions teach that the universe is governed by a benign ruler. People lacking this belief, I would argue, may view themselves as subject to the vagaries of a chaotic universe.
I wonder whether Americans lacking this belief see themselves as subject to anything. · Aug 24 at 10:32pm
"Subject to anything" - ?
Pardon me but since America is a predominantly Christian country and a goodly percentage of Christians attend services; and since the passage of Roe v. Wade there have been approximately 52 million abortions in America, wouldn't statistics indicate that the vast majority of Christians in America are having abortions? I think non-believers only make up a small percentage of Americans...surely it's not the non-believers who are responsible for this massive death toll, is it?
By all means get more people into church and have priests and ministers hammer the anti-abortion message home...because the message doesn't seem to be getting through.
Dec '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
Brian Watt
Pardon me but since America is a predominantly Christian country and a goodly percentage of Christians attend services; and since the passage of Roe v. Wade there have been approximately 52 million abortions in America, wouldn't statistics indicate that the vast majority of Christians in America are having abortions? I think non-believers only make up a small percentage of Americans...surely it's not the non-believers who are responsible for this massive death toll, is it?
By all means get more people into church and have priests and ministers hammer the anti-abortion message home...because the message doesn't seem to be getting through. · Aug 24 at 11:10pm
Out of curiosity... any idea what percentage of those having abortions have multiple abortions? In other words, are there any stats as to how many women had those 52M abortions? I'm sure it is less than 52M, but not sure how much less.
Jun '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
The Great Adventure!
Brian Watt
Pardon me but since America is a predominantly Christian country and a goodly percentage of Christians attend services; and since the passage of Roe v. Wade there have been approximately 52 million abortions in America, wouldn't statistics indicate that the vast majority of Christians in America are having abortions? I think non-believers only make up a small percentage of Americans...surely it's not the non-believers who are responsible for this massive death toll, is it?...
Out of curiosity... any idea what percentage of those having abortions have multiple abortions? In other words, are there any stats as to how many women had those 52M abortions? I'm sure it is less than 52M, but not sure how much less. · Aug 25 at 1:27am
Good question but I don't think it's within probability that 15% of the population who say that they're not affiliated with any given faith are still responsible for the vast majority of that 52 million number when 76% of Americans profess to be Christians. It is known that low income women tend to have more abortions than than women in households with higher income.
Nov '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
I think the author missed the point that attending, and believing, are different.
Jun '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
The Great Adventure!
Out of curiosity... any idea what percentage of those having abortions have multiple abortions? In other words, are there any stats as to how many women had those 52M abortions? I'm sure it is less than 52M, but not sure how much less. · Aug 25 at 1:27am
For the sake of discussion, let's say that professed Christians are only responsible for 18M of the 52M deaths. That's still unacceptable and 3x the number of Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis. The numbers of abortions clearly are horrific and something that is stunning in a predominantly Christian country. Clearly there's been an erosion of morality aided by government programs like Planned Parenthood but I think it should give all Christians and all Americans pause that this number is so staggeringly high. It's the legacy that comes back to haunt this country and I long for the day when Roe v. Wade is overturned and it's why I will always support a pro-life candidate over a pro-abortion or soft-on-abortion candidate.
Edited on August 25, 2011 at 3:40pmMay '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
The Great Adventure!
Out of curiosity... any idea what percentage of those having abortions have multiple abortions? In other words, are there any stats as to how many women had those 52M abortions? I'm sure it is less than 52M, but not sure how much less. · Aug 25 at 1:27am
In any given year, half of the women who have an abortion have had at least one previous abortion (stats from the Allan Guttmacher Institute--a pro-abortion outfit).
Feb '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
This is certainly true in my region of the country. Church is becoming a middle class and upper middle class only sort of thing. The wealthy are leaving slowly, and the working class/working poor are mostly gone. Having left the church faster than the wealthy (unless over say age 55). It is a trend I've noticed in the land of bitter-clingers over the last 15 years or so. Having worked through my church employment both with the homeless, those entrenched in the system, and coming from a working class community (farmers, miners, factory workers, shop keepers) I would agree with the digest of this study.
When you speak to those in the class below working, the dependent class, they do understand that the church has money and access to social programs, and they do turn there in desperation when other means of help fail. They rarely come for worship, social ties, education or even spiritual solace. They often play the system, thinking the church will be softer target than other charities or government agencies.
They are very, very fatalistic, and had a very odd view of their role in society, and their relationship to God.
Feb '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
I think that the working class, and I grew up in and attended a mostly working class/agricultural church, that they have changed the most radically since my youth. The generation born between 1910-1940 had such a totally different approach to life. They were largely unencumbered by any help from the state, had little ambition beyond the local, took a tragic view of life, had a profound faith, and saw service to their church, nation, family, and community as providing all the meaning in life they needed. They suffered quietly and worked very hard. Those who didn't earned their pity, enmity, or disgust. It wasn't all a bed of roses, but as I went to work in wider urban settings and wealthy churches with outreach programs, I discovered that those values were shared, but on a smaller scale. Returning to the village of my childhood, those same pathologies are now firmly rooted in the countryside and small towns. Government largess, lack of religious education with any substance, the replacement of the family, church, and charity by the state...has up-rooted and unmoored the working class. In conversation they see church as a hobby for rich people.
Jan '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
Brian Watt
katievs I wonder whether Americans lacking this belief see themselves as subject to anything.
I think non-believers only make up a small percentage of Americans...surely it's not the non-believers who are responsible for this massive death toll, is it?
By all means get more people into church and have priests and ministers hammer the anti-abortion message home...because the message doesn't seem to be getting through.
I'm curious, Brian - how does this answer Katievs' question?
Dec '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
This is fascinating. I agree with DrewInWisconsin it certainly runs counter to conventional "wisdom". But, it also makes me wonder if this is why the secular influences in academia seem to have such a disproportionate effect on society. Prager often points out that modern secular society influences religion more than religion influences society. Could this be why?
Nov '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
I think it has to do with the attitude of being poor in America. Being poor here isn't really a lack of money. If you're poor in America, most likely you can at least eat. So it isn't a choice between working hard and starving. If you work hard in this country, even in a low-level job, you can live somewhat comfortably. So, barring some outlying thing like a disability, an Obama economy, or being an illegal alien or the like, being poor is more of an attitude.
These poor are pretty flaky, in general. If they weren't, they wouldn't be in the situations they are in. These are the people that hop from job to job, because they can't come to work like they should. They probably couldn't go to school like they should, either.
They aren't just flaky in their occupation, they are flaky in life. When I was a missionary, these are the people that would make appointments with us, or say they would come to church, but then "something would come up" and they'd miss. This was not a problem with "middle class" people.
Jun '10
Re: Education and Religious Practice
KC Mulville
Brian Watt
katievs I wonder whether Americans lacking this belief see themselves as subject to anything.
I think non-believers only make up a small percentage of Americans...surely it's not the non-believers who are responsible for this massive death toll, is it?
By all means get more people into church and have priests and ministers hammer the anti-abortion message home...because the message doesn't seem to be getting through.
I'm curious, Brian - how does this answer Katievs' question? · Aug 25 at 8:47am
What's implied in the question is that non-church goers or those who profess no belief may be "subject to anything". I take that to mean any unethical or immoral behavior. I don't think there's any empirical evidence one way or another on this; only a feeling that I've heard expressed before...that without a belief in the divine people would essentially run amok. The numbers of abortions in a predominantly Christian country like America seems to indicate that Christians, unfortunately, are also prone to some horrific behavior and that, despite the best intentions of the clergy, too many in their flock have strayed.
Jan '11
Re: Education and Religious Practice
Brian Watt
What's implied in the question is that non-church goers or those who profess no belief may be "subject to anything". I take that to mean any unethical or immoral behavior.
I didn't take it that way at all. That's why your response surprised me. I thought Katie was simply saying that if non-believers see no authority coming from a divine authority, do they see it coming from anywhere? And from where? Reason? Nature? Or is there simply no authority at all?
Many Christian denominations don't teach that abortion is immoral in the first place, and the civil society certainly doesn't (it's legal, after all). So I don't think you can extend the abortion statistic to identify the "disobedience" of Christians. Although, it's sadly true that way too many Catholics have abortions. Then again, the church itself immediately excommunicates anyone who has one, so are they really still Catholics at that point?
To be sure, Christianity doesn't prevent bad behavior. It isn't a "cure." The unwillingness to obey the commandments doesn't speak poorly of the commandments.