Figure 4.4: Racial Composition of Evangelicals since 1972
Why the racial segregation in American Christianity? Some interpret this as racial discrimination. While discrimination undoubtedly exists throughout society, including the church, sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, in their book Divided by Faith, offer an alternative, and perhaps more compelling, explanation. They write that the organization of religion in America, and indeed much of what makes it so successful, inadvertently creates racial separation even when churches do not want to. Here is how it works. Generally speaking we’re all more comfortable, at least initially, with people similar to us. This similarity can encompass many aspects of life, such as age, occupation, hobbies, education levels, and race. Not only are we more comfortable around people similar to ourselves, but social relations with similar people also tend to be more stable. Applied to religion, this means that people gravitate toward familiar churches with similar people, including people of the same race.
Furthermore, according to Emerson and Smith, people from different cultural backgrounds prefer different styles of religious worship and participation. For example, people from one racial group might prefer music with an upbeat tempo, whereas another group might prefer classic hymns. These preferences cover a wide range of church activities, including Sunday school, the length of the sermon, Communion, and liturgy. It’s impossible for any one church to offer enough services to please everyone, so instead churches specialize in a particular style. This specialization allows them to become good at this approach, and it reduces costs, because the church doesn’t have to have multiple specializations. The byproduct of this specialization, however, is that any given religious style will attract a particular type of person. Given the significance of race and ethnicity in our country, this can result in racial sorting by congregations, denominations, and religions.
Emerson and Smith compare the Christian church to a large shopping mall. While malls have a few department stores that offer many different things for many people, most of their stores are highly specialized. There are clothing stores for pregnant women, video game stores for teenage boys, home décor shops for homeowners, Disney stores for kids, and electronic gadget stores for middle-aged sociologists. It’s difficult for any one store to appeal to everyone, so stores prosper by specializing. This same dynamic, according to Emerson and Smith, is at play in churches. To be successful, most churches have to specialize, and this, in turn, results in similarity among its members among various dimensions, including race.
In short, racial separation occurs as the unintended, and often unwanted, by-product of the very things that make churches strong.
Class
A final characteristic that I’ll cover is social class. Sociologists spend a lot of time researching class, and there are multiple, sometimes highly technical, definitions of it. For our purposes, let’s just say that social class refers to a person’s relative social and economic status in society. People with more social class have more money, fame, and power. One measure of social class is education, for people with more education tend to make more money, to have more career opportunities, and overall to be held in higher esteem than those without.
A common stereotype about Evangelical Christians is that we are poor and uneducated. (After spending fourteen years in college, grad school, and a post-doctorate, I certainly fit one of those two characteristics.) An infamous Washington Post article about Evangelical Christians referred to them as poor, undereducated, and easily led.[6] Granted, this is an extreme example, but critiques of Christianity in America, especially of Evangelicals, often have an underlying theme that Christianity is incongruent with a proper education.
Figure 4.5 describes the college graduation rates of different religious groups. Nationwide, 27% of all adults have graduated from college. Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, and Orthodox Christians have the highest levels of education. Catholics, Mormons, and Muslims are at about the national average, and Jehovah’s Witnesses have by far the lowest education. Evangelicals are somewhat below the national average. The religiously unaffiliated are just slightly above average in levels of college education. The irony is that some of the religiously unaffiliated explain their rejection of religion in terms of superior learning, but several religious groups have much higher levels of education.
Many people assume that going to college diminishes beliefs, because in college one learns about other belief systems and is exposed to people from a wide range of backgrounds. Among the general population, this diminishing is to some extent supported by the data. According to the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, 60% of high school graduates who didn’t go to college view religion as very important. These numbers go down to 55% of those with some college education and 50% of college graduates. A similar pattern holds true with a certainty in God and praying outside of religious services (although there are little differences in church attendance rates by education).
Figure 4.5: College Graduation Rates by Religious Group
A very different story emerges, however, for Evangelicals. Among them, increased education is associated with more, rather than less, religiousness. As shown in Figure 4.6, Evangelical Christians who graduated from college are slightly more likely to think that religion is very important. The most educated Evangelicals are also more certain in their belief in God, attend religious services more frequently, and pray more often outside of religious services.[7]
How would we explain this counterintuitive finding? Sociologist Christian Smith presents an interesting theory.[8] According to Smith, Evangelicals define themselves and their faith, in part, by being different from their surrounding society. Cultural conflict strengthens Evangelicals’ faith, and what better way to experience this conflict than college? Going to college causes Evangelicals to further engage society, thus highlighting and strengthening their faith. In contrast, some religious groups seek to isolate themselves from conventional society. For these groups, education may weaken their faith.
Evangelical parents worry about the faith of their children, and understandably so. For some, this leads to attempts to shelter the child from “secular” society and its various religious perspectives. Ironically, however, engaging society might actually be the best way for Evangelicals to strengthen their faith. Evangelical parents: Do you want your child to stay with the faith? Perhaps one of the best things you can do is make sure he or she is well-educated. At the very least, sending your children off to college is not necessarily something to fear (at least for their faith—for your finances, yes, run away screaming).
Figure 4.6: Religiousness and Education Among Evangelicals
The Geography of Religion
Let’s transition now from talking about the personal characteristics of Evangelicals to their geographical distribution. The United States is thought of as a religious country, and rightfully so; however, this doesn’t mean that religion is spread equally over the map, as regions of the country vary in both the amount and type of religion practiced. Figure 4.7 is a map of all the counties in the United States, and each county is shaded to indicate the percentage of its residents who adhere to any religion.[9] The darker the shade, the higher the percentage of religious adherence. As shown, there is wide variation from region to region. The most religious part of the country is the middle third. In this area, encompassing the Great Plains, the Midwest, and part of the South, more than half the residents of most counties adhere to a religion. The least religious section is the far West. Except for Mormon Utah, most counties west of the Rocky Mountains have relatively low rates of religious adherence. The East Coast is a mixture, with pockets of low and high rates of adherence scattered throughout.
Americans vary not only in whether they adhere to religion by geography but also which religious denominations they belong to. The American religious landscape is dominated by Baptists and Catholics. Baptists constitute a majority in almost every county in the South—between Texas and the Atlantic Ocean, and bet
ween the Gulf of Mexico and southern Indiana. If you found yourself in the middle of this area, say northern Mississippi, you’d have to drive a long way before you stopped seeing a lot of Baptist churches. In contrast to Baptists, who are concentrated in the South, Catholics are spread throughout the country. Most of the non-Mormon counties in the West have more Catholics than any other single group. This is also true in New England, the upper industrial states, lower Texas, and the Florida Coast. Lutherans are concentrated in the Dakotas and Minnesota. In fact, researchers have observed that the number of Lutherans in a given area steadily decreases with its distance from the North Dakota-Minnesota borders.[10] Methodist counties span horizontally from Maryland to Colorado, and Mormon counties are found mostly in Utah and bordering states.
The distribution of religious affiliation in the United States is the result of its history, with a special emphasis on, of all things, mountain ranges.[11] The colonial-era churches on the East Coast were predominately Anglican and Congregationalist. However, as the pioneers started moving west, they encountered the Appalachian Mountains, which made life rougher. For the most part, it was not the more settled Anglicans and Congregationalists who pioneered the frontier but the newly emerging Methodists and Baptists. The routes of the Methodist circuit riders are reflected in the concentration of Methodist churches across the middle of the country. Below that are Baptists. Later, Lutheran immigrants, originally from Northern Europe, settled in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. From there they moved west across the Upper Midwest to their current homeland, Lake Wobegon. Roman Catholics, many of whom were immigrants, settled in the large industrial cities throughout the East and the Midwest. Going farther west, pioneers eventually encountered the Rocky Mountains, which proved such a formidable obstacle that few of the Midwestern religious groups crossed them. Instead, the religions west of the Rockies tend to be homegrown Christian and Mormon groups as well as Catholic Hispanics. Just think: What if the mountain ranges in the Continental United States ran East-West instead of North-South? We might all be Episcopalians and Congregationalists.
Regarding Evangelicals, the South has many, with its high concentration of Baptists. But what about the rest of the country? Are Evangelicals losing whole regions? For instance, a recent study labeled New England to be the “new stronghold of the religiously unidentified.” In response to this study, R. Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, lamented this change by stating that the Northeast was an early stronghold of American religion, so to lose it “struck me as momentous.”[12]
To examine the regional distribution of Evangelicals, I calculated their percentage in four different regions—West, Midwest, East, and South. As shown in Figure 4.8, the South has a much greater concentration of Evangelicals than the other regions. Currently, more than one-third of all southern adults affiliate as Evangelicals. Far fewer easterners—only about 1 in 10—are Evangelicals. The West and the Midwest are in-between these extremes.
Over time the South has seen a slow but steady decline in the percentage of Evangelicals, dropping from about 40% in the 1970s to about 35% currently. In contrast, the East has seen an increase, from 6 to 11%. This increase in eastern Evangelicals has helped to offset the decrease of southern Evangelicals. Both the West and the Midwest witnessed an increase in the percentage of Evangelicals from the 1970s to the 1980s and a decrease from the 1990s to the present. Over time, the difference in Evangelical rates between regions is decreasing. If you’re familiar with statistics, this change represents an instance of “regression to the mean”—more extreme scores become less so over time. If this trend continues, and who knows if it will, then in the future the distribution of Evangelicals will be more uniform throughout the country.
Historian Mark Noll highlights an implication of the geographical concentration of Evangelicals in the South. He writes that the nation’s elite educational institutions and media centers are concentrated in the Northeast and the West, and these are regions with comparatively fewer Evangelicals. This means that academics and journalists have relatively fewer interactions with Evangelicals, and this can lead to their having misapprehensions about them.[13]
Figure 4.8: Percent of Evangelicals by Region
The Dynamics of Religious Change
Let’s move from talking about who Christians are to how they got to be Christians in the first place. That is, sometimes people switch between religions. This raises questions about where Christians come from and where they go.
Where Do Members Come From?
In evangelical churches, there is considerable emphasis on evangelism—bringing non-Christians to faith; and this is often spoken of as the primary mechanism of church growth. In addition, church growth is affected by fertility rates and keeping children in the faith. This being the case, a fundamental sociological question about Evangelicals, and about any religion for that matter, is whether its members were born into that group or converted from another group.
Figure 4.9 presents data that addresses this question. In this figure, reporting data from the 2008 Landscape Survey, each horizontal bar represents a different religious group. The lighter colored section, on the left of each bar, represents the percentage of that group raised in that religion. The darker section, on the right, represents the percentage of people who switched over to that group after being raised in a different group. As you can see, religious groups in the United States vary widely in where they get their members. Over 80% of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Hindu adults were raised as such. In contrast, more than half of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Buddhists, and the religiously unaffiliated were raised in other groups and switched over later in life.
From the same Pew study we can analyze various Protestant groups in more detail. Surprisingly, only about one-half of evangelical adults were raised in an evangelical church. Another 30% were raised in the Mainline Protestant or Historically Black tradition. About 10% were raised as Catholics (the category in which I fall). Only 2% were raised in a non-Christian religion, and 6% were raised unaffiliated to any particular religion. As such, the great majority of Evangelical Christians were brought up in a Christian home, though not necessarily an evangelical home. Conversions, especially from other religions, account for a relatively small number of Evangelicals.
Figure 4.9: Sources of Members by Religion
What Happens to People Raised in Religious Traditions?
For a religious group to grow, it has to both bring in new members, either through birth or conversion, and keep its current members. A group that attracts a lot of converts but loses its members might not grow at all—it would be like pouring water into a leaky bucket. Figure 4.10 plots retention rates for different religious groups, and as shown they vary widely in their ability to hold on to members. Each religion is represented by a horizontal bar divided into three sections. The first section represents how many members raised in that religious tradition stayed in it into adulthood. The next section represents the childhood members who switched to a different religious tradition, and the final section represents the members who became religiously unaffiliated. Hindus and Protestants showed the highest retention rates, with 80% or more of their childhood members remaining in the faith into adulthood. Catholics, Jews, and Mormons have mid-range retention rates, ranging from 68 to 76%. Jehovah’s Witnesses, the religiously unaffiliated, and Buddhists had the lowest retention rates, with 50% or fewer of their members remaining in that religious group. Interestingly, these last three groups also had the highest rates of conversion from other groups—suggesting that their membership is very fluid.
As shown in the graph, the religiously unaffiliated show low levels of retention, but this might be changing over time. The data shown here are from a cross section of adults, and so it compounds the experiences of both young and old. More detailed analysis of the religiously unaffiliated has found that earlier in the twentieth century, it was common for people raised without a religious affiliation to convert t
o a religion in adulthood, typically upon marriage. In more recent decades, however, this pattern has changed. Now those raised without religion are as likely to remain unaffiliated as those raised with religion are to stay in their religion.[14]
Figure 4.10: What Happens to People Raised in Each Religious Tradition?
Much has been made about the retention rates of Catholics. About 1 in 3 people raised Catholic end up leaving for another religion or no religion at all. Coupled with this outflow, a high percentage of immigrants to this country—almost half—are Catholic, usually from Hispanic countries.[15] As a result, the total percentage of Catholics in the country remains about the same because Catholic immigrants replace the American Catholics who have left the church; however, given the large size of the Catholic Church, there are many ex-Catholics in our country. When Catholics leave their church, they are likely to join another denomination, and so American Catholicism steadily provides members to other denominations or religious groups.
When it comes to retention rates, Evangelicals probably worry the most about the retention of their young people. In order to document what actually happens to Evangelical youth, I took data from the General Social Survey of respondents. Of all the respondents interviewed since the year 2000, 409 reported being raised in Evangelical families during the 1990s. In other words, here are data about 409 Evangelical youth in the 1990s who are now between eighteen and thirty-six years old. So what happened to them? As it turns out, 74% of these Evangelical kids’ families remained Evangelicals as adults. Another 7% switched to another Christian denomination, mostly becoming Mainline Protestants. Three percent joined other, non-Christian religions, and 16% disaffiliated from religion altogether. Whether this retention rate of Evangelical youth is high or low is a matter of interpretation, and it could be argued both ways: Is the glass half full, or has the water already been spilled? However, the recent experiences of Evangelical youth show no indication of the immediate collapse of Evangelical Christianity in the United States. Furthermore, since people generally become more religious as they age, it’s possible that some of these people who left their Evangelical roots will return as they enter into mid-life.
Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You've Been Told Page 7