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[A PDF copy of this study is available here. - Adobe Acrobat or Reader required]
American Religious Identification Survey
INTRODUCTION
What do adults say in America today when asked about their religion? How many belong to a church, temple, synagogue, mosque or some other place of worship? How many change their religion in the course of their lives? What is the mix of religious identification among American couples? These are among the many probing questions in the first large-scale national survey of religious identification conducted among Americans in the twenty-first century, and summarized in this report.
This report summarizes a ten-year follow-up study of religious identification among American adults, undertaken for the first time in 1990. Carried out under the auspices of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI) was the most extensive survey of religious identification in the later half of 20th-century America. That study, like the current follow-up, was undertaken because the U.S. Census does not produce a religious profile of the American population. Yet, the religious categories into which a population sorts itself is surely no less important than some of the other social-demographic categories that are enumerated by the decennial census.
Writing from the vantage point of an anthropologist of religion, Diana Eck [note 1] has observed that "'We the people' of the United States now form the most profusely religious nation on earth." We are also among the most diverse and the most changing. Often lost amidst the mesmerizing tapestry of faith groups that comprise the American population is also a vast and growing population of those without faith. They adhere to no creed nor choose to affiliate with any religious community. These are the seculars, the unchurched, the people who profess no faith in any religion.
Since the mid-1960s, when the Harvard theologian Harvey Cox's best selling The Secular City [note 2] ushered in a brief era of "secularization," American religion has been widely perceived as leaning toward the more literal, fundamental, and spiritual. Particularly since the election in 1976 of President Jimmy Carter, a self-avowed Born Again Christian, America has been through a period of great religious re-awakening. In sharp contrast to that widely held perception, the present survey has detected a wide and possibly growing swath of secularism among Americans. The magnitude and role of this large secular segment of the American population is frequently ignored by scholars and politicians alike.
However, the pattern emerging from the present study is completely consistent with similar secularizing trends in other Western, democratic societies [note 3] . For example, Andrew Greeley has found that England is considerably less religious than the USA. He also notes similarly high levels of secularism in "most countries of the European continent west of Poland."
Notes:
1 Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America: How A "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religious Diverse Nation (Harper San Francisco, 2001).
2 Harvey Cox, The Secular City (The Macmillan Co., 1965)
3 For an interesting comparison, see Andrew Greeley, "Religion in Britain, Ireland and the USA," in Roger Jowell et al, ed., British Social Attitudes: The 9th Report (Dartmouth Publishing Co., Aldershot, England, 1992).
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