Americans Losing their Religion

[Dardedar]

NSS STAFF REPORT
From NSS Newsline
June 14, 2006

The Good News: Americans Losing Their Religion

Given how much we hear about the rise of the religious right in America, the truth is that, like Europe, America is losing its religion. In a poll of 51,000 adults in the USA, 14 percent claimed to have no religious affiliation, a significant increase, the researchers say, from eight percent in a similar study they conducted in 1990.

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) found that those most disaffected with religion were under 35 years of age. In that age group, 23 percent of the men and 18 percent of the women said they did not follow any organized religion.

The researchers were surprised to find that 43 percent of the unaffiliated were former Roman Catholics, given that Catholics make up slightly less than one-quarter of the general population in the United States.

Ariela Keysar, a demographer at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut said: "Why aren’t ex-Catholics becoming Baptists or something else? Instead, they are deciding to distance themselves from organized religion. So there is something major going on in Catholic religious identity. It’s in transition."

For the ARIS study, telephone pollsters questioned randomly chosen households across the country in 2001. They began with a question they had first posed in 1990 during a survey of 110,000 households: "What is your religion?"

The more recent ARIS survey found that 19 percent of baptized Catholics leave the church, compared with an average of 16 percent for Americans of all faiths. But an exceptionally large number of Catholics who drop out (28 percent) do not join another faith. The next largest group to quit not only their church but religion entirely are Methodists, at 17 percent.

The ARIS study did not collect anecdotal information that might explain why Americans are leaving organized religion, or why such a large proportion of Catholics are among them. Keysar said the authors hoped to study secularization and denomination-switching patterns in detail in a national survey planned for 2010.
---

http://www.humaniststudies.org/enews/?id=247&article=5

[Hogeye]

I suspect that the number of atheists+agnostics+deists is much larger than 14%. Speaking to people who claim to "believe in god," I've noticed that quite a few have such a fuzzy notion of god that they may accurately be considered closet deists or closet agnostics. An amazingly large number, when asked what they mean by god, say essentially that god is the universe, or cosmos, or some such. This is a far cry from the belief in a supernatural intelligent critter of true theists.

Have there been any surveys on this?

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Generally speaking the better off economically a country gets, the less the people seem to worry about god(s) - apparently when things are going well, people feel they are in control of their lives and don't need any help. When things aren't going well, they don't feel in control and look for someone/something bigger and stronger to help them, be it people in groups (unions, government, churchs) or god(s).

[Betsy]

In the present case, perhaps the failure of our "religious right" president and his administration has added to religion's detractors.

Although, at the rate we're going, religion might go on the rise again. Remember in the book "On the Beach", when the world was wiped out by nuclear holoucost, and there were only a few people left in Australia who were about to die - they all started going to church...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Betsy, "On the Beach" illustrates my point. I think you are right about religion swinging up again - not just the fundies, as much as they want to legislate their own version, but all sects. America may have a high per capita income, but the US median household income is $55K (Arkansas is $46K), and American also has a relatively high per capita outgo (cost of living here is much higher than most parts of the world - partly due to things Americans consider necessities that the rest of the world considers luxeries, it's true). The economy is not stable, for all Bushco's blather, the "recovery" is nowhere near where it should be this many years after the "recession" is officially over. Global warming is real, but the results are very uncertain - we know they're mostly bad, but how bad and where the worst will hit is (at least for us laypeople) totally up in the air - and most of us know that whoever they are bad for, the worst will be for us bottom-quarter income people. Ditto job "outsourcing" and wage depression due to influx of immigrants, legal or not (the real crux of the immigration issue). And as far as terrorism goes, the scare tactics that kept W's numbers up until recently also make for very insecure feelings. All of the above traditionally drive people to the nearest priest/preacher for some kind of magic words to increase feelings of (not actual) security.

[Hogeye]

I just finished a book called "The Great Reckoning" by Davidson and Rees-Mogg. They agree that superstition and religion will increase when the crisis hits. The crisis they see coming is, however, a monetary crisis. Unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, US savings rates are extraordinarily low. Also unlike the Great Depression, there will likely be inflation rather than deflation. Both these factors would make the coming depression worse than the earlier one.

[Dardedar]

US savings rates are extraordinarily low. Also unlike the Great Depression, there will likely be inflation rather than deflation. Both these factors would make the coming depression worse than the earlier one.

DAR
However, as I heard one economist comment when addressing this often considered comparison, the population is FAR more wealthy in assets and real property than people were in the 20's. Plus we have vast efficiency and technological improvements, the amount of produce from an acre etc. I think the US will hit a wall, and hit hard, but I don't think it will necessarily be as bad or as quick to hit as the great depression. If we are lucky it will be a slow glide down.

D.

[Hogeye]

Well, yes, I think I exaggerated a little bit. I think that the coming depression come on more suddenly, and be more intense at first, but it probably won't last near as long.

The Great Depression actually started slowly. Contrary to popular belief, the GD did not start suddenly with the crash of October 1929. In fact, newspapers were still writing about good times in 1930, thinking the stock market crash was just an anomoly. Besides, only rich guys owned stock back then; most folks didn't care less about that. OTOH market crises due to hyperinflation come suddenly like a hurricane; inflation increases exponentially. Look at 1790s France or post WWI Germany to see some classic examples. From the time some Chinese central banker begins unloading T-bills to the burst where all central banks unload hysterically may happen in under a week. Suddenly the number of dollars in circulation will increase a hundred-fold, a thousandfold ... It'll be like a car hitting a brick wall - sudden and devastating.

So almost immediately, virtually all financial assets will be wiped out (these being denominated in dollars or dependent fiat money.) You make a good point, Darrel, about real assets - they won't disappear. But how many homeowners own outright, without a mortgage? Chances are, banks are going to call in loans. Many/most mortgages are "variable rate" (so won't be helped by inflation) and from what I hear, many people have little equity, or even negative equity for some modern home financing schemes. And yes, agricultural productivity has gone up per acre and factories are more efficient than in the 1930s, but the population has gone up, too. Are they more efficient on a per capita basis? Finally, inflation hits capital goods the hardest - it is the efficient capital-intensive factories that will close down first and fastest.

Then again, hopefully we won't have an FDR with warmed-over "war socialism" (actually fascism) prolonging and exacerbating the depression. Ideally we'll see the breakup of the US into smaller, freer, and more efficient entities. So when the fever breaks, most of us will be better off than before.

[Dardedar]

From the time some Chinese central banker begins unloading T-bills to the burst where all central banks unload hysterically may happen in under a week.

DAR
I do think that's possible.

And yes, agricultural productivity has gone up per acre and factories are more efficient than in the 1930s, but the population has gone up, too. Are they more efficient on a per capita basis?

DAR
Absolutely, productivity is through the roof because of technology.

So when the fever breaks, most of us will be better off than before.

DAR
Hurray!

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Part of how bad it will be depends on how dependent we are on foreign oil for energy when the balloon goes up. Our high productivity is based on technology, but technology is energy based. (FYI - The Great Depression, while dated from the 1929 stock market crash, began world wide in the early 1920s - ask Louisiana rice farmers about 1925 prices - there's a reason why farm parity was originally based on 1919 prices.) If the federal government doesn't just go down the tube, to probably be replaced by some ultra-despotic form of government (i.e., Napoleon after the French revolution), we may be possibly able to scrape through on WPA and CCC type programs until we restabilize. (The reason America didn't restabilize until WWII, ironically, is FDR wasn't willing to go into enough debt in putting money back into the local economies with works projects - WWII took the cap off.) Those type of programs could (I'm not saying will) do what we should be doing already - building wind power plants and cleaning up areas that used to be productive fisheries and can be again - which could put us back on our feet within a few years. If it goes the inflation rather than the deflation route, unfortunately revolution is probable.

[Hogeye]

Part of how bad it will be depends on how dependent we are on foreign oil for energy when the balloon goes up.

Right. I'm anxious to hear what you think about ethanol. See the new thread "Ethanol."

If the federal government doesn't just go down the tube, to probably be replaced by some ultra-despotic form of government (i.e., Napoleon after the French revolution)...

Right, and Hitler after the German hyperinflation. Of course, I'm hoping the central State will "go down the tubes" and devolve into 50-100 ministates and city-states and autonomous regions. The good news is that the American tradition of voluntary associations and local governing gives an advantage over historical France and Germany. The danger of a new despotism is a major motivation for me to publicize the libertarian alternative.

Those type of programs could (I'm not saying will) do what we should be doing already - building wind power plants...

Here's where we part company. I thing more government programs exacerbating inflation and encouraging dependence on rulers, planners, and centralized authority is absolutely the wrong way to go. That only increases the chance people will choose dictatorship over freedom when we get to the crossroad.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

BRI Energy is one Hogeye and I agree on. I have contacted the company and until they get some commercial plants built, they are not considering "going public" so small stakeholders can get a piece of the action. At maximum, BRI Energy plants could cover approximately half of our current liquid fuel requirements as well as approximately half of our current electricity requirements (based on our society's carbon-based waste generation, combining agricultural, industrial, and urban), considerably more than half if we implement already technologically available efficency changes. However, it takes big bucks, big bucks private sources are unlikely to put up without governmental guarantees, to get those plants built and online - and it will take changes in the current tax/legislative structures to convince the infrastructure owners (Exxon, AEP, etc) to either build the plants or buy the output of plants built (and owned) by someone else, with the petroleum industry being the harder to convince, since they are making out like the bandits they are under the status quo.

People do not choose dictorships, they submit to them. They choose between submitting and prison/torture/death. Those kinds of choices are what send the masses back to the churches they left when times were better (the more or less point of the original posting). Government was designed to be common folks' protection from corporate bullies. When government itself is the bully, the only bigger and stronger around is god. It's either faith or despair. The despairing kill themselves, which leaves the faithful (and a few atheists hiding out and trying to quietly undermine the tyrannical system).

[Hogeye]

Barbara and I agree: cellulosic ethanol is where it's at.

We agree that ethanol infrastructure takes big bucks, but I disagree that it takes govt guarantees, tax incentives, convincing the established petroleum industry, and so on. It's actually much simpler than that. All it will take is higher petrol prices. When the price of gas becomes much higher than the price of ethanol, the money will flow in from private sources. Have no worries about that! (Now, if we can unhijack this thread and move ethanol discussion to the other...)

People do not choose dictatorships, they submit to them.

In some cases, in the short run. But in the long run all governments, from dictatorship to democracy, depend on the acquiescence of the majority. Even in the short run, when the money's no good and the central govt loses legitimacy, people outside Russia, uh, the Washington DC area will be hard to control. If most people opt for local control, I don't think the remnants of the former State will be able to do much about it. The dissolution of the USSR proves that it can happen, and Americans have a huge advantage over former Soviet people in terms of voluntary organizations and local government. I am optimistic that Americans will opt for devolution rather than dictatorship, and the few diehards left in WashingtonDC will be powerless to do anything about it. Call it the Soviet breakup model.

Government was designed to be common folks' protection from corporate bullies.

LOL! You're pulling my leg. The State predates corporations, and even capitalism. The reality is: States were designed to systematically plunder productive people. States started when a roving bandit leader realized that, instead of pillaging a village and leaving everyone dead or destitute, he could have a henchman oversee the village and plunder it continuously. Sustainable robbery. "Organization of the political means," as Franz Oppenheimer put it.