One story that's swirling around the blogosphere right now is a new religious survey which you can read about in America's Newspaper, USA Today. Probably the takehome figure from the survey is that the percentage of people declaring that they are part of no religion has risen from 8.2% in 1990 to 15.0% now. Quite an increase. Most of the religious dominations have lost ground, but Mainline Protestant has suffered the worst: from 18.7% to 12.9%.
One blog I like to read is Andrew Sullivan, and he pointed out that Catholicism is going kersplat in New England. Huge decreases: -12% in Connecticut, -15% in Massachusetts, -16% in Rhode Island. Hell - -16% in Louisiana. Sullivan figures it's because of the shameful behavior of the church in all those sex scandals. However, Catholicism as a whole has decreased 1.1% in the US. Why?
It's the Hispanics, of course: while Rhode Island is shedding Catholics like my cat sheds hair, the percentage of Catholics has increased by 9% in Texas, the largest percentage increase for Catholics in the nation. Everything's bigger in Texas. But percentages are zerosum: something's gotta give. That's "Other Christians" (=any Christian who's not Catholic) there has been a 20% decrease in Texas. That's quite something. Most states have had a decrease in their percentage of Other Christians.
Other religions: stayed mostly the same, although there has been 8% decrease in Wyoming. Go figure. 0% change in Texas. No religion: growth in every state, but 21% in VT, 20% in NH. 7% increase in Texas, about the middle of the pack. Don't know/refuse has also seen growth, albeit milder growth.
Sullivan also has a graph showing religious percentage by age. Take it with a grain of salt: the graph doesn't show the percentage of adherents of other religions or of nondenominational Christianity or the adherents of Don't Know/Refuse. Anyway. Praise Jesus, because he needs extra praising now that some of his adherents no longer praise him.
Oh yeah, and let's be careful here: all of these percentage figures are a bit disingenuous. When I say that Texas has a 9% increase in Catholics (or whatever), that means that in 1990, n% of Texans were Catholic and now (n+9)% of Texans are Catholic. I'm not sure I made that clear above. All of this stuff has important implications: I think of politics here. Now, we know that people of no religion aren't inherently Democratic, and Hispanic Catholics aren't inherently Democratic either, and - well, the Republicans sure are becoming a bit of a gated community. Only white people of particular faiths need be Republican, because Republicans believe in one nation under a very specific God, and He doesn't want immigrants or unbelievers. My point is that the demographics show trouble for the Republicans, unless they become more inclusive or delude more people into thinking they've become more inclusive. Judging from Steele, Jindal, Palin, etc. they're going the delusion route.
But politics is kind of a boring application. I think the Catholic fall is more interesting: I'm not familiar at all with New England Catholics, but the percentage falls are quite severe, so my guess is dioceses will have to be consolidated - and probably already are. I wish I knew more about that. Sullivan is Catholic, so I'm sure he'll be covering that story. I'd like to apply the survey to other things, but I don't really feel like it right now.
Deep thought: Horace ended some of his poetry (Satires) with Jew jokes. Jews are 1.2% of the population, down from 1.8% in 1990.
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I've always been a bit confused as to why Catholics are commonly divided from Protestants on these statistics. Concerning why there's a decrease in the number of Catholics in New England, it probably has to do with American values conflicting with those of the Church. John Paul II was a pretty popular pope that was concerned about the youth of the Church. This new guy is more of the same stalwart Church officials that Americans have so many problems with.
ReplyDeleteConcerning scandals, I'd have to say that they're a pretty major cause as well as that they are the reason that my father stopped going to mass. Many Catholics are such in name only anyway, so it's pretty misleading. I don't attend mass regularly anymore (not for a few years now) since I was annoyed by several factors, but I'd still say that I'm Catholic if I'm asked in a survey.
I don't exactly see what the big deal of religion in politics is, anyway. Perhaps it's the biologist in me, but I tend to side with scientific study and reason over faith and idealism. Is free thought really that difficult for people to attain that they'd prefer their religion to tell them what to think in political issues?
AEther: The decrease - I read somewhere (sorry, don't remember where) that the decrease definitely happened around 2001, 2000, when all those sex scandals were. And yeah, you're right about what I call cultural Catholics. Same thing happens with Jews.
ReplyDeleteReligion in politics - well, I agree with you, but you know that. Some people are what I call authoritarian - they want a strong leader. This ties into religion in politics and specifically the religious right somehow, but I haven't formalized my thinking about that. Good topic for a future blog entry though! I believe John Dean wrote about it.