American Religious Identification Survey 2008

Posted by on March 9, 2009; This entry is filed under Uncategorized.
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It’s out. Will be interesting to compare with Religious Landscape Survey. Here’s a headline from a summary: More Americans say they have no religion. H/T Secular Right.

6 Comments

  1. Orion42 March 9th, 2009 at 11:48 am

    There seems to be a decent trend towards secularism, but two things are still wrong with the overall picture: Evangelicals are taking over mainline Protestantism, presumably making it more radical, and the proportion of outright atheists is still only at 1.6%, even if 12% are non-believers. This means that culturally the United States is not really getting any more secular, because most atheists are still in the closet, and fundamentalist Christianity is increasing in influence.

  2. razib March 9th, 2009 at 12:58 pm

    This means that culturally the United States is not really getting any more secular, because most atheists are still in the closet, and fundamentalist Christianity is increasing in influence. 
     
    1) i think the first is wrong. obama, and before him bush, made nods non-believers as part of american pluralism. atheists are where homosexuals were in 1990. also, the % who admitted being atheists or agnostics doubled. small in absolute terms, not relative ones 
     
    2) i don’t think americans are getting more fundie actually. ‘evangelical’ and ‘born-again’ christianity are not fixed terms, and even if the proportion is stable the nature of what those terms means is changing. i think politics and pop culture are probably lagging indicators….

  3. Inductivist March 9th, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    I’ve seen evidence that young evangelical Christians are more moderate than their parents. Of course, these generational differences could be due to an age effect. There are some of us who were secular/liberal in our 20s and turned religious/grumpy as life began to kick us in the ass.

  4. bioIgnoramus March 9th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    “atheists are where homosexuals were in 1990″: ahem.

  5. Chip Smith March 10th, 2009 at 9:03 pm

    …and before him bush… 
     
    Which Bush? When before? I wondered about precedent when I heard Obama’s inaugural speech reference to “non-believers.”

  6. razib March 10th, 2009 at 9:16 pm

    george w. bush.

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