Making Sense Of America's Religiosity

Albert Mohler interviewed Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor involved in a recent study of religion in America. There's a lot of valuable information in the interview, but some significant points weren't made during the program or weren't given enough emphasis.

Putnam claims that Americans are deeply religious, but they apparently:

- are highly pluralistic in their religious beliefs

- largely consider politics more important than religion

- reject some of the most difficult aspects of the religion they associate with (e.g., its exclusivism)

Putnam contrasts American religiosity to that of other nations. But if those other nations aren't particularly religious, how much significance is there in saying that Americans are more religious? A majority of the people in deeply religious America can't name the four gospels, and the average American spends more than five hours a day watching television (and they aren't watching much religious programming).

It seems that Putnam found that sexual issues, and premarital sex in particular, are significant in shaping people's religious views. I've often quoted some comments the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright made several years ago. In an interview with Christianity Today (February 8, 1999), he commented:

Probably they [some scholars] learned to disbelieve in the miracles of Jesus at the same time they first had sex. For them this stuff is part of liberation. To say maybe the conservative position is right is really to undermine their lives."

I asked Wright whether that would describe a younger generation of scholars. "Oh, no," he said, laughing; "they have sex much earlier."

Sex isn't the only factor involved, but it is one big factor among other factors.

Putnam also comments that those without a religious affiliation often say that one of the reasons they're not more involved in organized religion is that it's too political. I suspect that many of those people are just repeating something they've heard from the media or from other people. There's often a lot of media coverage of "the religious right" during election seasons and in other contexts. People looking for excuses for their behavior will repeat a stereotype they've gotten from the media or elsewhere, even if the stereotype is false. Saying that churches are too political is an easy, but unconvincing, excuse for not being more involved in organized religion. There isn't much emphasis on politics in Evangelical churches or in churches in general, from what I can tell. And the larger emphasis on politics outside of the church setting, such as on some Christian radio programs, often makes sense or isn't much different than the sort of emphasis we see in other circles (in the media, schools, unions, environmental groups, among atheists, etc.). Do people who avoid organized religion because it's allegedly too political also avoid those other groups? If not, then what good reason do they have for making that distinction?

We should also remember that Americans are behaving this way in an information age, with such advanced technology, and with so many political freedoms. People often suggest that previous generations were, or might have been, as bad or worse. (Our polling data only go back so far.) But even where that's the case (and I would want evidence for it), modern Americans are acting this way despite having many advantages that previous generations didn't have. There are some disadvantages as well, like having to process more information due to having access to sources like the web. But does it make sense for a society with our advantages to make so little progress (assuming there has been progress on the relevant issues)?

During the interview, Putnam repeatedly tried to cast the study results in a positive light, as if religious people should be largely pleased with what he's reporting. But even much of what he portrayed as good news is actually bad news, and even he found some of the results disturbing.

For some more accurate assessments than Putnam's, see here.