Religion & Income

Which are America’s wealthiest religions?  This graphic points towards Hindu and Jewish people of faith as the wealthiest in the U.S.  In contrast, historically black churches of the Christian tradition as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses have more people in the <$30,000 income bracket than the others.

Good Magazine has an ongoing project on Transparency, of which this is a part.  They call it “a graphical exploration of the data that surrounds us.”  As part of the project, they’ve created this graphic to compare income levels among some of the many religious groups in the U.S. as compared to the U.S average income distribution.

Using data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Good produced this image together with Column Five Magazine. Here is a close up to give you a sense of the distribution as compared to national average income.

This data visualization has ignited some controversy through comments on the Good site, including outrage over groups that were left out, upset over the presence of more detailed data on Christianity (acknowledging the diversity within that tradition) but not honoring the diversity of other traditions–for example, by breaking down Jewish data into Orthodox vs. Reformed Jews.

Is data like this, provided without commentary, truly useful? I like the spirit of the Transparency project, but when the data doesn’t have any framing interpretation (other than that present by the structures and biases provided in the graphic) it is less illuminating than it could be.  However, maybe the very spirit of having data made visible so that it comes off the page is the whole point.

 

U.S. Millennials = Secular Future?

Is the U.S. becoming more secular, at least so far as organized religion is concerned?

This recent study by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (also using data from General Social Surveys) would say that it is.  Or, more accurately, perhaps, Millennial-age people seem to have less of a strong affiliation with a particular religious group.

Though this is an interesting study to be sure, there are at least 2 sets of variables that I feel the research should have been isolated to a more precise degree:

• Stage of Life trends vs. Generational trends: In surveying young people about religion, it’s always hard to differentiate religious identification levels that are tied to a particular life stage (ie-people between the ages of 18-29 are less likely to be affiliated with a mosque, synagogue, church or other faith community, even if they are likely to self-identify as religious later in life) from affiliation levels that are tied to genuine generational differences, shaped by the particular zeitgeist of a formative period and persistent throughout the lifetime of an individual who is part of the Millennial cohort.
• Religious vs. Spiritual Self-Identification: this proverbial distinction is quite obvious, but measuring degrees of spirituality in the Millennial group could prove instructive.  How many find meaning in supernatural experiences of some sort?

The general reaction to this research has been to seize on the secularizing trend among Millennials and to ask whether the U.S. is on an accelerating path to secularization.  This is an important question to ask.

However, we don’t have a true picture of the degree of secularization until we’ve looked at the big picture–how many find sacred experiences in nature?  How many might say they experience God, or the transcendent or Nirvana outside of a traditional religious context?

To get a more robust picture of Faith in the Future (at least a more robust picture of it as it finds expression in the slice of the world called the United States) we must look to nuanced questions.

 

1.57 Billion Global Muslim People

Though demographics provide only one glimpse of the complexity of religious expression world-wide, numbers do allow a window into the key areas to watch in the next decade.

In this recent Pew study, the “center of gravity” of the Muslim faith in the next decade resides in Asia (defined here quite broadly, from China to Turkey), with more than 972 million of 1.57 billion global Muslims total (approximately 23% of the estimated global population today).

Together, North and South America have only 4.6 million of this total global population so far, though globalization continues to drive further religious diversity and a move away from national or regionalized religions.

So what does this mean for religious understanding and polarization between Muslims and non-Muslims in the US context, moving forward?  The challenges are clear.

Gallup’s Center for Muslim Studies as well as the collaboration between Gallup and the Coexist Foundation point to alarming polarization between Muslims and non-Muslims in the U.S.

For example:

• Islam is the most negatively viewed of the major world religions
• People in the U.S. are more likely to express prejudice toward Muslims than other religious groups.

Among the drivers of this polarization?:

• Lack of knowledge about Islam
• Lack of personal relationship with someone who is Muslim.

 

2020: A More Polarized U.S. Religious Context?

Though the 2010 U.S. Census is (understandably) prohibited from asking mandatory questions about religious expression, it is important for researchers to consider how religious polarization might shape faith in the next decade.

Polarization driven by religion is often inextricably bound with polarization based on political, cultural, socio-economic or racial grounds, so it’s difficult to isolate.  However, some organizations are trying to track these questions–to establish a baseline for today & to begin to sense the context for the decade that lies ahead.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life completed the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey in 2008, and they ask questions like this, that begin to get at religious beliefs that have a polarizing effect:

Granted, the question itself is biased toward presuming “eternal life” is a concept inherent in the respondent’s religion, which it is not in all cases. Exact question wording from Gallup:

[IF RESPONDENT HAS A RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION, ASK:] Now, as I read a pair of statements, tell me whether the FIRST statement or the SECOND statement comes closer to your own views even if neither is exactly right. First/next: My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life, OR: many religions can lead to eternal life.)

Pew also tracks other metrics that can be helpful in thinking through how religiously polarized the U.S. will be in the coming decade.  Here are just a few:

1. How many people experience religion through a fusion of multiple faith traditions (see Pew’s Dec. 2009 article, Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths:  Eastern, New Age Beliefs Widespread)
2. Changes in religious affiliation, which in some cases could hint at further openness to other religions (see Pew’s April 2009 article, Faith in Flux:  Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.)
3. Religiously mixed marriages.  Pew’s 2008 Landscape Survey found that 27% of married folks are in religiously mixed marriages.  Could this lead to better understanding and less polarization?