Recent Threads

[Douglas Laycock]

  Michael Hout and Claude Fischer at Berkely report a number of
studies with similar results, showing that people reporting no
religious preference doubled from 7% to 14% in the 90s.  Why More
Americans Have No Religious Preference: Politics and Generations, 67
Am. Soc. Rev. 165 (2002).  Tweaking the data, they find that some of
the difference is a difference between the young adult generation and
the recently deceased generation, and that part of the difference is
people with weak religious affiliations now reporting none. This
second group is entirely confined to political liberals and
moderates; these appear to be people who do not want to report
themselves as religious because to them, conservative Christians have
given all religion a bad name.

  The Baylor study may have picked up a small reversal of trend, or
it may have asked a slightly different question. 

  Quoting Newsom Michael <mnewsom at law.howard.edu>:

> I wonder if there is a "surge" of people reporting no religion. 
The
> Baylor study -- an extraordinary piece of social science work --
that
> came out a year ago shows that 89.2% of Americans have a religious
> affiliation, and of the remaining 10.8%, the study characterizes
them as
> "persons without a religious preference, denomination, or place of
> worship."  One cannot fairly say that the unaffiliated necessarily
have
> no religion, for it is possible to be an unaffiliated Christian,
and
> even if one could say that the unaffiliated have no religion, how
is
> 10.8% a "surge?"  It would seem to me that to be a "surge" one
would
> have to have good data that showed, for example, that 25 years ago,
the
> "unaffiliated" constituted something under 5 or 6% of the American
> people.
>
> I don't know for sure, but I suspect that the "unaffiliated" have
been
> around for a long time in the United States, and in numbers not
that far
> removed from 10.8%.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
> [mailto:religionlaw-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Douglas
Laycock
> Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 11:05 AM
> To: religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: Recent Threads
>
> Some Christians proselytize; some don't.  Same with atheists.
>
> There is clearly a hostile secular reaction to evangelical activism
and
> political influence; it is visible in our politics and in some of
the
> resistance to free exercise claims, and it shows up statistically
in a
> surge of people reporting no religion in surveys about religious
> belief.  It's not a reaction to the Christian Reconstructionists,
who
> are numerically trivial.  But many of the folks having the reaction
> can't tell the difference between the conservative values voters
and
> the Christian Reconstructionists.
>
> The mission is a central religious experience in Mormonism. What
Fred
> Gedicks described is the social understanding of the faith.  The
> reality of any religion lies not in formal doctrine but in the
social
> understanding, practices, and lived experience of its faithful. 
That
> smart people on this list can doubt whether the Mormon mission is
> religious dramatically illustrates what is wrong with the
> compelled/motivated distinction.
>
> I agree -- and have testified -- that the religious motivation must
be
> substantial or primary and not just lurking in the background
> somewhere.  That means the resulting line is one of degree and not
a
> bright line.  But to say the Mormon mission is not distinguishable
from
> any other reason for taking a year off is like saying that because
1
> isn't much different from 2, and 2 isn't much different from 3, and
so
> on -- that 1 is indistinguishable from 100 or a hundred trillion or
any
> other number.
>
> Douglas Laycock
> Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
> University of Michigan Law School
> 625 S. State St.
> Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
>   734-647-9713
>
> _______________________________________________
> To post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
> http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw[1]
>
> Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed
as
> private.  Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that
are
> posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can
(rightly
> or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
>
> _______________________________________________
> To post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see 
> http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw[2]
>
> Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed
as
> private.  Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that
are
> posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can 
> (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
>
>
>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713

Links:
------
[1] 
/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.ucla.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Freligionlaw
[2] 
/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.ucla.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Freligionlaw

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20070909/12b3fa02/attachment.htm