Media still trying to get religion

So are academic scholars at some of our institutions of higher learning. They try to analyze religion from time to time, and especially in recent years, since the ‘red state-blue state’ thing.

When sociologists at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR) commenced a landmark three-year survey on religion in America, they did something different. The survey has been called the most extensive and sensitive study of religion ever conducted, with more than 1,700 people who each answered nearly 400 questions on American religion and spirituality.”We wanted to do something that most surveys don’t and that is to probe questions that are typically not asked on surveys,” said researcher Dr. Byron Johnson, professor of sociology and co-director of the ISR, when the results were released last month. ISR researchers also organized their data according to brand-new categories, dividing American religion into four ways that we can view God — Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical and Distant.

They’re always thinking, these scolars.

As Baylor has noted, this is certainly unique compared to the old method of trying to predict what people would do by which denomination they belonged to. Over the last few decades that has proven to be an ever-weakening predictor of moral and political behavior, particularly as denominational definitions have become more elastic and fewer people are attending a church because of the specifics of its doctrine. The current sociological truism is that a Methodist who finds his way to church three times a week and a Catholic who attends daily Mass have more in common than either does with a Christmas-and-Easter liberal in his own church.

It doesn’t take a scholar to recognize that.

So denomination has been a sociological non-starter for a while. More interesting is that at least one Baylor team member is claiming that its Type of God categories are more predictive than church attendence or Bible reading. This is novel, and if it’s true, a lot of political strategists will be up late digesting the Baylor numbers. But for the average reader, the big drawback of the study at present is that its categories do not have a natural ring to them. It was easy to understand “Presbyterian” or “frequent churchgoer.” It’s a lot harder to figure out what Baylor means by its Critical God, who “does not interact with the world. Nevertheless… still observes the world and views the current state of the world unfavorably.” If you walked through the average church, where Baylor claims the majority of such believers reside, and read the definition from the pulpit, I’m not sure how many would understand it well enough to raise their hands.

So Baylor claims the “average” church has a “majority” of believers who view God as a “Critical God?” If that large population of mainstream believers wouldn’t understand this depiction of them, how accurate could it be?

Is this more of the ongoing attempt to define down standards in America? Those who don’t get religion, keep trying.