In chapter 3, Chaves discusses three major changes in religious belief: decline in a confident belief in God, decline in a literal interpretation of the Bible, and an increase in spiritual expression.

In discussing these changes, Chaves explains that there is a correlation between higher education and a decline in the belief of a literal Bible. This statistic is not at all new nor surprising to me. When I was first looking at colleges to attend, my very religious father was quite critical about the schools that I was considering. He wanted me to attend CBU due to its close affiliation with a Christian church. The purpose of college itself: learning, obtaining a degree for a future desired career, meant nothing to him. He believed that if I attended a school that was not openly and rigorously Christian that I would become an evolution subscribing atheist. He argued this point using the same statistics that Chaves points out in this chapter. No matter how often I reminded my father that my attending college was going to have no effect on my religious beliefs, he continued to be skeptical and upset. Still today when I discuss what I am learning with him, he expresses his sort of disdain for my educational pursuit. He often argues with me about scientific studies such as GMOs and climate change. He also constantly worries that in my classes professors push their religious agendas upon me like in the film God’s Not Dead. 

To my father’s surprise professors do not participate in any sort of religious judgement or recruitment of their students. However, much to his chagrin, I am not an advocate for a literal word-for-word interpretation of the Bible. My thoughts about interpreting the Bible are also not influenced in the slightest by the classes that I attend. I think that this correlation between higher education and a more “loose” interpretation of the Bible is not so much the education itself as opposed to students’ ability to question the world around them as well as reading “below the surface.” That does not necessarily mean that they no longer believe, although that could be the case sometimes. Like Susan in “Separate Realities” doubt and questioning can further your faith and relationship with God, in this case the Christian God.

In the third chapter of Chaves book “American Religion”, he mentions that there is a small but noticeable increase in the idea of spirituality in a persons life, rather than religion. I honestly find that really interesting considering how religion carries on throughout peoples families, and typically if a parent raises their child in one religion they would normally carry on that tradition with their children and so on. However, I do see how the idea of spirituality has become more of a pleasing form of “worship”. I think that as people in my generation (the “millennials”) grow up, we have succumbed more to not doing exactly as our parents have done, and have more of an idea of free thought.

Spirituality is based more on believing there is something else out there and that this life is more complicated, but not having to force yourself to believe in someone else’s specific views and “rules”. This generation is based soley on the idea of being yourself and having the freedom to express yourself however you feel and being accepted for who you are. I think that with thinking about that concept, you can still practice a religion or do be spiritual and it definitely gives you more options. Though I personally practice religion, I appreciate those that have a spiritual path because at least you are believing in a power that is greater than yourself. I think that both religion and spirituality is good to have, especially living within this generation, where there are numerous political views there are so with religious views.

As someone who studies the social politics of religion and loves statistics, I really enjoyed this week’s readings. The section in Chapter 4 on children’s religious involvement was of heightened interest to me. Figure 4.2 clearly pointed out the decline in youth religious participation rates over the generations of the 1900s. It was surprising to me such a greater decline in religiously active fathers than mothers reported in the second half of the century. Generally, men tend to be less religious then women in America but I did not expect a difference as larger as 15% when calculating the decline.

These trends in America’s youth match the overall population of the states. The text points out that while weekly attendance has been relatively stable since 1990, other forms of involvement have been on a decline. The number of Americans saying they participate in their congregation’s activities beyond attending services has dropped from 17% to 11% from the 1990s to the 2000s. It’s pointed out that some of this is attributed or how the standard for household structure has changed over the last few decades. The “nuclear family” is no longer the norm and the traditional family model continues to participate in activities outside of attending services much more frequently.

It is clear that societal changes have contributed to the decline of religious participation in the United states. I personally believe this is mainly due to social standards becoming more liberal, especially as our society continues to progress(even if slowly) in acceptance of alternative ways of life and diversity from what previous generations have grown up with.

In Chapter Four of Religion: The Social Context, McGuire writes on the topic of measuring religiosity. She lists a set of beliefs that could qualify someone as “highly religious.” However, she points out how this measuring system can unfairly discriminate against religious minorities. This brought me to question how one can accurately measure religiosity, without letting cultural or implicit bias disrupt the data. McGuire mentions that, “a person can be highly religious in one dimension (e.g., go to church regularly, pray often) and yet not know church teachings (intellectual dimension) or have had any religious experiences.” Is it possible to avoid this problem when measuring religiosity? It seems to me that, especially in the historically Protestant United States, it may be impossible for data to give an accurate representation of one’s religious fervor. One would need to dive into the data and really pull it apart to get a more accurate measurement, but even then there may be too many factors that affect the data, once again making it impossible to accurately measure such a boundless concept. The only other option that I can think of is to cut out  the numerical measurement aspect of data and switch to an entirely interview-based system of assessment. However, this bring about new problems, such as the implicit bias of the interviewer/s, as well as variables such as cost, plausibility, etc. How can a sociologist get an accurate picture of the religiosity of a congregation if they are limited by very the human problem of bias and the immeasurability of fluid, feeling-based concepts? This is a question I hope to answer as I continue my studies in this course.

Last week we talked about the different sorting systems for religions and how you can have different subcategories within a religious category. Pulling up the map on pewforum.org was very interesting to see the differences between states and how they are different in a religious manner. I specifically looked at the “nones” category because that was the highest in WA and Oregon. This caused me to think about the earlier reading that says people always lie on polls about how much they attend church. I went out on a limb to consider that either the pacific northwest is not religious at all or is that just the region of the country that includes people that tell the truth more on the polls. The states affiliations aren’t much higher then between 30-35% which is only a few percentages higher than any other place.

The readings from Chapter 4 of McGuire’s book talks about religion and non-religion. I was interested to see how they gave a formal definition to official and non-official. Official is basically the same as unofficial except it is accepted by a group and practices on a regular basis compared to unofficial. You must go through an initiation process for most religions to be considered “one of them” and a part of the group. Being apart of an official church organization is a lot like a frat. There is something that you must do to get into the organization whereas and unofficial religion is more just like a group of friends hanging out with the same interest. A more accepting environment but not recognized by the outer world. But do we really care what others think of us? Depending on the person, the way outsiders view us is everything while to others they know their morals and what is important to them.

The past weeks reading focused on the decline of religious participation, the decline in confident belief in God, and the decrease in belief of the Bible’s truth. Chaves presented a multitude of interesting statistics to support his statements, but the most interesting conclusion he drew from data was that there was not found to be an increase in belief in life after death among regular attendees of religious service. I find that interesting because I would have assumed that ongoing attendance would strengthen or at least create such a belief due to prolonged exposure to that message. That fact makes me wonder if the group responding to the survey that indicated regular religious service attendance only attends out of habit, or some other factor? Is attendance at religious services more of a social event than a religious one? It is a curious question. Another concept Chaves discussed as being a significant force in decreased population religiosity was generational turnover. Chaves found a significant impact of frequency of childhood religious service attendance on adulthood attendance, meaning as fewer parents take their children to church when those children grow up they are less likely to attend religious services or take their children to them leading to an overall decline. Chaves pointed out the connection between family structure and religious involvement in a way I had never considered, that the decline in traditional two-parent families has greatly impacted religious service attendance. It makes sense in a variety of ways, for example a single, working parent likely does not have the time or desire to spend what is potentially one of their days off in a multi-hour religious service. I really enjoyed this section of reading because it represented generally known information with significant data as well as new insights to why the trends are what they are, which I greatly appreciated.

It is obvious that Islam and the West many differences and reasons for conflicting issues that do not allow them to create a stable alliance. Actions from Islamic history from the past, present and future have affected the perception of how the West sees the Islamic world in the Middle East.

           Today in day the Middle East is associated both good and evil in the eyes of the Western perspective. The good aspect is strictly associated with their resources of Oil. In which the Middle East has peacefully agreed to trade their oil because it makes them feel that the Middle East still has some power in the world because other countries rely of them for their oil. On the other hand the majority of other populations that do not see the political benefit of the Middle East judge their religion of Islam. This is to the point where countries like the United States, Britain and France who had been affected by Islamic influence that have resulted in terrorist attacks.

Since the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 2001,  Americans have gained a hate for Islamic states in the Middle East. The media have portrayed Muslims as terrorists under the influence of their prophet Muhammad and his teachings of the Quran. However, Americans have not considered the idea that Islam is not as foreign as they think it is. From the interpretation of the of the Quran, Muslim culture and Christianity have similar beliefs. That include the act of being a faithful and good person in the eyes of God with the idea that their souls will enter heaven after death. Although after the over generalization of Muslims has shifted from a christian like religion to terrorism, fear and violence due to social media and the news. This is only a constant recurrence because of political and religious barriers in the Middle East.

As I looked at various charts and relationships between each questionnaire, this week, regarding how many individuals believed in the Bible, affiliated or nonaffiliated with a religion, whom has left a previous religion etc. All the results of the survey have various factors affecting each person which isn’t taken into question when an individual only has three answers to pick from during these types of surveys. Chaves brings this into discussion when a poll was taken about the belief of the Bible. The results from this survey shows a decline in the belief of the Bible. The question that was asked was “Which of these statements comes closest to describing your feelings about the bible?”, the options of answering the question are “The bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”, “The Bible is the inspired word of God, but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word” or “The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men” (Chaves 32). If this survey were to be taken more recently most individuals would not know which option to pick; nor would be satisfied with these answers. It makes me come to the realization that religion and belief in bible is one the most difficult topics to get a correct grasp at through a survey, unless all questions can be free answered. 

Knowing that there is a decline in belief in the Bible doesn’t mean that less people believe in the Bible, it could be that less people believe in what they use to know about the Bible not that there is necessarily a greater number of non-believers in the world than there have been before. People may be coming more aware of the “truth” of the Bible for themselves than what they had believed as a child.

91% of Americans in 2014 believed in either God or some form of a higher power, but that does not necessarily correspond to an increase to religion, as identifying as “spiritual” instead of religious is gaining popularity. This concept of spirituality disagrees with religious organizations as a whole, and it is the belief that one does not need to belong to a church or community to practice religion. It allows individuals to shape their own religious beliefs and ideas independently of others and lacks external guidance. Why has the growth of spirituality occurred in the present day? What factors have led to the growth of independent belief systems?

Marrying someone outside of your religion is becoming more and more common in the present day, and even more progressive is that within these couples, neither is forced to compromise their own faith. It used to be that one would usually convert, however, more and more couples are married in different ceremonies respective to each other’s faith. This means that the products of these marriages, their children, are growing up in interfaith, blended households, allowing them more exposure to multiple perspectives and answers to life. Identifying as spiritual means that people who want to embrace both sides of their family can do so. They can pick and choose the aspects of religion that they truly believe in, instead of just blindly following all that is told to them.

Another possible explanation for the rise in spirituality is more exposure outside of Western ideology. For example, yoga, practiced by 20.4 million Americans, is a Hindu philosophical tradition which also has roots in Buddhism and Jainism. Yet, in my yoga class at the local community center, there are people of many different backgrounds and faiths within it. The same goes for astrology’s religious roots. Even concepts like “karma” which many people believe in regardless of religion, is originally a Buddhist and Hindu belief. These could all serve to enhance a person’s understanding of the universe and a higher power beyond just one text or one congregation.

In Chapter 3 of Chaves’ book, “American Religion, Contemporary Trends,” he discusses how the statistic that up to 91 percent of Americans in 2014 believe in God or a higher power, was broken down and asked among survey takers. In the General Social Survey (GGS) there were four out of six boxes that people could check that would indicate they believe in God or a higher power. Those statements were:

• I don’t believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a Higher Power of some kind.
• I find myself believing in God some of the time, but not at other.
• While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God.
• I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it.

While I read these statements, I questioned how the people that checked one of these four options define God or a Higher Power in their lives and what it means to them to believe in one. For someone to believe in God or a Higher Power, is there some sort practice or participation in something that would fulfill and show that belief? If someone has a belief, but no action to support that belief is it discredited by society? For instance, if someone says they believe in God but they do not go church or subscribe to a certain religion, does that mean when other people look at this person they think they are to doubt their belief? It might seem reasonable to say that even if someone does not go to church they can still believe in God, but looking at it through a sociological perspective, doesn’t society base belief off of action instead of pure thought?

It is interesting to think about the complexity of how each individual’s situation might be who checked on those four boxes.