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Pew on Religion in America: Impressive data, flawed conclusions

The Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life is the latest research institute to tackle the daunting task of mapping the religious terrain of America. Its conclusions, released last week in the first of two detailed reports, rest on impressive data, but are flawed by their failure to understand the nuanced boundaries that exist between and among Christian churches.

The most recent attempt before Pew to map this complicated and shifting landscape was undertaken by Baylor University in 2006. Unlike Pew, Baylor's principal contribution was its controversial characterization of the God in whom Americans believe.

Was God, to use Baylor's language, authoritarian (and therefore judgmental), benevolent (and therefore non-judgmental), critical (and therefore negative in his assessment of a world with which he does not interact), or distant (and therefore simply uninvolved)? Generally speaking, the study argued that Americans in red states were more likely to believe in a God who was intimately involved in human affairs, while Americans in blue states were prone to think of God as remote and uninvolved.

Pew agreed with Baylor in many of its overall conclusions. Who can dispute the fact that Christians are the largest religious group in America (78 percent of the population); Protestants the largest group of Christians (51 percent); and Evangelicals the largest group of Protestants (26 percent)? By comparison, Jews and Mormons tie at 1.7 percent.

Nevertheless, Pew's study diverges from Baylor's in many of its emphases. After interviewing 35,000 Americans, Pew was impressed by the fluidity of the religious market in America and the tendency of many Americans (44 percent) to change their religious affiliation at least once over the course of their lifetime.

Pew divided American Protestants into three groups: Mainline (the older Protestant denominations like Methodist and Presbyterian), Evangelical (the more recent Protestant groups like the Assemblies of God and the Nazarenes), and the Historically Black denominations (like the National and Missionary Baptist churches). Unfortunately, these categories, while intellectually defensible, are not sufficiently nuanced to fit the reality they describe.

For example, African-American Protestants are overwhelmingly evangelical in their religious faith and practice, but rarely classify themselves as "Evangelicals." "Evangelical" often means to African Americans "a white guy who doesn't get it."

Furthermore, the boundary between Evangelical and Mainline Protestants is frequently blurred. A substantial number of lay and clergy in mainline churches (including some members of the leadership) are in fact evangelical. "Evangelical" is therefore not a synonym for "a member in good standing of a traditionally evangelical denomination," and never has been. Rather, evangelicals are the spiritual heirs of a traditional Protestant Christianity influenced by Puritanism and the American Revivalist tradition.

Denominational labels decline daily in importance as they have become increasingly devoid of meaning. A century ago, a Presbyterian was a Protestant Christian who stressed predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God, while a Methodist rejected predestination and opted for the priority of human freedom.

Today the situation is far more diverse. A conservative Methodist parish may have far more in common with a conservative Episcopalian parish around the corner than with a liberal Methodist parish downtown.

Changing churches in a new city from evangelical Methodist to evangelical Episcopalian may be less a sign of religious "conversion" (or even fickleness) than an example of intense loyalty to one's original vision of Christianity. In each case, the relatively stable mindset ("evangelical") trumps the relatively unstable brand name ("Methodist").

Roman Catholics also belong to a church in flux. Indeed, Pew has even given fresh credibility to the old Catholic joke that the largest church in America is the Roman Catholic Church (25 percent), while the second largest is the informal congregation of ex-Catholics (10 percent).

Two-way traffic has always existed between Catholic and Protestant churches, especially between Rome and the Episcopal Church. What has changed is that ex-Catholics have joined a much broader range of Protestant churches. So many former Catholics are members of a United Methodist parish I know well that the very non-liturgical and evangelical chief pastor now blesses the congregation with the Catholic sign of the cross. Well, why not?

Critics are unlikely to overturn Pew's central thesis that the American religious landscape is diverse, fluid, changing and competitive. But what that thesis means requires analysts to ask questions as nuanced and complex as the reality they are studying -- in short, some better questions than they have asked thus far.

After all, no amount of data, however impressive, can wrest good answers from questions never asked.