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Our U. S.
"Religion  Stew"

Reading [ Lesson 3]
New glossary terms at end of reading

Religion is a realm in which there is lots of diversity of belief and practice, and teachers need to be generally cognizant of our nation's particular panorama.  

Heterogeneity / Homogeneity

A "stew" analogy seems better than "melting pot" as a means for considering the diversity of religious and nonreligious beliefs of the citizenry.  Trouble is, identifying the ingredients is harder than poking around in a kettle.

At a Glimpse

We can temporarily ignore relative proportions so as to concentrate our attention just on what identifiable components are to be found in our national mixture.  When we do so, we encounter absolutely astounding variety across the worldview spectrum.  

Most all of the world's major popular religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Taoism are represented in the United States population. This web resource, Teaching about Religion with a View to Diversity, offers a handy "Worldview Sampler" useful for comparing major elements of these religious heritages.  And there are innumerable variants within each of these major world religions, too.  Concerning Christianity, for example, The State of Religion Atlas^2REF(O'Brien and Palmer 1993) reports 2550 separate denominations! In the U.S., many independent Christian congregations exist.

Interestingly, the U.S. stew is an even spicier mix, because it is flavored with adherents of even more beliefs than those major ones found world-wide.  Sprinkled around the nation are people who are Chinese folk religionists, Jains, Scientologists, New Age Religionists, Bah'a'is, Rastafarians, Confucianists, Wiccans, Ethical Culturists, Druids, Santerians, Pagans, and Spiritists, just to mention a few.  

Additionally, there are countless indigenous belief traditions among the Native Americans. Then, too, there are many people who adhere to no religion whatsoever.

Let's focus on some specific information about the worldview mix within the U.S. most pertinent to the typical classroom teacher.

When U.S. religious diversity is viewed only by major world religion categories, the demographic makeup of the country actually seems to be rather uniform.  According to The State of Religion Atlas, over 85 percent of Americans claim Christian affiliation of some kind, leaving less than 15 percent of the stew for the non-Christian array, including the folks who profess no religion at all.  

A more recent national survey done to build upon the U. S. Census 2000 gives somewhat different numbers but still points out clearly that Christianity is the definitive ingredient in the U.S. religion mixture.  Based upon "self-identification" by 50,281 residential households contacted by phone, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York's American Religious Identification Survey ^2REF(Kosmin et al. 2001) reports 76.5% of the adult citizenry as claiming adherence to some type of Christianity.²

A Closer Look

Available data showing the predominance of Christians in the national makeup would seem to make U.S. schools on the whole rather homogeneous with respect to religion.  In a “broad brush” sense, perhaps they are..  However, when one gets down to the nitty gritty of family beliefs and traditions, there can be plenty of interesting differences represented among the youngsters in any classroom.  

Let's delve a bit into the diversity to be
found under that broad label, Christianity.

The The State of Religion Atlas reports that slightly over half of U.S. Christians are Protestant affiliation and nearly 30% Roman Catholic.  (ARIS 2001 give a 24.5% Catholic representation for adults.)  Although Protestant and Catholic are both Christian heritages, between these two there are some rather extensive doctrinal differences.

Compared to Catholicism elsewhere, American Catholicism may be seen as quite diverse, but compared to Protestant Christianity it presents a rather uniform picture.  Within Protestant Christianity there is a wide range of emotional investment in belief, depending on the denomination.   (Recall the 2550 denominations our Atlas source provided.)

In 1993, the same year as the Atlas came out, a book by Barry Kosmin and Seymour Lachman was published.  It reported on the results of an extensive national survey the authors had conducted in 1990 under the auspices of the Graduate School of the City University of New York.^2REF(Kosmin and Lachman 1993)  That survey is cited widely.  There have been several polls in the press in the decade since (e.g., Gallup, Scripps-Howard), but until now no study report has surpassed the 1990 Kosmin/Lachman survey of 113,000 adults in terms of perceived general usefulness as a basis for reporting information on U.S. religious diversity. Given the pace of change in the religion picture across the 1990s reported in the ARIS 2001, however, that report seems likely to replace its predecessor.  The study was a follow-up to the 1990 National Survey, and it included one of the same researchers, Professor Kosmin. 

In the year 2000, the Public Agenda conducted quite an extensive survey of American's religious beliefs.^2REF(Farkas 2001)  The intent was exploring and reporting on the perceptions of Americans concerning the role of religion in American life.  To glean some diversity of outlook within Christian perspectives, that survey used three broad categories: Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Other.  The organization relied on the 1990 Kosmin/Lachman survey, using it as basis for categorizing survey respondents and providing yet another example of how the 1990 CUNY survey has continued to be used when religious groupings within the U.S. are presented.  

Beyond Christianity

Beyond the heavy infusion in our stew of the variants of Christianity, what else is there?  

Let's not forget the nonreligious folks.  The data show them to be well represented, a significant category ingredient of our "religion stew".  
[Should we perhaps be calling the U.S. religious diversity picture by another name than religion stew?]

Most recent surveys indicate that U.S. adults who do not claim any religious affiliation at all number at least ten percent.  The ARIS 2001 study reports the "No Religion" grouping at 14.1%.

Concerning the nonreligious, the ARIS study reports a few specific variants, but none of these reported as specific types of nonreligious (atheist, agnostic, humanist) approach in numbers the 13.2% broad general "no religion" category also reported.

Whether 10% or 14.1%, at that level it appears that adult Americans who declare no religion considerably outnumber the major non-Christian religious Americans combined all together.  Take the four population categories, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.  When these are coalesced in the ARIS 2001 study, the adult count equals only 2.7% of the adult U. S. population. In fact, in that study, all remaining religious citizens beyond Christian distribute in single digit percentages, and total only 3.7%.  Note that the merged 3.7% number is fully inclusive of all those who self-identified by "other religions" in the ARIS report.    

What are the population demographics
of the non-Christian religions? 

The ARIS 2001 study puts the percentage for Jewish at 1.3%, making Judaism the largest non-Christian religious category in the adult population.  U.S. demographics for minority religions are rapidly changing, though.  The Muslim population, for example, is swiftly expanding.  ARIS 2001 reports the Muslim adult population at 0.5% (considerably lower than prior estimates and reports from studies conducted within the U.S. Muslim community, but conceivably more valid), but numbers are increasing rapidly as Islam is becoming a significant minority religion in the U.S. population.  The ARIS 2001 number for the Buddhist adult population is 0.5%, and for the Hindu adults, 0.4%.

The following table incorporates data from the ARIS 2001 that is inclusive of the various groupings mentioned within this reading. The American adults surveyed were responding to the question, What is your religion, if any?  The questioning generated over a hundred categories of response, which researchers classified into sixty-five categories.  Only the topmost categories are provided in this abridged table.  Those who refused to respond are not included in the listing.  Examples of omitted categories (<0.3% to negligible for calculation) are provided to illustrate the diversity. 

A Message for Teachers?

Given the demographic picture, the Public Agenda survey of beliefs about religion in American life previously mentioned gave considered attention to the opinions and outlook of minorities, particularly Jews, and the nonreligious.  A number of that survey's conclusions have relevance for classroom teachers.  Take for example, this paragraph: 

"If Americans are quite comfortable in the knowledge that ours is a nation of many faiths living together harmoniously, the fact remains that few know very much about the beliefs and practices of non-Christians.  Most are also fairly uninformed about the actual numbers of religious minorities in this country." [p. 14] ^2REF(Farkas et al. 2001)

"Harmony, But Little Knowledge"—That was the section title for the portion of the Public Agenda report that contained the above statement.  The concept captures both a desired classroom goal and a real situation to which classroom teachers need to be attuned. 

 "Harmony among diversity" (another way of saying, pluralism) is an admirable goal, considering the diversity that exists in beliefs and practices.  "Little Knowledge" points out the lack of public understanding of the worldview reality of America.  Surely Americans know little of the diverse beliefs and practices that exist; nor do they have adequate understanding of the demographics of religion in the U.S.  Of these two failings, knowledge of demographics can more readily be undertaken and improved.  This reading has concentrated on that aspect. 

_________

Corrections and comments invited. [last modified: 4/4/02]  
Lead author: Mynga Futrell, Ph.D.

GLOSSARY TERMS:  adherence  \  demographics  \   demography  \   heterogeneity  \  heterogeneous  \  homogeneous \   indigenous  \  worldview diversity  

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