USCIRF Report on State-favored Religions

Last week the USCIRF (which you will learn about on Homework 7) issued a report on state-favored religions.  Here's the press release, and here is the entire report (pdf).

Some of the key points include:

• 73% of the 78 countries that have an official or favored religion, also have policies or laws that led to repression or discrimination.
• Religious minorities and women are among the mostly likely victims of this repression and discrimination.

The report is only 8 pages, so read the entire report.  Ask yourself the following questions as you read:

• Of the 78 countries with an official or favored religion, in how many is Islam the favored religion?  What about Christianity?  What other religions may be favored?
• In what parts of the world are countries with favored religions located?  Where are the ones that have discriminatory laws and policies?  Where are the ones that do not have discriminatory policies?
• Do you see any patterns?
• What types of repression and discrimination occur?
• What is the connection between having a favored religion and having discriminatory laws and policies?
• Are non-religious persons also victims?  Why or why not?

Which is Better: Conducting the Survey Online or Over the Phone?

A recent article at Religion News Service describes a new study of survey responses for the General Social Survey (GSS).  This study finds that the move from conducting the GSS via phone calls to conducting surveys online has led to a change in the set of people to agree to participate in the survey, and that this can lead to mistakes in how we interpret trends in the data.  In particular, the study finds that highly religious individuals are less likely to participate in the online surveys, and that this skews the survey results so that the surveys overstate the decline in religiosity.

There is a counterargument, however, that is also mentioned in the RNS article, namely, that the phone interviews were already overstating American religiosity so the move to online survey is producing more representative data.

This debate illustrates how, even when two people agree on what the data literally report, they may still disagree on the best way to interpret what the data actually mean.

The Church Like Me

Last week, Christianity Today published an article titled "More Americans Want Their Church to Share Their Politics."  The "more" in the title refers to a finding that the percent of U.S. Protestant churchgoers who want their fellow churchgoers to share their political views has increased.

The figure below is from that article.  According to the blue bars, compared to 2017, more people now somewhat agree or strongly agree with the statement "I prefer to attend a church where people share my political views."  According to the red bars, there has also been a similar shift in people's perceptions of whether their fellow churchgoers' views match their own.

This trend is not a new one in the American religious marketplace.  In their 2010 book American Grace, Putnam and Campbell show that this trend has been in place for decades.  Americans are increasingly sorting themselves into religious groups of people who are more like themselves.

This sorting a natural consequence of a vibrant religious marketplace in which people are able to switch religious groups at relatively low cost, thereby increasing the chance that they find a religious group that better matches their tastes.  Though it is fair to ask about the consequences of this trend.  Of course, the main one is that this sorting further reduces the diversity in the already someone homogenous churches.  Overcoming this homogeneity is difficult, an issue that is discussed in Section 11.5 of the book.

Read this article and Section 11.5 of the book to better understand the challenges with creating and fostering a diverse church.