Okay, so Vermont is the least religious state in the country and Mississippi is the most religious state. We probably didn’t need polling to tell us this.
So, how is that working out for the people of those two states?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
I’d say pretty good.
Mississippian’s can thank their god for delivering them misery, testing their faith and providing a chance to empathize with their tormented savior. Good qualities for entrance to the Kingdom of HeavenTM.
Vermonters can thank their state government for delivering affordable healthcare.
Let me quote the key part from the linked article: “Gallup classifies Americans as very religious if they say religion is an important part of their daily lives and that they attend religious services every week or almost every week.”
It’s entirely possible that Vermonters are simply much more honest than Mississippians, not less “religious.” Moreover, there are much more accurate ways to measure church attendance — which would be a measure of churchgoing, actually, not religiousness. Counting butts in seats (and pews) on Sundays (and in some houses of worship on Saturdays) would be one better way.
I see what you mean about being more honest, but there would also be people who would understate their religiosity for fear of being taken for a bigot.
Not all religious people are bigots, by any means, but there are so many religious bigots, who are so aggressive in their religious bigotry, that they give the whole enterprise of religion a bad name. For myself, when I see the phrase “Americans who say that religion is an important part of their daily lives,” one of the images that comes to mind is of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin harassing young women at an abortion clinic. Who wants to be associated with that?
Not many
But too many.
Those stats are interesting. The top 13 states are all in the South or the two top states for Mormons (Utah, Idaho). Then the four Great Plains states from Kansas, straight north to North Dakota, line up neatly behind.
The gulf between MS (61%) and VT (22%) surprised me. I thought they would be about 10 points closer. I have the feeling though that pressure to identify oneself as “religious” would be higher among evangelicals than many other major branches of Christian churches.
Effect before politics turned it into cause. Introduce prosperity into Mississippi and watch what happens.
Also, Mississippi did not get in influx of hippies in the 1970s; Vermont did. North Carolina did too, and it shows in the Triangle and in the Asheville area.
And remember the definition excludes a lot of religious Catholics and Lutherans and likely undercounts the religious in cities and in the Midwest.
Why would that exclude Catholics and Lutherans?
I knew several Catholic ladies from Central and South America who attended Mass twice a day, even here. I’d say religion was an important part of their daily lives.
My wife was Lutheran and was expected to attend services every week. I’ll admit the Bible Church I was brought up in thought once a week was barely tolerable and wanted me to attend Sunday evening services and Wednesday prayer meeting as well, but thankfully, Mother didn’t agree.
I didn’t say “exclude”. I said “undercount”. Remember that this is based on polling. Catholics and Lutherans are less likely to wear religion on their sleeve and might be more likely to seem more moderate about religion than they actually are. I’m saying that a lot of states might be more religious in reality (and in politics) than the seem in this survey.
This might be a factor in the misjudgement of Wisconsin and Michigan, for example. Look at the hash the Catholics in MI-01 (Stupak’s district) made of the ACA provisions on women’s health, for example.
Thanks for the explanation.
However regarding not saying “excludes”:
A slip of the pen, I’m sure.
I see numerous problems with this sort of analysis. First, correlation is not causation. Second, as others have alluded to, how does one measure “religiousness.” Third, religion itself spans a huge range of thought and practice. Is a Buddhist religious? An abortion-clinic bomber who self identifies as Christian?
Finally, we on the left frequently make the mistake of making certain assumptions about religion and the people who consider themselves religious. There’s a tendency to assume it’s a crutch for the weak, stupid and needy. We fail to see our own arrogance.
It’s worth remembering how rooted in religion the civil rights movement was. Had African-Americans gone to war, they would have gotten beaten down and achieved nothing. But a movement that was able to inspire people to aggressive non-violence, to allowing themselves to be beaten and kicked in the name of justice, inspired a nation and brought forth huge cultural and political shifts. Was Dr. King religious? Rosa Parks? What about Malcolm X?
These are complex questions.
I have a problem with the whole idea of trying to draw conclusions from self identification. That would seem to me to be a very good way of getting a misrepresentation.
“Religiousness” is one of those amorphous terms we seem to like to use, and that is defined solely by the individual and always in a way that helps support whatever argument one is trying to make.
Religion is, indeed, a very complicated subject with a lot of nuance.
Causation vs. Correlation?
The correlation vs. causation problem here is largely a matter of the commenters, not the survey itself. The survey results say nothing about causation; the commenters, on the other hand, mostly are keen to make claims about causation.
You cannot understand the significance of the survey results for our polity unless you grapple to some extent with the theology. The Calvinism that informs evangelical Christianity, for example, takes a very dark view of humanity and also promotes the idea that material wealth and virtue are automatically related–that the wealthy are wealthy because they’re virtuous, and that the poor suffer because they are not virtuous. If that’s your mindset, it’s no surprise that you don’t think much of government programs to help the poor.
In other words, you cannot just condemn today’s GOP for being mean spirited unless you examine the attitudes that so many Republicans imbibe from their religion.