This article examines the changing character of religious pluralism in America since midcentury. Major changes bringing about a new climate include an expanding pluralism, declines of the liberal establishment, and a conservative religious and moral resurgence. As a result there have been broad shifts and realignments of religion and culture and a changing social and demographic basis of religion in the country. Patterns of religious switching point to a new voluntarism in identifying with the religious tradition of one's choice. The demographics suggest that in the future the liberal sector of Protestantism will continue to decline and that the divergence of conservative religious and secular cultures may intensify.
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References
1.
1. The “Unchurched American” Study (Gallup Organization, Inc., 1978).
2.
2. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon (New York: Harper & Row, 1931), 2:796.
3.
3. Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955).
4.
4. These figures are based on a composite sample of over 17,000 Americans from the General Social Surveys, from 1972 to 1984. These surveys are conducted by the National Opinion Research Center and provide a representative sampling of the adult population. Unless otherwise indicated, data reported in this article are taken from these surveys.
5.
5. Herberg, p. 234.
6.
6. Religion in America, 1984, Gallup Report, no. 222, pp. 54-55 (March 1984).
7.
7. The unchurched were those who reported not being a member of a church or synagogue, or had not attended a religious service in the past six months apart from weddings, funerals, or special holidays. See “Unchurched American.”
8.
see also Dean R. Hoge and David A. Roozen, eds., Understanding Church Growth and Decline, 1950-1978 (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1979).
9.
9. Religion in America, 1984.
10.
10. See Marty's introduction to Hoge and Roozen, Understanding Church Growth and Decline.
11.
see also Harold S. Himmelfarb and R. Michael Loar, “National Trends in Jewish Ethnicity: A Test of the Polarization Hypothesis,”Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 23: 140-154 (June 1984).
12.
12. Emerging Trends, a newsletter published by the Princeton Religion Research Center and the Gallup Organization, regularly provides data on these trends. See, for example, vol. 6, no. 4 (Apr. 1984).
13.
13. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 81 percent of white born-again Protestants voted for the Reagan-Bush ticket in 1984, as compared to 58 percent of white Catholics, 69 percent of other white Protestants, and 32 percent of Jews. See New York Times, 25 Nov. 1984.
14.
14. John S. Hendricks, “Religious and Political Fundamentalism” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1977).
15.
15. There is little unanimity on what precisely the new class is or how to define it. See Irving Horowitz, “On the Expansion of New Theories and the Withering Away of Old Classes,”Society, 16 (2): 55-62.
16.
16. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Meridian Books, 1929).
17.
17. Peter L. Berger, The Heretical Imperative (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980).
18.
18. Talcott Parsons, “Christianity and Modern Industrial Society,” in his Sociological Theory and Modern Society (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 413.
19.
19. See his “Selective Catholicism: How They Get Away with It,”America, 30 Apr. 1983.
20.
20. See William McKinney and Wade Clark Roof, “A Social Profile of American Religious Groups,”Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 1982 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press), pp. 267-273.
21.
21. See Tom W. Smith, “America's Religious Mosaic,”American Demographics, pp. 19-23 (June 1984). Also using the General Social Surveys, Smith looks at five birth cohorts since the early 1900s.
22.
22. Richard J. Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984).
