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September 12, 2006
Baylor Religion Study Raises Interesting Questions
by Faithful Progressive
What view of God--if any-- do you hold? This USA Today analysis of a big Baylor study raises very interesting questions about what this implies for your values and politics. This in some ways coincides with Lakofff's description of nurturing and authoritarian parent models. But the Baylor study fleshes out greater detail and more categories. Personally, I think that God is all of the above and below and more--far greater than our ideas about God.
View of God can predict values, politics:
The survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with any of 10 descriptions of their "personal understanding of what God is like," including phrases such as "angered by my sins" or "removed from worldly affairs." They could check off 16 adjectives they believe describe God, including words such as "absolute," "wrathful," "forgiving," "friendly" or "distant." (snip)
Highlights of Baylor's analysis:
• The Authoritarian God (31.4% of Americans overall, 43.3% in the South) is angry at humanity's sins and engaged in every creature's life and world affairs. He is ready to throw the thunderbolt of judgment down on "the unfaithful or ungodly," Bader says.
Those who envision God this way "are religiously and politically conservative people, more often black Protestants and white evangelicals," Bader says.
"(They) want an active, Christian-values-based government with federal funding for faith-based social services and prayer in the schools."
They're also the most inclined to say God favors the USA in world affairs (32.1% vs. 18.6% overall).
•The Benevolent God (23% overall, 28.7% in the Midwest) still sets absolute standards for mankind in the Bible. More than half (54.8%) want the government to advocate Christian values.
But this group, which draws more from mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, sees primarily a forgiving God, more like the father who embraces his repentant prodigal son in the Bible, Froese says.
They're inclined (68.1%) to say caring for the sick and needy ranks highest on the list of what it means to be a good person.
This is the group in which the Rev. Jeremy Johnston, executive pastor and communications director for his father's 5,000-member Southern Baptist congregation in Overland Park, Kan., places himself.
"God is in control of everything. He's grieved by the sin of the world, by any created person who doesn't follow him. But I see (a) God ... who loves us, who sees us for who we really are. We serve a God of the second, third, fourth and fifth chance," Johnston says.
•The Critical God (16% overall, 21.3% in the East) has his judgmental eye on the world, but he's not going to intervene, either to punish or to comfort.
"This group is more paradoxical," Bader says. "They have very traditional beliefs, picturing God as the classic bearded old man on high. Yet they're less inclined to go to church or affiliate seriously with religious groups. They are less inclined to see God as active in the world. Their politics are definitely not liberal, but they're not quite conservative, either."
Those who picture a critical God are significantly less likely to draw absolute moral lines on hot-button issues such as abortion, gay marriage or embryonic stem cell research.
For example, 57% overall say gay marriage is always wrong compared with 80.6% for those who see an authoritarian God, and 65.8% for those who see God as benevolent. For those who believe in a critical God, it was 54.7%.
•The Distant God (24.4% overall, 30.3% in the West) is "no bearded old man in the sky raining down his opinions on us," Bader says. Followers of this God see a cosmic force that launched the world, then left it spinning on its own.
This has strongest appeal for Catholics, mainline Protestants and Jews. It's also strong among "moral relativists," those least likely to say any moral choice is always wrong, and among those who don't attend church, Bader says.
Only 3.8% of this group say embryonic stem cell research is always wrong, compared with 38.5% of those who see an authoritarian God, 22.7% for those who see God as benevolent and 13.2% who see God as critical but disengaged.
Posted by Faithful Progressive at September 12, 2006 02:26 PM
Comments
Ninety-five percent of Americans believe in "God", but they disagree on what "God" is like. Believing in God is worthless if the God you believe in is not real. Actually, it is worse than worthless, it is harmful. Unless you believe in the real God, the God the Bible talks about, you will have no chance of ever getting right with God. Believeing in the existance of God is not equivalent to being right with God; it is just the first step.
Posted by: Gary at September 13, 2006 01:22 PM
I always get frustrated with these studies because I never see myself or people I know in them. All of us have a very nuanced approach to God, and attempts to lump people together do a disservice to how beautifully individual all of our experiences of God are. We all have different personalities and lives, and God works in ways specific to each of our experiences. Attempts to force categories (especially so few categories) do not accomplish anything, IMO.
Posted by: john g at September 13, 2006 06:00 PM
Hi John g.
I probably am saying the same thing as you, but I see myself in *all* of the positions described in the poll. I think God's anger is the same as his sadness wrt my sin, I think God both comforts us, superintends the events that we experience, and gives us the freedom to act in the world as if he didn't exist. God is both distant and near, which is what one would expect of an omnipresent deity.
Gary:
I don't quite agree with you about holding wrong opinions about God. Having wrong theories about God doesn't imply not having a relationship with God. Since God is real, not just a concept, what matters is that God is there to relate with and as long as your ideas don't prevent you from having the right relationship they don't matter. For a lot of people, the "God who hates people" theory is the very thing that *does* prevent them from having a right relationship with God, the very theory they need to get shed of.
your friend
keith
Posted by: keith johnson at September 13, 2006 11:31 PM
I was in flight at 37K feet when my reading of the Dallas Morning News revealed this piece of information. I have severed any relationship with Baylor, the institution from which I hold two academic degrees, since this & other educational institutions fell to the fundamentalist take-over within the SBC. This survey from the Sociology Dept. was aided by funds from the Templeton Foundation with the actual polling being done by the Gallup Organization, which lends its credibility to the study. The Sociology Dept. lends some surprising credibility to its own independence, even under the shroud of fundamentalism, with an adherence to academic excellence, even under duress of the local religious regime.
Terminology used is a problem, especially with the term 'evangelical.' Rather than it representing the higher end of fundamentalism, it is shredded by lower case followers by lesser terminology. Other terms could have been more exacting too. Yet, their end result renders some surprising results. They admit to an overstating of "unchurched" & the narrow ideology which excluded many just over the question of church membership or not. By extrapalation, it was determined that 14 million needed to be pegged down to 10.8 million, and their religiosity needed to be measured with more openness. How the definition of God was fielded was the culprit. Before, not attending church meant one was atheistic; now, more leniency included believers who did not attend for various reasons. N.B. Keith's final sentence above is an example of this problem & very apropos! I have opined in prior posts about this also: it's a common theme in non-churched, more educated individuals & higher-end churches. FP's final sentence of introduction about God being "far more than our ideas about God" is right on target too.
With Gallup being involved, no doubt a promised follow-up will address some of these "growing pains" of difficulty, and perhaps Baylor's Sociology Dept. will help curb & dispel the fundamentalism that has overwhelmed it, even tho' it's still a terminal status. It'll take a lot more than this to show legitimacy to me, but thanks for the light from a dark corner.
Posted by: Arden C. Hander at September 14, 2006 01:47 AM
I've rejected most of those views of God. The Benevolant God is the closest to what I accept- a Loving God who cares and is concerned, but that tries to get humankind to be God's "hands and feet", as it were. One that is still not understood even in the slightest by a great many people. Also, one that understands and accepts human weakness, but encourages us to do better. I also have a problem with the benevolant God concept when it comes to absolute standards in the Bible, because so many people take little scriptures and turn them into full-blown laws, and have reduced the gospel to a set of rules and regulations. I think that the "absolute standard" is what Teyose was trying to get us to understand.
I also oppose any attempt to force any religious viewpoint on anyone else- we are supposed to be lights, not flamethrowers.
Posted by: Bob Bowers at September 14, 2006 01:57 AM
