A Guy in the Pew

As my priest, Nicholas Knisely knows all too well, I carry my blackberry around with me wherever I go--including to church on Sundays. (Nicholas does too!). And I hardly avoid the Internet on Sunday--and I even have an excuse since I am the Sunday editor of the group Episcopal news blog, the Lead . Still, I think this suggestion by Michael Glasser makes a great deal of sense: Lately, I’ve been experimenting with taking one day each week away from work completely. You might think this would be an easy task as there’s a “weekend” each week that allegedly offers up two full days of rest. And yet, as I work at home, the shiny big screen of the iMac beckons at all hours, and I am often in front of its white glow the first thing every morning and the last thing at night. So, being that I am Jewish — though not very religious — I decided to shut down the computer each Friday night at sunset until Saturday at sunset, the traditional time of the Jewish Sabbath. I make exceptions when I need to ...

Ian McEwan has a fascinating two part series in the Guardian on "end time thinking." Part one is here , and part two is here . Here are some interesting points: First, McEwan notes that "end time" thinking is quite pronounced in the United States: Five centuries later, the United States, responsible for more than four-fifths of the world's scientific research and still a land of plenty, can show the world an abundance of opinion polls concerning its religious convictions. The litany will be familiar. Ninety per cent of Americans say they have never doubted the existence of God and are certain they will be called to answer for their sins. Fifty-three per cent are creationists who believe that the cosmos is 6,000 years old, 44 per cent are sure that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead within the next 50 years. Only 12 per cent believe that life on earth has evolved through natural selection without the intervention of supernatural agency. In genera...

Well this is provocative. Razib of Gene Expression has decided to examine a variety of data about various religious denominations to see if there is any relationship between the views on bibical literalism of each denomination and factors such as IQ scores and education. Here is the chart on education, using the demographic data from The Pew Religion Survey : Razib notes that the R2 goes up to 0.81 (the measure of the fit of the curve, and thus the correlation) if you exclude Roman Catholics. Razib does not think that education necessarily "causes" a reduced beleif in bibical literalism. Instead, her thinks that a different dynamic-focused on the education of the clergy, is at play: What I think is going on is simply what we might term the Wisdom of the Crowds ; people conform to the social and religious group which they identify with. Biblical literalism flourishes because most people trust pastors and parents who preach it. Similarly, a more metaphorical reading flourishes ...

It turns out that Americans do not have a one-size-fits-all approach to our preferred faith community. some like large churches; others like small. some prefer contemporary services; others prefer more traditional services. Some move to more conservative churches; others moved to more liberal churches. Here is the report from the Christian Post : In a study of over 1,000 American adults, released Monday by Ellison Research, 69 percent of all Americans who currently attend worship services have attended more than one place of worship - which includes churches, temples, or houses of worship - as an adult. Only 31 percent say their current place of worship is the only one they have regularly attended since age 18. When changing where they worship, not all opt for a bigger congregation or a more contemporary worship style. When choosing size, Americans are nearly evenly divided between a larger or smaller congregation. Forty-three percent of American Protestants have moved to a larger cong...

This map shows which of eight major Christian denominations has a plurality in the United States, county by county. the map obviously does not capture the full story given the rich diversity of Christian denominations in the United States, but it does show much of the regionalization of the major denominations. The map and analysis can be found here . Hat Tip to my friend Jim .

Thanks to a debate occurring among several bloggers about why lower income/lower status voters seem attracted to social conservatives such as Mike Huckabee, I discovered a nearly year old analysis by Garance Franke-Ruta, a former senior editor at the Prospect . She explores some recent polling data, and explains a much more nuanced view of what is happening on "values" issues in the American public. The article is very rich and well worth a read, but I will highlight three points. First, she explores how the public is moving on two different axis of a matrix: authority versus individualism on one axis and fulfillment versus survival on the other. The polling data should give no comfort to wither conservatives or liberals: Between 1992 and 2004, for example, the percentage of people who said they agree that “the father of the family must be the master in his own house” increased ten points, from 42 to 52 percent, in the 2,500-person Environics survey. The percentage agreeing t...

Bad news. A decade long trend of reductions in the teen birth rate is reversing: After falling steadily for more than a decade, the birth rate for American teenagers jumped last year, federal health officials reported yesterday, a sharp reversal in what has been one of the nation's most celebrated social and public health successes. The birth rate rose by 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 among 15-to-19-year-old girls, after plummeting 34 percent between 1991 and 2005, the National Center for Health Statistics reported. This is concerning," said Stephanie J. Ventura, who heads the center's reproductive statistics branch. "It represents an interruption of 14 years of steady decline. Now unexpectedly we have an increase of 3 percent, which is a significant increase." Ventura said it is too soon to know whether the increase was an aberration or the beginning of a trend. But she said the magnitude of the rise, especially after many years of decline, is worrisome. ...

Well this is a very interesting graph from Pew Global Research that shows an inverse reltionship between a nation's per capita GDP and its level of religiousity. Religiosity is measured using a three-item index ranging from 0-3, with "3" representing the most religious position. Respondents were given a "1" if they believe faith in God is necessary for morality; a "1" if they say religion is very important in their lives; and a "1" if they pray at least once a day. Note that the United States is an outlier--our level of relgiousity is far higher than would be predicted by our per capita GDP. And several wealthy Muslim countries (most notably Kuwait) are also outliers. Pew offers this analyis: Global publics are sharply divided over the relationship between religion and morality. In much of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, there is a strong consensus that belief in God is necessary for morality and good values. Throughout much of Europe, ho...

Freakonomics has an interesting post about how disadvantaged children who grow up in religious households do better on many measures than children who don't: According to Rajeev Dehejia, an economics professor at Tufts University, one answer may be to join a church. Dehejia, along with Thomas DeLeire, an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Erzo Luttmer and Josh Mitchell, from the Harvard economics department, have written a new working paper called “ The Role of Religious and Social Organizations in the Lives of Disadvantaged Youth .” In it, they test the impact of religion on more than 20,000 children raised by “disadvantaged” families, as defined by factors like family income, the parents’ levels of education, and “child characteristics including parental assessments of the child.” Using the National Survey of Families and Households, they questioned each child on the amount of involvement his or her parent had with a religious organization, then obse...

Theo Hobson has a very interesting comment on the benefits of marraige--and how and why our culture display a very different (and inaccurate view) of marriage: In a brilliant article in today's Telegraph, Rowan Pelling considers the poor image of marriage . The problem is that defenders of this institution make it sound dull, dutiful and socially responsible. To the average singleton, she writes, it sounds like "a domestic penitentiary". She adds: "What nobody evangelises is the incredible liberation many people find within marriage. Most unwed people under 40 are a seething mass of insecurities. They may be free to go backpacking in Goa at a second's notice, but they're imprisoned by self-doubt and vulnerability." The stability of marriage, she goes on, "provides a platform from which risky and exhilarating enterprises can be launched". She concedes that the psychological security of a strong relationship is also possible outside of marriage, ...

Pew Research released an analysis this week of how the American public views different religious faiths. As you can see from the graphic above, a majority have unfavorable views about atheists, and sizable minorities have unfavorable views about both Muslims and Mormons. One interesting fact is that Evangelicals are viewed far less favorably than Jews or Catholics--which is likely the result of political activity by prominant Evangelical leaders in the past. Here is the analysis: The Muslim and Mormon religions have gained increasing national visibility in recent years. Yet most Americans say they know little or nothing about either religion's practices, and large majorities say that their own religion is very different from Islam and the Mormon religion. A new national survey reveals some notable similarities, as well as major differences, in the ways that Americans view these faiths and their followers. Public impressions of both religions are hazy – 58% say they know little o...

Paul Klugman of the New York Times has just started a blog , and one of his first posts--indeed, the post introduces his blog--is on the issue of inequlaity in the United States. It is well worth reading. He argues in that post that inequality in the U.S. is the result of political decisions--not inpersonal market forces. Here are some highlights: In fact, let me start this blog off with a chart that’s central to how I think about the big picture, the underlying story of what’s really going on in this country. The chart shows the share of the richest 10 percent of the American population in total income – an indicator that closely tracks many other measures of economic inequality – over the past 90 years, as estimated by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. I’ve added labels indicating four key periods. These are: The Long Gilded Age : Historians generally say that the Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era around 1900. In many important ways, though, the Gilded Age...

I have posted a few times about empirical evidence about diversity. Studies show that diversity is hard work--social distrust appears to rise in diverse communities. Studies also seem to show, however, that decisionmaking improves when a diverse group of decisionmakers are involved. Today, I found a very interesting study that uses census data to qaunitify the increased housing costs that people arw willing to pay for homogeneity: Using restricted-access Census data, a new study examines a quarter-million households on a block-by-block basis to yield new results about the correlation between household attributes and school quality. The researchers find that, conditional on income, households prefer to self-segregate on the basis of both race and education. Economists have long been interested in estimating household preferences for school and neighborhood attributes, given their relevance to many central issues in applied economics," write Patrick Bayer (Duke University and NBE...

As many of you know, I am responsible for posting the Sunday posts on the Episcopal Cafe's The Lead . Today I have two posts that have a common theme: in a word, games. In the first post, I discuss the rather odd assertion by an Oxford philosophy professor that there is some probability that we are the virtual reality creations of some future game player. To put it bluntly, we may be the creation of some future teenager. As odd as this theory may be, it is based on some logic, and it raises some interesting perspectives on how we should live our life. Read that post here . In the second post, I write about games of conscience--games that teach us something about the ethics of living in a world of scarcity. Read that post here .

As the father of a toddler, this book review in the New York Times really hit home: For children, play is easy. You can do it anytime, anywhere, with anyone, and it’s fun. For adults, play is hard. They want to know if it’s safe for their kids, if it’s educational, if it promotes motor coordination, if it’s environmentally friendly, if it will look good on a preschool application. The tension between how children spend their free time and how adults want them to spend it runs through Howard P. Chudacoff’s new book, “Children at Play: An American History” (New York University Press), like a yellow line smack down the middle of a highway. “Kids should have their own world, and parents are nuisances,” said Mr. Chudacoff, a professor of history at Brown University. His critique is increasingly echoed today by parents, educators and children’s advocates who warn that organized activities, overscheduling and excessive amounts of homework are crowding out free time and constricting children’...

I realize that this may make great sense--especially for a spouse without an income--but this article in the New York Times about people timing their divorce around the real estate market was vaguely disturbing: A little-noted side effect of the property boom of the past decade has been the real-estate-enabled divorce. Home values might have slid in some markets, but in the New York City region, where prices remain high, divorce professionals like therapists and lawyers, along with real estate brokers, say unhappily married couples are cashing in appreciated homes to underwrite a split. “The equity that there is in real estate is one of the impetuses why there are so many divorces,” said Nancy Chemtob, a Manhattan divorce lawyer, adding that the net worth of her clients has doubled in the past three years mainly thanks to real estate. The price of the average Manhattan apartment was $1.3 million as of June, up 7 percent from a year ago, according to the real estate brokers Brown Harris...

J.K. Rowling has stated what should be ovious to any reader of the Harry Potter series--particularly the final book: The book is inspired by Christian themes (Spoiler Alert) : CHRISTIAN motifs play a central role in the Harry Potter stories, author JK Rowling told an American television audience on July 29. Participating in a question-and-answer session on the NBC news magazine show Dateline, Rowling was asked by a child in the studio audience what the significance of her calling Harry Potter the “chosen one” might be. “Well, there -- there clearly is a religious — undertone,” to the stories, Rowling said. She added that it had “always been difficult to talk about that because until we reached Book Seven, views of what happens after death and so on” an explicit discussion of the books’ Christian motifs “would give away a lot of what was coming.” Rowling stated “my belief and my struggling with religious belief, and so on, I think is quite apparent in this book.” Asked by the televis...

In the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine , researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that religious physicians are less likely than non-religious physicians to serve the poor: Although most religious traditions call on the faithful to serve the poor, a large cross-sectional survey of U.S. physicians found that physicians who are more religious are slightly less likely to practice medicine among the under-served than physicians with no religious affiliation. In the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious--as measured by "intrinsic religiosity" as well as frequency of attendance at religious services--practiced among the under-served, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none. "This came as both a surprise and a disappointment...

Robert Samuelson has a gem of a column . He oddly starts talking about the virtues of the comma, but then riffs to a larger theme about the increased speed by which we now live our lives. I'll let you read the ode to the comma on your own. Here is what Samuelson has to say about the speed of everyday life: It is true that Americans have always been in a hurry. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville has a famous passage noting the "feverish ardor" with which Americans pursue material gains and private pleasures. What's distinctive about our era, I think, is that new technologies and astonishing prosperity give us the chance to slacken the pace. Perish the thought. In some ways, it seems, we Americans have actually become more frantic. Evidence to support this hunch hasn't been hard to find. Exhibit A is a story a few months ago in The Post headlined " Teens Can Multitask, But What Are Costs?" We meet Megan, a 17-year-old high sc...

We like to assume that a diversity has value, but is there any empirical evidence that a diverse group will make a better decision? The Scientific American blog discusses a jury experiment that offers empirical evidence that diversity does matter: Many liberals share the vague intuition that a racially diverse (or representative) jury is "better" than a racially homogeneous one. The arguments for this view tend to be murky, though. Who benefits, and how, from racial diversity in the jury box? In a recent paper in Psychological Science [pdf download ], Tufts University psychology professor Samuel Sommers argues that this is an empirical question, and he provides a surprisingly powerful answer: when making a complex, ambiguous decision, everyone in a diverse group benefits. . . . In the study, Sommers asked 30 different mock juries, each composed of six adults, to watch a video summary, edited from Court TV coverage, of the trial proceedings of an actual sexual assault case in ...