A Falling Tide Sinks All Boats? The Media May Drown First

Gallup released some interesting data on trends in confidence in “the church or organized religion” yesterday. Key findings include that this is falling among all Americans and that it is lower among Catholics than Protestants.

Gallup isn’t the only survey organization that has been asking Americans about their confidence in institutions. Academics have been doing this as well since 1972 in the General Social Survey (GSS). I tend to prefer the GSS measure to Gallup for two reasons: 1) the response scale for the GSS uses three points whereas Gallup uses four and 2) the GSS asks specifically about confidence in “the people running these institutions” and when referring to religion asks only about “organized religion.”

By comparison, Gallup asks about “the church or organized religion.” I am concerned how a non-Christian may respond to a question with the word “church” in it and more so “the church.” Gallup asks if one has “a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little” confidence. I’ve never been sure how much difference I am supposed to see between “a great deal” or “quite a lot.” If I was at a movie and someone told me they wanted “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of popcorn I’d buy them the large either way! The “quite a lot” seems to be unnecessary and unbalanced on the scale where one can perhaps more clearly distinguish between the GSS scale of “a great deal of confidence, only some confidence, or hardly any confidence.”

Gallup did a fine job putting the data in context in their release. The researchers note that the decline in confidence in organized religion is consistent with a broader decline for most institutions since 1973 and that organized religion still ranks fourth among the 16 of those they regularly measure. But religion reporters at secular media outlets too often drop the context and go for the “red meat” of the story (as of Friday there were more than 10,000 news items indexed by Google News for this report). I always prefer my news a bit more well-seasoned with the full context of reality (marinated in facts and data for as long as possible).

The table below shows how many Catholics said they had a “great deal of confidence” in the set of institutions regularly measured in the GSS in 1975 and in 2010 (the most recent data available). Organized religion sits squarely in the middle of the set and has lost about 5 percentage points in the last 35 years in terms of Catholics noting a “great deal of confidence” (this change is within margin of error).

Catholics have grown more confident in the people running the military (+23 percentage points), the Executive Branch (+5 percentage points), the Supreme Court (+4 percentage points) and education (+3 percentage points)—although the changes for these latter three institutions are within margin of error. Who have Catholics lost the most confidence in? The press (-15 percentage points) and banks and financial institutions (-17 percentage points). 

In 2010, Catholics exhibited the most confidence in those running the military (59%), the scientific community (44%), and medicine (43%). They exhibited the least amount of confidence in major companies (16%), banks and financial institutions (14%), Congress (14%), organized labor (13%), and the press (10%). 

Oddly, given the Church’s social teachings, organized labor has never captured much confidence among Catholics. Banks, financial institutions, and major companies were viewed more positively by Catholics in the 1970s and have taken a steep dive since the recession (Note: banks and financial institutions were not included in the GSS until 1975).
 

Catholics have shown consistent confidence in the Supreme Court. It would be interesting to have more current data to see if the Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act has moved opinion in any different direction. Confidence in the Executive Branch and Congress move up and down together and often higher in good economic times and lower in recessions.

Catholics have consistently had high confidence levels (relative to other institutions) in leadership in the scientific community and medicine. Educations lags slightly behind but is on an upswing.

Catholic confidence in the military has risen sharply during wars in the last two decades. Organized religion achieved its highest confidence ratings among Catholics in the 1970s and 1980s. Since the early 1990s this has dipped a bit and then sharply so in 2002 as news of clergy sex abuse cases made headlines across the country. It has recovered a bit from that low (...the more recent Gallup data may foreshadow a drop in the 2012 GSS, which has not been released yet).

The press has been battling it out with organized labor for the institution garnering the least confidence among American Catholics for decades. As of 2012 it was still losing this battle. I wonder why?

Back to what is in the news… In the figure below we aggregate multiple waves of the GSS—the first from 1973 to 1983 and again from 2000 to 2010. This increases sample sizes making it possible to reliably compare changes in confidence in religion among those of different affiliations.

Unlike the Gallup data, the GSS data indicate almost no difference between Catholics and Protestants. The boost among Protestants in the Gallup data appears to be related to use of the 4-point scale and possibly the word “church.” When this is collapsed into three more evenly “spaced” responses and respondents are evaluating “organized religion” the difference between Catholics and Protestants is negligible. As one might expect Nones, those without a religious affiliation, were very unlikely to have a “great deal of confidence” in organized religion in the 1970s and still are now.

There certainly is a crisis in confidence in America. As the Gallup researchers noted, Americans seem to be losing confidence in most institutions. This does not appear to be just a “religious thing.” Why? I think part of it has to do with the press. We may not trust it but we watch, listen, and read. Since the early 1970s I would argue that journalism has become more cynical, certainly more partisan in the last decade in both directions (e.g., Fox News, MSNBC), and it is on 24 hours a day on TV, posted in our social networks, and distributed instantly on Twitter. 

The reputation of institutions has taken a beating in this evolution—often rightfully so. All this “bad news” has also turned us on the messenger as well—often rightly so. And perhaps it is a good thing to have less confidence in so many institutions. Having too much trust could be dangerous. As a scientist I always try to be a skeptic. As a good citizen it might be better to be more of a cynic. 

Reigniting Sacramental Activity: There may be a devil in the details

One of the Catholic Church’s biggest challenges is encouraging more sacramental celebrations. Although Mass attendance rates have been stable for more than a decade, many Catholics are not at Mass on any given weekend. The percentage of Catholics indicating that they go to confession with any regularity is very low. Many Catholics are still choosing to marry—yet some decide not to celebrate the Sacrament of Marriage in the Church.

At CARA we often get inquiries for any data or research on how sacramental participation could be improved. There are many correlations and sub-group differences in our research that are quite telling. One of the most powerful is also a bit surprising. I was reminded of this when reading a recent article by psychologists showing that belief in Hell is negatively correlated with crime rates cross-nationally. Guess what else Hell is related to? How often someone celebrates sacraments.

CARA's national surveys of adult Catholics have asked respondents to indicate their belief in either Heaven or Hell and they can answer: I have never doubted this; I have had doubts about this in the past, but I have none now; I have a few doubts about this from time to time; I frequently doubt this; or I do not believe this.

More Catholics believe in Heaven than Hell creating three sub-groups to study:
1) Those frequently doubting or not believing in both Heaven and Hell
2) Those believing in Heaven with no more than a few doubts that also frequently doubt or don’t believe in Hell
3) Those believing in both Heaven and Hell with no more than a few doubts
(…there are a small number of respondents who say they believe in Hell but not Heaven but they are too few in number to analyze).

Strong belief in Heaven and Hell among U.S adult Catholics varies by generation with the youngest Catholics being the least likely to say they have never doubted either. 

More than nine in ten Catholics of each generation say they currently believe in Heaven although some say they have a few doubts from time to time. Thus, overall, Millennials are just about as likely as Pre-Vatican II Generation Catholics to believe in Heaven accounting for occasional doubts (93% compared to 98%).

Catholics who believe in both Heaven and Hell have higher Mass attendance rates than those who believe only in Heaven or who believe in neither. Forty-seven percent of Catholics believing in both attend Mass at least once a month compared to 30% of those believing only in Heaven, and just 12% of those who doubt or don’t believe in either Heaven or Hell.

That is the devil in the details. This of course has been a hot topic among Evangelicals and it appears to be an issue among Catholics as well. I teach a class at Georgetown called “Catholicism at the Movies: A Critical Review of Portrayals of Faith on Film” where I discuss our popular conceptions of God and the theory of how these may have crept into our religious beliefs altering our notions of judgment and damnation. Think about the portrayal of God in the 1956 film The Ten Commandments (the highest grossing religion film of all time, adjusted for inflation). Here God is embodied in a deep voice (described as “off-screen and to the right” by critic Paul Schrader). This is a depiction of God that showed anger and judgment. 

In more recent pop culture, God is depicted as non-judgmental and kindly in portrayals by George Burns or Morgan Freeman. This may have played at least a bit part in the imagination of young Catholics where I think some simply don’t think the God they believe in would send them to Hell for missing Mass from time to time. For others, they don't believe it is possible for God to send them to Hell because it does not even exist as an option.

If belief in Hell is related to Mass attendance than one would think there would also be a connection to how frequently one seeks out the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Twenty-eight percent of Catholics believing in both Heaven and Hell go to confession at least once a year compared to 10% of those only believing in Heaven, and 12% of those who do not believe in Heaven or Hell (...note that those saying they “never” go to confession are not saying that they literally have never gone to confession. Most report they celebrated the Sacrament of Reconciliation before their First Communion). 

For some, urgency and frequency of going to confession may be tied to their own short-term perceptions of their probability of death. It is the case that, generally, older Catholics are more likely to go to confession than younger. This may be part of the reason why still a majority of those who believe in Hell do not go to confession at least annually. Believing in Hell and recognizing one’s own mortality is a transformative event (...even if it is only Pascal’s Wager for some).

As the figure below shows, 42% of Catholics believing in both Heaven and Hell say the Sacrament of Reconciliation is “very meaningful” to them compared to only 15% of those believing only in Heaven and just 12% of those believing in neither Heaven nor Hell. Seven in ten Catholics who believe in Hell say going to confession is at least “somewhat meaningful” to them. 

Nearly half of all adult Catholics (48%) believing in Heaven and Hell say it is “very important” to them that they receive the Anointing of the Sick at some point in their lives (80% at least “somewhat’ important”). Receiving this is less important among those who doubt or do not believe in the existence of Hell and those who believe in neither Heaven nor Hell.

In my opinion, an erosion in belief in Hell among Catholics and perhaps a growing sense that God is kinder and gentler than the booming voice “off-screen and to the right” has had at least some effect on the frequency with which Catholics go to Mass or confession. It feels a bit uncomfortable saying that more “fire and brimstone” may make Catholics more active in sacramental life but the data are no deception.

Above photo courtesy of Snurb at Flickr Creative Commons.

The Reverts: Catholics who left and came back

In a recent post, we noted that there are about 22.5 million people in the U.S. who were baptized and raised Catholic who no longer self-identify as Catholic (i.e., some join other faiths and others report having no religious affiliation and become "Nones"). This number is often quoted and very easy to come by using surveys that include a question about whether one is still a member of the faith that they were raised in. For any religion, the percentage of adults who remain affiliated is called the "retention rate."

See the figure below to comparatively evaluate how well the U.S. Catholic Church does in retaining its members (more on this here: 1, 2, 3). All things considered a 68% retention rate is better than many faiths achieve (...all Protestant denominations with sufficient numbers of respondents for an estimation have lower retention rates than the Catholic Church). And if you think it is challenging to be a Catholic parent try being an Atheist parent! Some 70% of Americans raised to believe God does not exist end up being a member of a religion as an adult (about one in five former Atheists drift off to become an open-minded agnostic or None).

What is less often noted in the discussion of retention, and only very rarely reported on in the secular press (...with this exception by Cathy Lynn Grossman who inspired this post), is the number of people raised Catholic who left the faith but who later returned to the Church. These people are measured as "retained" in snapshot surveys because researchers so rarely ask about any of the time in between when the poll is being conducted and the respondent's recall of their childhood religion. 

Those who leave and come back are often called the "returned" Catholics or the "reverts." CARA has two data sources that can be used to estimate the size of this population. The first is the responses of 20,031 in-pew surveys from adult Mass attenders in parishes across the country and the second is a national survey of 1,504 adults conducted last week. From these two sources we can estimate that in the pews, on a typically weekend, you can expect that about 13% of the adults in attendance are reverts, which is equivalent to 2.3 million people. These individuals are a part of a larger 4.7 million adults in the United States who self-identify as a returned or revert Catholic. However, this is a bit of an under-count as the survey on which this later number is based was only conducted in English. Using other CARA data sources and the in-pew responses (...where surveys were conducted in both English and Spanish) together we can estimate that there are likely an additional 360,000 Spanish-speaking reverts. Thus, in total CARA estimates there more than 5 million Catholic reverts nationally in 2012 (i.e., equivalent to 9% of all adult Catholics).

In a previous post, we noted that the Catholic population could not maintain its approximate 25% U.S. population share by immigration alone as many argue (...given the Catholic retention rate and that only 2.6% of U.S. adults saying they converted to Catholicism as an adult). The math just does not work (...other important factors to complete this equation are the annual number of baptisms, Catholics leaving the U.S., and deaths of Catholics). Part of what is keeping the Catholic population percentage so steady is Catholic reverts. In a typical year, CARA estimates that there are approximately 168,000 people who were raised Catholic and left the faith (typically in their teens or early 20s) who come back.

Who are the Catholic reverts? Currently, these are people who are disproportionately between the ages of 25 and 34 (currently a combination of the oldest Millennials and the youngest of the Post-Vatican II Generation). A plurality of regular Mass attending Catholic reverts (41%) are of the Post-Vatican II Generation (ages 31 to 51). Another numerous group of reverts are in their retirement years (age 65 or older). Younger reverts may be coming back as they marry and raise children—seeking out sacraments. Seniors may turn back to the faith of their youth just at the moment they begin to face the autumn of their life.

Among reverts who are regularly attending Mass (as measured in CARA in-pew surveys), 47% report that they had attended Catholic elementary school, 30% went to a Catholic high school, 89% celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation, and 12% went to a Catholic college or university.

Those more interested in the life-cycle phenomenon of why and how Catholics revert should check out In the Course of a Lifetime: Tracing Religious Belief, Practice, and Change by Michele Dillon and Paul Wink. If you are not a numbers person and instead want to hear the stories of people who reverted back to the Catholic Church check out these profiles over at whyimcatholic.com. Finally, over at the USCCB here are some tips for how parishes can welcome back reverts.


Update/Note: Some of the retention rates in the figure above were never provided in Pew's original report. These are calculated from the original data sets released by Pew for this study (one for the continental U.S. and another for Alaska and Hawaii). In these data there are 432 weighted respondents who say they were raised as Atheists. A total of 131 of these individuals self-identify as an Atheist at the time of the survey resulting in an estimated retention rate of 30%. However, there were a total of 1,387 Atheists (weighted) identified in the survey (equivalent to 1.6% of the adult population). What these findings reflect is that in the U.S. Atheists are for the most part "made" as adults after being raised in another faith. It appears to be much more challenging to raise one's child as an Atheist and have them maintain this identity in their life. Of those raised as Atheists, 30% are now affiliated with a Protestant denomination, 10% are Catholic, 2% are Jewish, and 1% are Mormon.

Some also seem to want to treat (as Pew does in its original report) switching between Protestant denominations as a non-switch. It is true that all of these respondents are still practicing Christianity (as are those who leave Catholicism for a Protestant denomination or for the Greek Orthodox Church) but in terms of the effect on the religious organization and the individual a real change in membership has occurred. I don't think the Presbyterians are just fine with losing 59% of those raised in the faith as long as these former members are in another Protestant denomination's church. From an organizational perspective I assume all of these religious institutions would prefer to maintain their youthful members in a similar regard (...with the exception of Atheists who have no real institution or organizational structure... which may have something to do with the very low retention rate for this group).

Continued in another post...

Above photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk at Flickr Creative Commons.