Pretty much a ghostpost here, but I like the "four views of
god" bit. (Particularly if they were actually found as
clusters in the responses to the poll, rather than having
been pulled out of the researchers' hats.)
---David
No wonder no one agrees, Maru
Commentary
The Monitor's View from the September 25, 2006 edition
Americans and the God question The Monitor's View "In God we
trust"... but what kind of God? Most Americans (85 to 90 percent)
believe in God. A large majority prays and almost half attend church
or other services at least monthly. But how do they view God, and
does it affect social and political attitudes?
A new survey from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, called "American
Piety in the 21st Century" probes this subject. Conducted by Gallup
pollsters, the survey is receiving deserved praise for its depth of
questioning.
While some critics point to a degree of bias - Baylor is a Baptist
university - religion pollsters say the survey is generally sound and
especially revealing about people's concept of deity.
The use of religion in politics has helped drive polling on faith.
But understanding how Americans think about God is also important in
gauging how they approach the moral issues of the day, and how they
relate to each other.
The most innovative aspect of the Baylor study is how its questions
turned up four ways in which people conceive of deity.
The survey offered 16 words to characterize God, such as motherly,
wrathful, and severe. It supplied 10 descriptions relating to God's
involvement in the world, including "a cosmic force in the universe,"
"removed from world affairs," and "concerned with my personal
well-being."
About 5 percent of the 1,721 respondents were atheists, but the rest
had a view of God that fit one of four basic "types":
Type "A" is authoritarian, metes out punishment, and is highly
involved in world and personal affairs (the view of about 31
percent).
Type "B" is benevolent, also active in the world and individual
lives, but more forgiving (23 percent).
Type "C" is critical, not engaged but still passing judgment - which
individuals will discover in a later life (16 percent).
Type "D" is distant, neither active nor judging - but a force which
set the laws of nature in motion (about 24 percent).
The study found that even people within the same denomination hold
different concepts of God - which may explain schisms over dogma.
Evangelicals and black Protestants, however, hold the most uniform
views (a majority sees God as authoritarian).
It also found that the "four Gods" track more closely with political
and social attitudes than do traditional indicators such as church
attendance. The study found, for instance, that the closer one moves
toward the authoritarian model, the more likely one finds abortion
and gay marriage are "always wrong."
Baylor plans more such surveys, and there's still much to plumb. Some
religion experts, for instance, suspect a certain superficiality in
Americans' religiosity. How might they weigh in on the import of the
Sermon on the Mount or the Ten Commandments? And then there's the
growth in nontraditional and nonJudeo-Christian faiths, especially
among young people.
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