The 2010 U.S. Religion Census, released today on the Association of Religion Data Archives, found that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gained the most regular members in the last 10 years, growing by nearly 2 million to a total of 6.14 million adherents in 13,600 congregations.

Some of the church’s largest percentage gains were in places such as Tazewell County, Virginia; Bath County, Kentucky, and Big Horn County, Montana. As Romney makes his historic run to be the first Mormon president, there are few places on the 2012 campaign trail he will go where people are not close to a Latter-day Saint congregation or neighbors who share his faith.

But the denomination is not the only one spreading its wings nationally in a time of increasing religious diversity, the census shows.

Consider these findings:

• Taken together, nondenominational and independent churches may now be considered the third largest religious group in the country, with 12.2 million adherents in 35,500 congregations.   Only the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention are larger.
• The U.S. was home to 2,106 mosques nationwide in 2010. The figure includes 166 mosques in Texas, 118 in Florida and 50 Muslim houses of worship in North Carolina.
• Buddhist congregations were reported in all 50 states, and Hindu houses of worship in 49 states.

Still, not everyone was a winner in the religious marketplace.

Mainline Protestant churches lost an average of 12.8 percent of adherents in the first decade of the 21st century; 5 percent fewer active members were found in Catholic churches.

A vital marketplace

The U.S. Religion Census, also known as the Religious Congregations & Membership Study 2010, is a once-in-a-decade project to collect county-by-county data from hundreds of religious groups. It is considered the most complete census data for local, state and national information on congregations and their members.

The 2010 study, sponsored by The Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, obtained reports from 236 religious bodies. The 236 groups reported 344,894 congregations with 150,686,156 adherents, comprising 48.8 percent of the total U.S. population of 308,745,538 in 2010.

The study data and the accompanying maps, which provide easy visual analysis of religion demographics, are widely used by scholars, researchers, teachers, the media and the general public.

“Each year the ARDA disseminates thousands of copies of the data files and each week thousands of visitors use ARDA’s online maps and reports to explore America’s religious landscape,” said sociologist Roger Finke of Pennsylvania State University, ARDA director. “Whether it is county profiles conducted by local churches or national research conducted by religion scholars, the data offer a trove of new information on American religion.”

One limitation of the study is that information on attendance and membership is self-reported by the religious bodies. Some figures are estimates, such as the 2.6 million Muslims in the U.S.  Further information on study sources is available on ARDA.

Still, Clifford Grammich, a study leader, said the 2010 study “is the most comprehensive local-level analysis of U.S. religious adherents and attendance in more than 60 years.”

What emerges from the new census is a portrait of an increasingly diverse, vital religious marketplace.

It is difficult today for any one group to claim a monopoly on a particular state or region of the country.

For example, if you consider, as the group itself does, that the Mormon Church is a Christian body, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported the largest increase among Christian groups from 2000 to 2010 in 30 states, including places like North Dakota, New Mexico and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, the census found nondenominational and independent churches in 2,663 counties, or 88 percent of U.S. counties. Added together, they would be among the top five religious groups in 48 states.

In secular terms, Hartford Seminary sociologist Scott Thumma compares the nationwide growth of groups such as the Mormon Church and nondenominational congregations to successful fast-food franchises starting out locally, finding they meet a need and then expanding regionally and nationally until you can find one at almost every rest stop.

Nondenominational churches, in particular, have become “an alternative to denominational religiosity in every market,” Thumma said.

Increasing competition

The diversity extends beyond Christianity.

The number of non-Christian congregations – synagogues, mosques, temples and other religious centers – increased by nearly a third, from 8,795 in the 2000 study to 11,572 in the 2010 census. Houses of worship of other faiths were found in 985 counties in 2010, almost a third of the total.

Even some groups that had a drop in adherents found themselves expanding in newer markets.

For example, the Catholic Church, which had 62 million adherents in 2000 and 59 million in 2010 according to the census, reported the largest gains among Christian groups in 11 states, including Georgia, Nevada and Oregon.

Even places such as Salt Lake County in Utah, the home of the Latter-day Saints, have become more diverse, cosmopolitan communities, census researchers noted.   The number of Catholic adherents there jumped from 53,500 to 84,000 from 2000 to 2010.

There has been a shift to “a true marketplace,” Thumma said. When new players “in the religious marketplace come along, it’s harder to maintain this is our market, you can’t come in here.”

So, too, is it possible for a Mormon to run for president.

It is “absolutely the case,” Thumma said, that the spread of Latter-day Saints across the nation, and the degree of familiarity that provided many Americans with their faith, paved the way for a Romney run.

Explore congregational membership in every county, state and urban area in the United States.

Social media is an effective vessel for New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow to carry his religious message. When he quotes Scripture or wishes people a good night with God’s blessings, he has an audience of nearly 2 million public subscribers to his Facebook page and more than 1.5 million followers on Twitter.

For average social media users, however, deciding how much of their personal faith to disclose online is not so easy.

Will sharing my religious life make me more or less likely to get a date? Make new friends?  Expand professional networks?

If they just disclosed that they are Catholic or United Methodist or Jewish, Facebook users can pretty much stop worrying, new research with young adults indicates.

Studies of college students also reveal, however, that both the costs and the benefits may increase the more people share about their faith. Those with similar religious beliefs will have more positive impressions of those who disclose a great deal about their faith; others may be more likely to hold negative stereotypes of individuals who talk about God’s plan for their lives and list Casting Crowns, Switchfoot and Mercy Me among their favorite musical groups.

The findings that spiritual dialogue is dominated by those already committed to their faith also may be sobering news to religious groups hoping Facebook and Twitter may provide a shortcut to evangelizing younger generations.

Online faith

Issues of online privacy now are drawing intense scrutiny from federal regulars and Congress.

The recent report of an ill-considered Facebook post “checking out” Sarah Palin by one of the Secret Service agents linked to an ongoing sex scandal is only the latest in a series of high-profile social media gaffes.

But worries over how much to share on sites such as Facebook and MySpace have long been a concern of users.

Nearly three-quarters of young adults ages 18 to 25 in the Pew Research Center’s 2006 Generation Next Survey said people their age post too much personal information on the Internet.

And young adults seem reluctant to reveal a lot about their faith online.

Researchers Piotr Bobkowski of the University of Kansas and Lisa Pearce of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found more than 60 percent of a sample of 560 young adults listed a religious identity in their MySpace profiles.

They also found, however, that fewer than one in three of the profile owners said something about religion outside of disclosing their religious identity. Those who were more likely to talk about their faith were young adults who believe religion is a public matter or have positive views of organized religion.

Overall, the study showed “social media users rarely disclose much about religion in their online profiles and, when they do, their disclosures tend to be brief and superficial,” Bobkowski and Pearce wrote in an article on “Baring Their Souls in Online Profiles or Not? Religious Self-Disclosure in Social Media in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In a separate study of the effects of online Christian self-disclosure, Bobkowski and Sriram Kalyanaraman of the University of North Carolina found few negative consequences of social media users merely revealing a religious identity online.

“Identifying your religious affiliation doesn’t seem to affect the way you are perceived,” Bobkowski said in an interview. “It doesn’t seem to hurt you. It doesn’t seem to benefit you. It’s just an is.”

What they found did matter in their study of 233 undergraduates reacting to test profiles is how much was shared about faith.

Very religious participants tended to view extensively disclosing Christians as significantly more likable and more romantically desirable than either nominally disclosing Christians or non-disclosers, Bobkowski and Kalyanaraman reported in an article in the JSSR.

Regardless of how much was shared about faith, religious respondents rated profile owners as more likeable and less stereotypically negative than less religious respondents.

However, the least religious respondents tended to rate extensively disclosing Christians as least romantically desirable and with more negative stereotyping, the researchers reported.

How much to disclose may depend on who your online friends are.

“It all depends on the audience that individual is trying to communicate to, and the most important element of the audience they are trying to influence,” Bobkowski said.

Looking ahead

There is still a great need for more research on religious disclosure in social media. But what is available seems to be consistent with other studies showing a wariness among young adults toward organized religion.

For instance, three-quarters of respondents ages 18 to 24 said modern-day Christianity “has good values and principles.” But more than six in 10 respondents said it is anti-gay and “judgmental,” according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2012 Millennial Values Survey.

In the larger picture, Bobkowski said, social media seems to be more reflective of young people’s attitudes toward religion than an instrument of change. The great majority of religious dialogue online is dominated by individuals who are already invested in religion.

For religious groups, that means Facebook and Twitter do not appear to be shortcuts for the hard work of reaching out in personal ways to make their faith relevant to younger generations.

“It’s not the magic pill that clergy and religious leaders might be looking for to get young people involved in religion,” Bobkowski said.

And for those seeking to use social media to increase their romantic prospects or find a job, it may be best to worry less about disclosing their religious preferences, and to spend that time developing their personalities and polishing off their resumes.

Unless you are planning on winning the Heisman trophy, leading a series of dramatic comeback wins in the NFL and becoming part of a quarterback controversy in the nation’s leading media market. Did someone say Tim Tebow?

Then you can expect 135,000 likes when you wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Explore a Facebook Question from the National Study of Youth and Religion

Give people in the pews some credit.

Every so often, a story pops up making light of religious illiteracy because a significant percentage of the population cannot identify facts such as the names of the four books of the Gospel. More often, researchers and media pundits attempt to classify different believers by how they vote or their stands on controversial social issues.

Yet, American Christians can and do articulate for themselves what matters most.

Ask Orthodox Christians about the importance of regular attendance at services, and six in 10 will say you can be a good church member without going to church every Sunday.

But inquire about the resurrection, and 96 percent will say you cannot be considered a good Orthodox Christian if you do not believe Jesus rose from the dead, according to The Orthodox Church Today study.

In a Gallup Poll, 42 percent of American Catholics said the teaching claimed by the Vatican is very important

But twice as many, 84 percent, said belief in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was very important to them as a Catholic. Overall, 97 percent said the belief was important to their faith.

As Christians prepare to celebrate Easter this Sunday, it is clear that they do differentiate among beliefs and practices and traditions. And the belief that Jesus rose from the dead is overwhelmingly at the center of their faith.

Standing fast

Interest in the historical Jesus has led to thousands of studies in recent decades seeking to recreate the life of Christianity’s founder from determining what he actually said to the historicity of Gospel accounts of the resurrection.

Some scholars have argued that the Gospel accounts of Jesus appearing before his followers after being crucified never happened, or were hallucinations. Some Christian scholars have said the resurrection should be considered in symbolic terms rather than as an actual occurrence.

Yet even as U.S. Christians have changed their views dramatically on issues such as same-sex marriage and women clergy, they have overwhelming held fast with the traditional view of the resurrection.

Consider these findings:

• In the 2008-2009 wave of the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, 94 percent of evangelicals, 91 percent of Catholics and 78 percent of mainline Protestants said Jesus was raised bodily from the dead after his crucifixion.

• Jesus’ resurrection from the dead was an actual event, said three-quarters of the more than 25,000 respondents to congregational surveys offered by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research from 2004 to 2010. Most of the participants were mainline Protestants.
• More than two-thirds of Christian respondents, including 84 percent of black and evangelical respondents, strongly agreed with the statement, “Jesus Christ physically rose from the dead,” according to the Portraits of American Life Study.

And the more active they are in their faith, the stronger their beliefs are in the resurrection.

Ninety-five percent of respondents to the Gallup Poll who attended church at least two or three times a month said belief in the resurrection of Jesus was very important to them as Catholics. Less than three-fifths of those Catholics who seldom or never attended church said belief in the resurrection was very important.

Finding hope

What these findings indicate, some scholars say, is that contrary to those who would label individuals “cafeteria” Catholics or Baptists or Lutherans because they disagree with one or another stand of church hierarchies, U.S. Christians do have boundaries, theological rocks upon which they build their faith.

It is incumbent upon church leadership, said the late Catholic University of America sociologist Dean Hoge, to “know the hierarchy of truths … that which the laity know in their minds and hearts.”

The sermon message “It may be Friday, but Sunday’s coming” is one Hartford Seminary sociologist Scott Thumma has heard in thousands of churches, and it endures because of the comfort and hope it gives to individuals who can identify both with the suffering of Christ on Good Friday and the promise of the resurrection on Easter Sunday.

“When you’re in despair, it’s the quintessential event in the Gospel that provides hopefulness,” Thumma said.

If one diminishes the doctrine of the resurrection to mere symbolism, it waters down the spiritual significance and power of the belief, he said.

On the other side, the challenge is to make the belief more than just a creed that is recited each week. One of the gifts of the black church and some successful megachurches has been the ability to apply the doctrine in such a way it energizes people throughout the week, said Thumma, co-author with Warren Bird of  “The Other 80 Percent: Turning Your Church’s Spectators Into Active Participants.”

There may be no better time to start than Sunday.

It is hard to doubt the power of belief in the resurrection looking around at all those full pews.

And yet ministers often endure the stresses of these dysfunctional relationships for months, or even years, before eventually being forced out or giving up.

Adding to the strain is the process, which is often shrouded in secrecy. No one – from denominational officials to church members to the clerics themselves – want to acknowledge the failure of a relationship designed to be a sign to the world of mutual love and support.

But new research is providing insights into just how widespread – and damaging – these forced terminations can be to clergy.

An online study published in the March issue of the Review of Religious Research found 28 percent of ministers said they had at one time been forced to leave their jobs due to personal attacks and criticism from a small faction of their congregations.

The researchers from Texas Tech University and Virginia Tech University also found that the clergy who had been forced out were more likely to report lower levels of self-esteem and higher levels of depression, stress and physical health problems.

And too few clergy are getting the help they need, said researcher Marcus Tanner of Texas Tech.

“Everybody knows this is happening, but nobody wants to talk about it,” Tanner said in an interview. “The vast majority of denominations across the country are doing absolutely nothing.”

A secret struggle

The issue of clergy job security will be front and center next month when delegates to the quadrennial General Conference of the

United Methodist Church consider a proposal to end “guaranteed appointments” for elders in good standing. The church’s Study of Ministry Commission says clergy job guarantees cost too much money and can focus more on the clergyperson’s needs rather than the denomination’s mission. On the other side, many clergy express fears that eliminating job security may lead to arbitrary dismissals. A major concern is that clergy will be judged based on their performance at “toxic” congregations, churches with so much internal conflict that it is difficult for any minister to have success.

The clergy have good reason to worry. A small percentage of congregations do seem to be responsible for a large share of congregational conflict.

Seven percent of congregations accounted for more than 35 percent of all the conflict reported in the National Congregations Study. And that conflict often had a high price.

In the 2006-2007 National Congregations Study, 9 percent of congregations reported a conflict in the last two years that led a clergyperson or other religious leader to leave the congregation.

It is difficult to get specific denominational figures, Tanner said. Many churches do not keep records indicating when a pastor was forced out as opposed to leaving voluntarily. And not only is it difficult to get clergy to open up about such painful experiences, many ministers are forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement to receive their severance package.

In their study, Tanner, Anisa Zvonkovic and Charlie Adams recruited respondents through Facebook groups relating to Christian clergy. Four-fifths of the 582 ministers participating — 410 males and 172 females from 39 denominations — ranged in age from 26 to 55.

The participants were asked whether they ever left a job “due to the constant negativity found in personal attacks and criticism from a small faction of the congregation.”

Twenty-eight percent of the respondents said they had been forced from a ministry job. Three-quarters had been forced out once, and 4 percent had been forcibly terminated three or more times, the study found.

Even one time, however, is more than enough.

A heavy toll

Ministers who were forced out of their jobs because of congregational conflict were more likely to experience burnout, depression, lower self-esteem and more physical health problems, the online study found.

In addition, more than four in 10 ministers forced out of their jobs reported seriously considering leaving the ministry.

A separate survey by Texas Tech and Virginia Tech researchers of 55 ministers who were forced out of a pastoral position found a significant link with self-reported measures of post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

“This study shows that not only is forced termination an issue, but a cruel one that has very distressing effects on those who experience it,” Tanner, Zvonkovic and Jeffrey Wherry reported in the current issue of the Journal of Religion and Health. “It is important that Christian organizations recognize the problem and implement steps to increase awareness and solutions.”

Months of suffering traumatic and demeaning psychological and emotional abuse as they are slowly being forced out of their pulpits due to congregational conflict, Tanner said, “is a really, really horrible process.”

What makes it even worse is the complicity of silence that prevents clergy from getting the help they need to go forward.

Explore More Data on Congregations, Conflict, and Religious Leaders Using the National Congregations Study, Faith Communities Today Survey, or the U.S. Religious Congregational Life Surveys.

Many continue suffering into adulthood from the crimes of wayward clergy and the conspiracy of silence by religious hierarchs. Now, some will be offended even more by statements made by Cardinal Edward Egan.

The archbishop emeritus of New York recently expressed regret for issuing an apology at the height of the U.S. scandal, saying, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”

Yet no matter how much individuals such as the cardinal would like to put the sexual abuse scandal behind them, they can no longer appeal to an obedient laity to ignore or downplay the crimes, according to new research.

Many Catholics are still mad as heck, and they are not going to take it anymore. It is not just the firestorm of disapproval that greeted Egan’s remarks published earlier this month.

Consider some of these recent findings related to the enduring consequences of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church:

• In a 2011 survey of American Catholics, more than three-quarters of respondents said the sexual abuse issue has hurt priests’ ability to meet the spiritual-pastoral needs of parishioners.
• In an online survey, anger at church leadership for the sexual abuse scandal was the No. 1 reason cited by people who left the church and are not coming back. Nearly two-thirds of respondents who are not even considering returning to the church listed the abuse scandal as a reason for leaving.
• The scandal led to a loss of 2 million Catholics, and generated more than $3 billion in donations to other faiths from those Catholics who joined other groups, economist Daniel Hungerman of Notre Dame University estimated in a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Negative publicity from the scandal explains about 5 percent of the decline in the number of Catholic schools in the past two decades, researchers Angela K. Dills of Providence College and Rey Hernandez-Julian of the Metropolitan State College of Denver estimated in the journal Economic Inquiry.

And the outrage is not abating.

Explore the ARDA Data Archive for Survey Questions about the Abuse Scandal

Anger growing

The revelations in recent years of the global nature of the scandal are only inflaming the anger of rank-and-file Catholics, analysts say.

The Catholic abuse scandal became a national crisis for the church in 2002 following revelations of widespread wrongdoing in Boston, Cleveland and other areas of the country. By 2005, as the church responded with new rules and safeguards, many Catholics were willing to give bishops the benefit of the doubt, sociologist William D’Antonio of Catholic University of America said.

However, “Six years later, as the scandal continues and becomes worldwide, the laity seem much more distressed by it,” said D’Antonio, who has led five major surveys of American Catholics since 1987. “The laity seems to be losing their patience.”

In the 2011 study of 1,442 adult Catholics, 69 percent of respondents said the Catholic bishops have done a fair or poor job in handling accusations of sexual abuse by priests. More than four in five respondents said the issue has hurt church leaders’ political credibility, reported researchers D’Antonio, Mary Gautier of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and Michele Dillon of the University of New Hampshire.

Many Catholics may be lost for good.

In an online survey of Catholics who left the church, 20 percent of respondents who said they were returning to the church listed anger at church leadership over the sexual abuse scandal as one reason for their departure. Among those who say they are not returning, 64 percent said anger over the scandal was a reason they left.

“The scars of the sexual abuse crisis run deep” among those not returning to the church, said researcher Michael Cieslak of the Catholic Diocese of Rockford, Ill., who reported the results at the annual joint meeting of the Religious Research Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

In his work integrating data from several studies, Notre Dame’s Hungerman found that many who left the Catholic Church chose highly different alternatives such as Baptist traditions. There were also indications about half may no longer be affiliated with any religious group.

“Over time, both non-affiliation and non-Catholic participation appear to have increased in areas hard-hit by the scandal,” he reported.

‘Live the Gospel’

It may hardly seem fair for the Catholic Church to be singled out when the problem of clergy sexual abuse crosses denominational and faith lines.

Young people have been and are being sexually abused in evangelical and mainline Protestant churches, in mosques and synagogues and temples. The initial response is largely the same: Religious leaders protect the institution, often angrily condemning or ignoring the victim lying wounded on the side of the road.

This is not just “a Catholic problem.”

But downplaying the Catholic Church’s own wrongdoing is not an effective response on any level, analysts say.

In an article in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, the Rev. Joseph Guido of Providence College states clergy abuse in the Catholic Church is a unique betrayal because the priest is regarded as an alter Christus, another Christ.

Bishops have even greater responsibility.

“A bishop must act in personae Christi—in the person of Christ—and care for his flock even at a price to himself (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, nos. 894–896). When he fails to do so, his failure constitutes a betrayal of the sacramental meaning of his authority and leaves his flock … spiritual orphans.”

D’Antonio’s advice to church leaders is straightforward: “Live the Gospel.”

The Gospels do not say much about retracting apologies. What they do say, in part, is: “Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. … Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

(Hungerman, Hernandez-Julian and Dills are scheduled to present their latest research on the consequences of the abuse scandal at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics and Culture March 9-11 at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.)

They are part of a growing number of Americans with weakened ties to organized religion, many of whom will identify themselves in surveys as having no religious home.

What is up for debate is whether these new “nones” are a sign of an inevitable movement toward a more secular nation, or whether they represent shifts in the religious marketplace but stability in basic beliefs and behaviors.

There is no easy answer.

A growing body of evidence reveals a complex portrait of Americans who do not identify with a particular religious group. What research is increasingly showing is that “nones” are a dynamic group whose members cannot be simply characterized as either atheists or in other popular categories such as “unchurched believers” or “spiritual but not religious.”

There are people who appear to be consistently secular in their beliefs. However, the nones also include a large group of people who switch their preferences over time, and continue to attend a particular congregation and express belief in God.

These individuals are “betwixt and between the religious and the secular, but they are not necessarily on the path to being one or the other,” researchers Chaeyoon Lim of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carol Ann MacGregor of Princeton University and Robert Putnam of Harvard University said in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. “They stand halfway in and halfway out of a certain religious identity.”

By the numbers

The number of Americans expressing no religious affiliation has grown significantly in recent decades, according to several surveys.

The percentage of General Social Survey respondents reporting no religious affiliation more than doubled to 16.3 percent from 1990 to 2008. The American Religious Identification Survey found the percentage of respondents self-identifying as nones rose from 8 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008.

But there also are indications the growth of nones is slowing down from the “secular boom” of the 1990s. The 2008 ARIS survey found some 1.3 million more American adults joined the ranks of the nones in the 1990s, while since 2001 the increase has dropped to some 660,000 a year.

And nones also are proving to be one of the most dynamic groups in terms of changing affiliations.

In the 2006-2007 Faith Matters Study, fewer than 70 percent of the respondents who said their religious affiliation were “nothing in particular” in the first wave reported the same preference when they were contacted a year later. That compared, for example, to 92 percent of Catholics who gave a consistent answer in both surveys.

What stayed largely the same, however, was the overall percentage of religious nones, and the basic beliefs and behaviors of those switching in and out of the none category. For example, only 2 percent of those switching into the “nothing in particular category” from other religious preferences said they had become less religious in 2007 than in 2006.

Predicting the future

The gray areas of religion many nones find themselves in make it difficult to predict the future.

In their journal article based in large part on data from the Faith Matters Study, Lim, MacGregor and Putnam said it seems reasonable to speculate that the limited religious identity of those nones who switched affiliations may fade away over time.

Other findings such as little change in religious service attendance, however, offer a different picture.

“Despite the instability in their reported religious preferences, their marginal involvement in religion appears to be enduring,” the researchers wrote. “When they do experience religious changes, they do not necessarily head toward secularism.”

Consider some other countervailing forces muddying future predictions:

• Youth is on the none’s side. Nones are significantly younger than the general population, and many young adult nones will be parents of the next generation. However, research also indicates the potential for a life-cycle effect where many people return to religion when they marry and have children.
• Economics matter. Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute reported in a recent Wall Street Journal article that secularism was up 21 percent among the working class. But while having to work on Sunday in service industries can reduce churchgoing, the poor economy can cut both ways. Sociologist Barry Kosmin of Trinity College, a principal investigator of the ARIS study, said people are more willing to make changes when they feel secure and comfortable, and are confident about the future.
• Gender gap remains. The 2008 ARIS study found nones are similar to the general population in education and income, but there is a gender divide. Nineteen percent of American men, but only 12 percent of women, were nones. Women are generally more influential in the religious upbringing of children.

Several other factors, from the clergy sex abuse scandal leading some away from churches to immigration and fertility rates that some say favor the religious population, also come into the picture.

Religious leaders and secularists, take note: The struggle for the hearts and minds of many in this diverse group of religiously unaffiliated Americans is far from over.

Standing along the first base line, I did something I had not done before during a game: I prayed for a specific result. Not that he would get a hit. Just that he would hit the ball, and not strike out.

He ended up hitting a home run over the centerfield fence – a rare feat for anyone at this field – and was mobbed by his teammates. The coach sent his younger son to retrieve the ball, and gave it to my son after the game, which his team won.

Should I have prayed about a kids’ baseball game? Did my prayer make a difference?

The success of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow and his personal expressions of faith – including the addition of a prayer posture now known as Tebowing – has reignited conversation about the relationship between sports and religion.

Some secular commentators argue against any breach in what they would like to see as a wall separating faith from the playing field. Many religious folk fear too great an accommodation with big-time athletics can promote worship of false idols.

As Super Bowl XLVI approaches, however, research provides evidence that for both athlete and fan, prayer may serve to help them cope with the pressures of sports, and help them keep in perspective that, in the end, it is just a game.

Winning isn’t everything

Athletics and religion have a long history together. Sports first appeared in culture as cultic rituals.

The early Mayans, “like ancient Greek sprinters, Egyptian ball players and American Indian stickball players, regarded competitive games as depictions and celebrations of ultimate realities,” Shirl Hoffman of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro wrote in an article in “Word & World.”

In the United States, early Puritan wariness of the frivolity of play gave way to the notion of “muscular Christianity.” After the Second World War, athletics increasingly came to be seen as a platform for evangelists to urge consideration of a higher playing field. Organizations such as the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Athletes in Action developed in the 1950s and 1960s.  Many religious groups today offer athletic programs as a way of inviting and integrating the faithful into their communities.

Concerns abound that the conflation of religion and sports promotes a “winning-at-all-costs” attitude, but some research suggests prayer has a greater purpose for many athletes.

• In an in-depth study of nine former NCAA Division 1 Christian athletes, researchers from Samford University and the University of Tennessee found prayer helped the athletes cope with the stress of competition and provided a sense of self-worth and mission that transcended winning and losing. One participant said, “When I prayed, I felt more relaxed because I had a connection with God. I felt like whatever happened, happened. If I was successful, I was successful. If I failed, it’s not I failed. It’s not the end of the world.” Winning or losing was inconsequential to most of the athletes, the researchers wrote in an article on “The Experience of Christian Prayer in Sport” for the Journal of Psychology and Christianity.
• Researchers also discovered a general antipathy to praying for wins in a separate study of 92 Division 1 softball players. The study found that athletes who spent individual time praying for teammates demonstrated higher levels of spirituality, but team prayer also helped participants feel more together, happier, calmer and more hopeful. “I think it lets people know they can put their trust in God and, whatever the outcome, it’s OK,” one participant said in the study also reported in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity.
• In groundbreaking interviews with 104 former or current NFL players, sociologist Eric Carter of Georgetown College found high levels of unhappiness and deviant behavior. What made a positive difference, the study found, was faith in God and access to a religious support system. Overall, 72 percent of the players who reported that they were happy with life also reported that religion was an important support mechanism.

After the game

You need not look beyond the riots in Vancouver after the Stanley Cup last year or instances of parents attacking coaches, referees or even other players at high school and youth league games to see how fan obsessions can escalate out of control. Movies such as the 1996 film “The Fan” with Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes and the 2009 “Big Fan” with Patton Oswalt illustrate the darker side of wrapping up too much of one’s self-identity and self-worth in the exploits of a favorite player or team.

But sports in perspective can also bring a lot of pleasure to individuals and help fans vicariously experience emotions of triumph and loss, the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” without giving over their souls to big-time sports.

Even in the early stage of research on religion and sports, there are indicators that prayer can help fans and players alike. 

In sports and war, “identification is facilitated by the clear differentiation of opposing sides, rules of engagement, a desire to determine a ‘winner’ and ‘loser,’ and denigration of the opponent,” Fred Mael and Blake Ashforth note in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour.

 But religion, they note, carries with it the potential for raising aspirations and promoting transcendent values such as care for others.

 In my own experience at that long-ago Little League game, what I can say my prayer accomplished was that it helped calm a nervous father.

Perhaps I was expressing what scholars might call an evolutionary-based desire to respond to someone in need with an act that offered support and helped alleviate my own feelings of helplessness. But it was a moment I will never forget.

After the game, I bought a little stand and mounted the ball to display in my son’s room. But it seemed to always end up buried in the closet along with piles of old baseball cards. When my son moved away after college, I held on to the ball.

Every time I look at the ball, it still gives me a warm feeling inside of a magical – perhaps even mystical – moment in time.

More than many people could ever imagine.

Forget the popular cultural images from shows such as HBO’s “Big Love” that revive stereotypes linking Mormonism with polygamy or the ubiquitous images in the news associating Islam with terrorism. Look past the cultural crossfire that lumps religious liberals and conservatives into separate boxes defined by extremist political and social agendas.

The reality, as presented in a new book by two respected scholars, is that if you walk into a mosque, synagogue, temple or church next weekend, you will most likely find groups of believers in prayer and meditation seeking spiritual growth.

For six weeks, Pennsylvania State University sociologists Christopher Scheitle and Roger Finke traveled nearly 7,000 miles across the country visiting diverse religious communities. What they report back in “Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America’s Landscape” is a portrait of people of faith sharing many of the same aspirations across theological and denominational divides.

They encounter members of a black church in Memphis and a Mormon congregation in a small Utah town giving personal testimonies amid Sunday worship and religious education classes lasting three hours and more. In both the Friday prayer service at the Islamic Center of America in Detroit and the Saturday morning Shabbat service at B’nai Avraham in Brooklyn, the authors find immigrants from Africa, Asia and Europe praying for the well-being of humanity.

These straightforward observations of faith groups at worship have a critical role to play in public discourse on religion – especially when an increasing body of research reveals sharp declines in religious prejudice the more people of different beliefs get to know one another.

“Places of Faith” allows “students and people in general to look over our shoulder and to find out what these communities are like and how similar they are in many ways,” said Finke, who is also director of the Association of Religion Data Archives.

Leaving comfort zones

The similarities do not mean there has been a homogenization of religion in America equivalent to the impact of, say, a  Starbucks or a Wal-Mart on the nation’s retail culture.

Many of the cities Scheitle and Finke chose for their journey – Memphis, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Detroit – continue to offer fertile soil for  distinctive religious communities to blossom.

In San Francisco, for example, the authors explore the wealth of places to experience Asian religion. In the upper-floor Taoist and Buddhist temples in Chinatown, individuals in incense-filled rooms pray and perform rituals to a deity or deities. Over at the Buddhist Church of San Francisco, worshippers in wooden pews meditate, hear a Dharma talk similar to a sermon and sing and listen to congregational announcements.

The dynamism in the American religious scene extends from Houston, where more than 5,000 volunteers each week serve Joel Osteen’s arena-sized Lakewood Church, to Grand Island, Neb., where St. Mary’s Catholic Church offers a charismatic prayer service with people “speaking in tongues” after one of two Hispanic Masses serving Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants.

But what remains striking throughout this journey across America are the similarities at the core of the spiritual experiences.

Common activities include community service projects reflecting the fruits of their faith, but the connections also extend to basic spiritual practices, the authors found.

Almost everywhere, Finke said, worship includes a message, references to a sacred text and meditation.

“In the end,” Finke said, “it’s all about how you connect to the supernatural being you believe in.”

The more you know …

In an age of so much misinformation, the unvarnished portraits shared by Scheitle and Finke of what actually goes on in neighborhood houses of worship can have profound consequences.

As religious prejudice thrives on ignorance, so does firsthand knowledge lead to more positive attitudes, several recent studies indicate.

In a 2010 University of Munster study of more than 1,000 respondents from five Western European nations, what came to many of their minds when they thought of Islam were discrimination against women, fanaticism and, somewhat ironically, narrow-mindedness. What did not come to their minds were notions of Muslims as peaceful and tolerant.

Yet those attitudes were far different among respondents who had personal contact with Muslims. For example, in the former West Germany, 38 percent of respondents who reported a lot of contact with Muslims reported very positive attitudes; only 1 percent of respondents who had no contact held very positive attitudes toward Muslims.

In the 2002-2003 Religion and Diversity Survey, 90 percent of respondents said they would welcome Christians becoming a stronger presence in the United States, but less than six in 10 said they would be as supportive of Hindus, Buddhists or Muslims.

Yet when people met across faith lines, the experiences were mostly positive, according to the U.S. survey. About two-thirds of respondents said their contacts with Muslims were mostly pleasant; 6 percent said they were mostly unpleasant. Three-quarters said their contacts with Buddhists were mostly pleasant, with 3 percent saying they were mostly unpleasant.

The people you will meet in “Places of Faith” – the Memphis pastor with five children and 14 grandchildren devoted to keeping youth out of jail and on a path to college; an Amish family concerned about the safety of their aging grandfather continuing to drive a horse and buggy – help close the chasm of apprehension about people of different beliefs.

“At the same time,” Scheitle and Finke note, the diversity within the ‘them’ begins to appear.”

The journey of Scheitle and Finke helps to open the door to the reality of religious life in America.

Perhaps it also will inspire more people to choose to walk through the open doors of temples, churches and mosques in their communities to experience it for themselves.

Read more about Places of Faith: A Road Trip Across America’s Religious Landscape on the book’s website

The Pew Research Center recently reported that just 51 percent of U.S. adults are married, a record low, and that the number of new marriages declined 5 percent from 2009 to 2010.

But those people questioning whether the institution can still work for them may want to have a little faith – or, even better, share faith with their partner.

Couples who pray together and share religious values are more likely to express affection and love, perform acts of kindness and be less critical of their partners, according to a study of 1,491 respondents ages 18 to 59 to the 2006 National Survey of Religion and Family Life.

Sanctification of marriage – the belief of partners that God is at the center of their unions – also was associated with kinder, gentler relationships, according to the study by University of Texas at San Antonio sociologists Christopher Ellison and Xiaohe Xu.  Ellison and Xu reported the results at the recent National Council on Family Relations meeting in Orlando.

The bottom line: Faith matters in marriage.

“One of the findings that comes through loud and clear,” Ellison said in an interview, is that couples who do in-home worship activities such as prayer and Bible study together are more likely to have loving unions.

Battling demons

Not all religious beliefs and practices lead to happier marriages.

Those religious individuals who pull God on their side against their spouses are likely to experience more conflict, says psychology professor Annette Mahoney of Bowling Green State University.

And when marriages break up, people who strongly identify God as being at the core of their unions may experience “the dark side of sanctification,” depressive symptoms and a deep sense of sacred loss when the relationship is unsuccessful, Mahoney said.

Recent research also indicates that other factors such as racial and economic inequality can create pressures on a marriage that even people with active faith lives may find difficult to overcome.

In a study presented at the recent joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association, researchers Mark Killian and Steve Carlton-Ford of the University of Cincinnati found religious black adults reported lower marital satisfaction than religious whites. The lower rates of marital quality were despite the generally higher rates of religious practice among black partners.

“It would seem that structural inequalities, particularly the lack of cultural and economic resources, have a significant effect on the rates of satisfaction within the African American population,” Killian reported on the study analyzing data from the Portraits of American Life Study.

Love is kind

In general, however, a great body of research indicates religion can play a positive role in healthy marriages.

In the last 30 years, slightly higher marital satisfaction has been found among partners who attend services frequently and share the same religious affiliation, according to Mahoney. She examined nearly 200 peer-reviewed studies on religion and family life from 1999 to 2009 in an article in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Newer research shows that beliefs and actions such as praying privately for their partner, seeing marriage as part of a divine plan and engaging in religious activities together also are associated with happier, more loving unions, she said.

In addition, multiple studies show people who attend religious services frequently are less likely to perpetrate or be the victim of domestic violence, Mahoney said.

In their study, Ellison and Xu found that husbands and wives who prayed together and shared other religious activities in the home were significantly more likely to express affection, to perform small acts of kindness for one another, to compliment each other on the work they do around the home or as a parent and to refrain from criticism.

Sharing core spiritual values and believing God is at the center of their relationships also were predictive of kinder and more affectionate unions, the researchers found.

The findings make sense for several reasons, say researchers on religion and marriage. Ellison and Xu offer these considerations:

• Shared religious values may contribute to intimacy, trust, empathy and mutual understanding.
• Couples who pray and study the Bible together can reinforce religious commitments that may lead to more acts of routine kindness and forbearance in their daily lives.
• Believing their relationships are sanctified by God can provide added incentives for expressions of loving kindness, compassion, and affection among partners. The belief may also encourage partners to practice spiritual models of unconditional forgiveness.

As hard as it is these days to get people to the altar, the challenge for religious institutions goes beyond making sure couples get to the church, mosque or temple on time on their wedding day. The happily ever after part, the research indicates, also involves a commitment by couples to continue to share their spiritual lives with one another.

Then Smith decided to run for president.

It was one of the last in a series of fateful decisions about the personal power he sought that proved too much for many of his neighbors or former political allies to accept. Not long after, on June 27, 1844, he was killed by a mob in Carthage, Ill.

Now, in his run for the presidency, another Mormon, the more mild-mannered Mitt Romney, is asking voters to judge him on his individual qualifications, and not as a representative of an entire faith – just as the Catholic John F. Kennedy did in his groundbreaking run five decades ago.

And the issue Romney is most criticized for, flip-flopping on key issues from taxes to gay rights, would seem to mitigate efforts to portray him as a puppet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But each step of the way, the former Massachusetts governor will have a lot to overcome to become the first Mormon to be elected president, say scholars studying religion and presidential politics.  Those obstacles include everything from evangelical distrust in the GOP primaries to secular and liberal prejudice in the general election.

Little is off limits in American politics.

Already, the not-so-subtle intimations of GOP candidates about Romney’s electability and rumblings from Democratic and liberal sources about his “weirdness” appear to many analysts to be attempts to reap political gains by exploiting anti-Mormon attitudes and fears.

Americans have been always suspicious of presidential candidates perceived to hold weak or unorthodox religious values, according to authors Corwin Smidt, Kevin den Dulk, Bryan Froehle, James Penning, Steven Monsma and Douglas Koopman in their new book, “The Disappearing God Gap? Religion in the 2008 Presidential Election.”

“In fact,” the researchers write, “the average voter’s insistence that presidential candidates must be religious — and religious in a mainstream way  — is something akin to what political scientists call a ‘standing decision,’ a nonnegotiable starting point for many voters in considering candidates for office.”

Click Here to See a Distribution Map of Mormons in the United States

The outsiders

Members of other once-persecuted religious groups such as Jews and Catholics may have moved into the religious mainstream, but that acceptance is still denied members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In the 2006 Faith Matters Survey, respondents expressed relatively warm feelings toward Jews, Catholics and Mainline Protestants. Mormons, however, stood out for their unpopularity.  They ranked below evangelicals and people who are not religious, Robert Putnam and David Campbell reported in their book “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.”

And while Mormons have ascended into Congress and top state positions, the   uneasiness many Americans feel about them is magnified when it comes to the nation’s highest office.

In the 2007 Religion and Public Life Survey, a quarter of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who is Mormon. In a June Gallup Poll, 22 percent of Americans said they would not support a Mormon for president.

“It’s because it’s the presidency” that Romney’s faith matters so much, Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, said in an interview. “His religion is a liability, but it will not necessarily doom him.”

Not that his opponents will shy away from using Romney’s religion against him.

Attacks from the left and right

Just how politically vulnerable he is because of his religion was indicated in a mid-November poll by the Pew Research Center. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said Mormonism is very different from their own religion, and about a quarter of respondents used negative terms such as “cult.” “polygamy” or “strange” when asked to give a one-word impression of the Mormon religion.

Few analysts expect Romney’s foes on either side of the political aisle to resist exploiting this perceived weakness.

GOP contenders have been criticized for what some consider their relative silence on the topic of anti-Mormonism. They also seem to introduce the subject in roundabout ways such as raising doubts about Romney’s “electability” in states with large populations of evangelical Christians.

On the Democratic side, a recent article in Politico reported that President Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are planning a personal assault on Romney. Part of the plan is to portray Romney as “weird” – a word the authors said was used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in asbout a dozen interviews. Some analysts view the term as a subtle code word to reinforce anti-Mormon concerns.

Whether Romney wins or loses, Campbell said, one likely positive outcome is that anti-Mormon attitudes and fears will be aired and addressed, and in the long run there will be greater understanding. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may no longer seem so “foreign” to other citizens.

That may be of little consolation to Romney, however. To paraphrase the line from “The Godfather” when Al Pacino’s character is contemplating a double murder, the former governor may want to keep in mind: “It’s not personal, Mitt. It’s strictly politics.”

Click Here to Compare Mormons to Adherents of Other Denominations on Survey Questions