美国国家公共电台 NPR Why Religion Is More Durable Than Commonly Thought In Modern Society

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It's easy to just assume this as fact - as a society becomes more modern, it becomes more secular¹. People separate their religion from their institutions and from parts of their lives. Sociologists have a name for this idea. They call it the secularization³ thesis. Now, research suggests the story is more complicated. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

TOM GJELTEN, BYLINE⁴: Back in 1822, Thomas Jefferson predicted in a letter to a friend that Unitarianism will, ere long, be the religion of the majority from North to South. Unitarianism, a religion that rejects much of traditional Christian⁵ doctrine⁶. It was Jefferson's notion that as America developed economically, technologically⁷ and socially, as more Americans became better educated, they'd become less religious in the traditional sense.

A new study from the Pew Research Center on the relation between education and religion sort of backs up that theory - or seems to. Gregory Smith was the lead researcher.

GREGORY SMITH: College graduates are less likely to say they believe in God with absolute certainty. They are less likely to say that religion is very important in their lives. They're less likely to say that they pray regularly.

GJELTEN: But secularism⁸ has not yet triumphed in the U.S. Seven out of 10 Americans still call themselves Christians⁹. And Smith says in that group - self-identified Christians - education does not seem to weaken their faith.

SMITH: Highly-educated adherents¹⁰ are just as religious, in some cases more religious than their fellow members in the pews who might have less education.

GJELTEN: One example - college-educated Christians are actually more likely than non-college-educated Christians to say they attend church at least once a week. That pattern does not hold for all religious groups. Highly-educated Jews, for example, tend to be less observant than less-educated Jews. But it's clear higher education does not necessarily make you less religious. The secularization thesis is not quite a proven fact, at least not among American Christians.

In Western Europe, it may be a different story. Churches there are largely empty. Europeans over the last 50 years, as they've become more prosperous and better educated, seem to have drifted away from their churches. So why would America be different? One possible reason - European churches have gotten much of their financial support from government.

PHILIP SCHWADEL: When a state creates a relationship with religion like that, the religious leaders no longer have the same impetus¹¹ to go out and urge people to come.

GJELTEN: Philip Schwadel is a sociologist² of religion at the University of Nebraska.

SCHWADEL: They get money from the state through taxes. They don't have to collect money from their congregants in the same way. And when we don't have that kind of establishment such as in the United States, the religious leaders need to in a sense hustle¹² more.

GJELTEN: The result - religion in America may have more vitality¹³. In fact, maybe even in Europe, religion is not as weak as it seems. Linda Woodhead, a British sociologist, has argued, as she did in this debate, that church attendance is not the only measure of how religious a society is.

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LINDA WOODHEAD: Why just look at the churches? Of course some forms of religion decline over time because religion's constantly transforming. So why say that's the only true religion and nothing else counts?

GJELTEN: A similar argument from Philip Schwadel in Nebraska. Religion, he says, may no longer offer people the same explanations for the world that it did in medieval times but it serves other roles as well and always has.

SCHWADEL: Religion provides people with a community. It provides them with psychological support, with economic support. It provides a lot more than simply an understanding of where they are in the world in relation to the afterlife.

GJELTEN: And by those measures, religion may endure even in an increasingly modern world. Tom Gjelten, NPR News.