Much Ado About Numbers

With the publication of the recent study by ARIS, the American Religious Identification Survey, which shows an increase in the number of folks who claim to have "no religion" and a corresponding decline in the overall religiosity of Americans, the 'survey' wars have heated up.

The news headlines reporting the ARIS results shouted that America was losing its reeligious tilt. Then came stories suggesting that all polls really show are the biases of its authors. Others, wisely so I think, pointed out that no poll can capture the complexity of the religious orientation. Finally, in a column on Religious Dispatches, Konstantin Petrenko states his belief that all the ARIS survey shows is the new American apathy toward religion and things religious.

This is not the first tempest to be found in the religious tea pot. Earlier in the year, a group published a study that charged the people at Baylor University, a school associated with Southern Baptists, with manipulating data. The Baylor poll showed an increase in the religious orientation of America. Of course, there then followed days of rebuttals by the Baylor folks and then rebuttals of the rebuttals.

My questions about all of this are simple: If a person is asked, "Do you consider yourself to be a religious person?" and answers either "NO" or "YES", does it really tell us anything? If it does, does it matter whether 12% or 15% or 25% of the population answers "NO"? Do you care if you live in a country in which only 76% of the people identify themselves as Christian? If you do care, does it then matter whether those people understand Christianity in the same way you do?