Friday, August 20, 2021

Lyman Stone on changes in American religiosity over time

Had read this summary/excerpt earlier, but just finished the longer research piece (in the first comment below). Really nice work, if you're into this question. (The longer article is long, but you can skim a lot of it.)

Key findings for me:
1.) Reiterates the importance of understanding the 1950s as a religious aberration-- not the end of a long period of intense religiosity from the early days of the American experiment. This includes a surprisingly low level of religiosity in our earlier years as a country. (See: my Touchstone article on Herberg's classic book about this.)

2.) The 1st Great Awakening may have changed which churches people attended, but did not have a big impact on overall religiosity.

3.) The correlations and likely somewhat-causal impacts of dramatically increasing and then declining marriage-- and increased secular education (length of days, # of days and years)-- on religiosity.



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