Religion in America

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Univ of California Press, Aug 4, 2020 - Social Science - 208 pages

Written in an engaging and accessible tone, Religion in America probes the dynamics of recent American religious beliefs and behaviors. Charting trends over time using demographic data, this book examines how patterns of religious affiliation, service attendance, and prayer vary by race and ethnicity, social class, and gender. The authors identify demographic processes such as birth, death, and migration, as well as changes in education, employment, and families, as central to why some individuals and congregations experience change in religious practices and beliefs while others hold steady. Religion in America challenges students to examine the demographic data alongside everyday accounts of how religion is experienced differently across social groups to better understand the role that religion plays in the lives of Americans today and how that is changing.


 
 

Contents

Weekly rate of religious service attendance by education level
5
Racial and Ethnic Variation in Religion and Its Trends
19
6
21
Complex Religion in America
37
Proportion with no religious affiliation by combined race
50
A Demographic Perspective on Religious Change
56
10
81
Change in Americas Congregations
83
The Long Arm of Religion in America
102
Conclusion
125
References
155
Index
183
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About the author (2020)

Lisa D. Pearce is the Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professor in Research and Undergraduate Education in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and coauthor of A Faith of Their Own: Stability and Change in the Religiosity of American Adolescents.

Claire Chipman Gilliland is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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