The Ottery
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Religion in Academia: A Survey by (Gasp!) Academics

Thanks to the Think Christian blog, I just heard about this study on religious beliefs among professors in higher education.

The overall result of the study is that professors may be slightly less religious than the American population as a whole, but they’re not as atheistic as commonly thought. The study included professors at “religious” and “secular” schools, and these schools ranged in prestige from community colleges to elite research universities.

After looking at the questions about belief in God (summarized in In Higher Ed), I have to admit that the survey seems deeply flawed. The questions seem intended to classify the devotedness of the subjects to their faith, but the surveyors don’t seem to understand that doubt can coexist with very fervent religious belief. I’d be inclined to suspect that those 35.7% who said they never doubt God’s existence are lying. Even if they don’t doubt it rationally, they probably sometimes act as if they don’t believe in God’s existence on a practical level. Most of us, even those of us who are trying to follow Jesus, don’t always trust in his goodness and providence.

The other particularly troubling question (if you want to see the whole report, here it is, though I warn you that it’s boring–too many words and too few pictures!) has to do with beliefs about the Bible. The potential responses were: “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word”; “The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word”; or “The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men.” What on earth is the phrase “actual word of God” (as opposed to “inspired”) supposed to mean? I might say that I believe the Bible is the actual word of God, but that certainly doesn’t mean that I think everything should be taken literally (otherwise, we’d all be walking around with gouged-out eyes and hacked-off hands, in obedience to Jesus’s teachings). It just seems like the survey questions were designed by people who have no idea of how the majority of Christians (even academics!) talk about their belief. And, of course, the survey doesn’t distinguish between the responses of Christians and non-Christians to this question.

It’s an interesting study, but I’m not sure it actually tells us much about anyone except the sociologists who designed it.

Add comment October 19th, 2006