INTERFAITH ALLIANCE STATE OF BELIEF

RADIO MAY 16, 2015

RUSH TRANSCRIPT: CLAUDE FISCHER
Click here for audio
[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Dr. Claude S. Fischer is
Natalie Cohen Professor of Sociology at the University of California at
Berkeley. Together with fellow sociologist Dr. Michael Hout of New
York University, Dr. Fischer has been examining the reasons behind
Americas changing religious landscape for more than a decade, and
they are the co-authors of the paper Explaining Why More Americans
Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational
Succession, 19872012.
Dr. Fischer, thank you for being with us on State of Belief Radio.
[CLAUDE S. FISCHER, Ph.D., GUEST]: My pleasure. Nice to talk to
you.
[WG]: Youve been working in this area for a long time. What got you
interested in the subject of American religion?
[CF]: Well, Ive been working for a long time even longer time at
trying to understand the nature of American culture and how its
changed over the generations; and you certainly cannot understand
America if you dont understand religion in America, since Americans
are distinctively a religious people compared to other western
peoples, and religions played such an important role in the
development of the American culture and the American society.

[WG]: You and Dr. Hout write that you are challenging conventional
causality in your paper. Frankly, one of the reasons for talking right
now is because in recent days, weve seen polling data released and
interpretation of it and there are differences of opinion, but they seem
to be based not so much on actual data as on interpretations of the
data. So Im interested in hearing you talk about what really is going
on outside of what we would call conventional causality.
[CF]: Everything we know about the modern world, whether its the
development of the economy or the development of science,
education this is the argument undermines belief and undermines
religion. And people have been making that argument, now, for a
couple of centuries. And one of the interesting challenges to that point
of view has always been the American case, in which Americans
have persisted for generations in declaring unusually high levels of
faith compared to other westerners, and unusually high levels of
church membership, participation in church services, and so forth.
And that is a very interesting part of the American story. Its part of
what I would call American exceptionalism, which doesnt
necessarily mean American superiority, but means American
difference.
One thing thats appeared in the data, and this is what Mike Hout and
I started looking at and writing about about 15 years ago is, since
about 1990 theres been a shift and its been showing up in several
major polls a distinctive increase in the proportion of Americans
who, when surveyed and asked the standard question about religion:
What would you say your religion is? Protestant, Catholic, Jewish,
Other or None? picking the None option. It went from the single
digits in around 1990 6%, 7%, 8% - to double digits by 2000, and
now its around 20%, give or take. This is the phenomenon we
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focused on. Now a lot of the writing conventional writing goes

along the lines of, well, secularization has finally arrived in the United
States; this is the crumbling of faith; this is the abandonment of the
Church. We saw it in Western Europe; were going to see it now,
finally, in the United States.
When Mike and I look at the data, what is striking to us, very much
and it was true in the first paper we wrote on this, published in 2002,
and the most recent paper that you referenced that we just published
about a year ago what is striking is that when you look at the
measures of actual faith: do you believe in God; in what sense do you
believe in God; or religious practice, like praying private practice,
private piety when you look at religious piety, you dont see very
much change over that same period. Not saying theres no change,
but there really is a modest amount of change.
What really seems to be happening is that Americans are making a
declaration against Religion with a capital R. And we interpret this
very much as a distancing, an alienation, from organized religion;
from the established denominations and churches that a growing
proportion of Americans now roughly about one in five are making
that kind of a statement. Even though a large proportion of those very
same people will express some kind of belief either in God in a
traditional sense, or a higher power; and a striking proportion of them
will report things like praying.
So for us, the changes are not about Americans faith and belief; its
about the relationship of a chunk of Americans to organized religion.
[WG]: Let me explore that with you for a minute in terms of causation.
Ive done a lot of work through the years with the Interfaith Alliance on
the politicization of religion in our nation; how significant is the
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influence of that the politicization of religion to Americans

disaffection with organized religion?
[CF]: Well, a major argument that Mike Hout and I made in 2002 and
we reiterated in this most recent paper is that we think that is the key
issue here. And if you think of politics not just in terms of electoral
politics the, for instance, very explicit alignment of conservative
denominations with the Republican Party, thats one sense of it but
politicization in a wider sense: that is, of the sort of culture wars over
sexuality, over abortion, over gays and so forth, which then feeds into
electoral politics: so we have all these elections that revolve around
issues like abortion or gay marriage, and so on.
We think that the evidence clearly shows that the major thrust in
whats happened over the last, now, 25 years or so is, a large chunk
of Americans have basically gone through the following thought
process: you ask me if I have any religion; the word religion brings
to mind these positions on politics and cultural issues; if thats what
religion is count me out. Put me down in your survey as no
religion. I think its very much a statement people are making:
rejection of organized religion.
When you look at the survey data and you ask, well, what groups
seem to be showing this rapid disaffection for religion; this rapid
increase in stating, I have no religion, its very much connected to
politics. The trend took off and has been very much accelerated with
people who consider themselves liberals; it took off later and is
modest among people who consider themselves political moderates;
and its a very minor trend among people who consider themselves
political conservatives.

This, thus, is major evidence along with other things that a lot of
whats going on here is peoples backlash, you might say, against the
seeming marriage of religion and conservative politics conservative
cultural politics over the last quarter-century.
[WG]: In your research, you make a distinction that I think is really
important and Id like for you to talk a little bit more about. Talk about
how you distinguish between faith and religion.
[CF]: In the American religious system which is largely Protestantderived theres a big emphasis on declarations of belief and
theology. And so there have been, over the many decades survey
researchers have asked standard questions: do you believe in God?
Or more polished variations of that: what do you mean by God? What
kind of sense do you have of God? Theyve also asked questions
about, do you believe in the literal content of the bible, or do you think
its metaphoric, or do you think its just a bunch of stories? Survey
researchers have asked people about their private devotional
practice: how often do they pray? Theyve asked about attendance at
religious services. And the basic story is, if you look at these other
indicators of personal, private faith or piety they have not changed
much in the last couple of generations. The proportion of Americans
who believe in the literal truth of the bible its declined maybe a few
percent, but nothing dramatic. Nothing like this huge increase in the
proportion of people who say, I have no religion.
And similarly, on most of these other items, if you look at church
attendance, and you separate out the people who declare themselves
as having no religion, church attendance in the last quarter-century or
so or even longer, has been slightly declining, but not by any dramatic
means.

What this generates, Hout and I have described, is a large group of

people who are what we call unchurched believers. They express
some kind of faith that we could identify as religious; sometimes they
use the language its become very popular in recent decades, Oh,
Im not religious; Im spiritual, which I think is, again, another way of
saying I dont like that term religion with the r in it. And so you
have this, I think, growing proportion of people who have what many
would consider a religious impulse, but they dont label it that way.
They might label it spiritual. And they have beliefs, but they are
disaffected from organized religion.
Weve always had a group of people, by the way, who we called
churched non-believers. That is, people who tell you, yes, theyre a
member of a church; yes, they go to services; but they dont believe in
the literacy of the bible or theyre not believers at all. So theres
always been a mix. But one of the interesting things, I think, is the
development of a larger and larger growing set of people who have
some kinds of religious instincts, who in an earlier age would have
been conventional members of a conventional church.
[WG]: Does your work lend itself to any predictions about the future of
this whole matter?
[CF]: I like to say that social scientists are not in the business of
prediction, because all sorts of things can turn around. One ironic
turnaround, for instance, is if you go back to the 60s and people
complained about religion and politics, it was people on the right
complaining about all these liberal ministers. Things can turn around
fast. I do imagine, however, that we may be entering a situation which
is really novel in American history. Weve had ups and downs over the
course of American history in peoples religiosity. There were earlier
periods in which wise observers said religion was collapsing in
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America actually, there was, in 1907, a delegation of ministers went

to visit Theodore Roosevelt to try to get his help because of the
collapse of faith in the United States. This was 1907. And in the
1950s, we had a huge surge of church-building in America and it
looked like religion was on the march. So these things go up and
down.
But I would say that if youre getting a generation and were still
talking about a minority, here but if youre getting a large number of
people, a new generation, who have said, for these cultural and
political reasons, Im not stepping inside a church; and they grow up
and they have kids, and they do not take those kids to church then
you may be moving to a stage where you just start developing large
numbers of younger people and their children and their grandchildren
whove never been exposed to the church. And its hard to come back
to the church if youve never been exposed to the church. Its sort of
the conventional story: exposure to the church as a child; wander
away during your late teens and 20s; and then come back. But we
may be seeing a significant chunk of the population that, as they
become parents, are not going to expose their kids to the church. And
that might be hard to change back. So these cycles I mentioned
before in American history of surges of religiosity and declines in
religiosity its a possibility that weve sort of moved to a new phase
here.
[WG]: Dr. Claude S. Fischer is the co-author, with fellow sociologist
Dr. Michael Hout, of a comprehensive academic paper, titled
Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference:
Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 19872012.
Friends, this is an important work, and were going to link to it from
stateofbelief.com. His books include Century of Difference: How
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America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years, and most recently,
Lurching Toward Happiness in America.
Dr. Fischer, I hope this is the beginning of a conversation that we can
continue, because Im fascinated by your insights and your brilliance
in telling us what thats all about. Thank you for being with us today
on State of Belief Radio.
[CF]: My pleasure.

Claude S. Fischer, Ph.D.

Claude S. Fischer is the Natalie Cohen Professor of Sociology at the
University of California, Berkeley. He arrived at Berkeley in 1972 with
an undergraduate degree from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Harvard.
Most of his early research focused on the social psychology of urban
lifehow and why rural and urban experiences differand on social
networks, both coming together in To Dwell Among Friends: Personal
Networks in Town and City (1982). In recent years, he has worked on
American social history, beginning with a study of the early
telephone's place in social life, America Calling: A Social History of
the Telephone to 1940(1992). Along the way, Fischer has worked on
other topics, including writing a book on inequality with five Berkeley
colleagues, Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve
Myth (1996). Fischer was also the founding editor of Contexts, the
American Sociological Association's magazine of sociology for the
general reader, and its executive editor through 2004. In 2006,
Fischer co-authored a social historical book with Michael
Hout, Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One
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Hundred Years (Russell Sage), which describes the shrinking of old

divisions and the widening of new ones among Americans over the
twentieth century. In 2010, he published Made in America: A Social
History of American Culture and Character(University of Chicago
Press), which analyzes social and cultural change since the colonial
era. In 2011, Fischer completed Still Connected: Family and Friends
in America Since 1970 (Russell Sage), a study, using compilations of
survey data, of whether and how Americans' personal ties altered
over four decades. His major current project, funded by the National
Institute of Aging, is a five-year panel study of how personal ties and
networks change as individuals age.
Fischer has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in urban
sociology, research methods, personality and social structure, social
psychology, and American society, and seminars on topics ranging
from professional writing to the sociology of consumption.
In 1996, Fischer won Robert and Helen Lynd Award for lifetime
contributions to urban studies. In 2011, Fischer was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was recently chosen as
the 2015 David Riesman Fellow of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science.
Fischer blogs at Made in
America (http://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/) and
contributes a bimonthly column to the Boston Review. A volume of
selected updated columns appeared in 2014 as Lurching Toward
Happiness in America.

Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy

Author of more than 20 books, including First Freedom First: A
Citizens Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of
Church and State, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy led the national nonpartisan grassroots and educational organization Interfaith Alliance
for 16 years, retiring in 2014. Dr. Gaddy continues his work with the
Alliance as President Emeritus and Senior Advisor. He serves as
Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster (Baptist) Church in
Monroe, Louisiana.
In addition to being a prolific writer, Dr. Gaddy hosts the weekly State
of Belief radio program, where he explores the role of religion in the
life of the nation by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in America,
while exposing and critiquing both the political manipulation of religion
for partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government
for sectarian purposes.
Dr. Gaddy provides regular commentary to the national media on
issues relating to religion and politics. He has appeared on MSNBCs
The Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball, NBCs Nightly News and
Dateline, PBSs Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and The Newshour
with Jim Lehrer, C-SPANs Washington Journal, ABCs World News,
and CNNs American Morning. Former host of Morally Speaking on
NBC affiliate KTVE in Monroe, Louisiana, Dr. Gaddy is a regular
contributor to mainstream and religious news outlets.
While ministering to churches with a message of inclusion, Dr. Gaddy
emerged as a leader among progressive and moderate Baptists.
Among his many leadership roles, he is a past president of the
Alliance of Baptists and has been a 20-year member of the
Commission of Christian Ethics of the Baptist World Alliance. His past

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leadership roles include serving as a member of the General Council

of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, President of Americans United
for Separation of Church and State, Chair of the Pastoral Leadership
Commission of the Baptist World Alliance and member of the World
Economic Forums Council of 100. Rev. Gaddy currently serves on
the White House task force on the reform of the Office of Faith Based
and Neighborhood Partnerships.
Prior to the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist
Convention (SBC), Dr. Gaddy served in many SBC leadership roles
including as a member of the conventions Executive Committee from
1980-84 and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the
Christian Life Commission from 1973-77.
Dr. Gaddy received his undergraduate degree from Union University
in Jackson, Tennessee and his doctoral degree and divinity training
from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville,
Kentucky.

State of Belief Radio

State of Belief is based on the proposition that religion has a positive
and healing role to play in the life of the nation. The show explains
and explores that role by illustrating the vast diversity of beliefs in
America the most religiously diverse country in the world while
exposing and critiquing both the political manipulation of religion for
partisan purposes and the religious manipulation of government for
sectarian purposes.

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Each week, the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy offers listeners critical
analysis of the news of religion and politics, and seeks to provide
listeners with an understanding and appreciation of religious liberty.
Rev. Gaddy tackles politics with the firm belief that the best way to
secure freedom for religion in America is to secure freedom from
religion. State of Belief illustrates how the Religious Right is wrong
wrong for America and bad for religion.
Through interviews with celebrities and newsmakers and field reports
from around the country, State of Belief explores the intersection of
religion with politics, culture, media, and activism, and promotes
diverse religious voices in a religiously pluralistic world.

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