Wednesday, September 13, 2006

American Piety in the 21st Century

The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, part of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, has compiled findings from an extensive survey on religious beliefs in America. They assert that previous surveys have presented religion in America as predominantly homogenous or "monolithic." That is, we all believe in God in the same way. However, their survey tries to dig deeper into the complexity and uniqueness of American religion in the 21st century, including even data from our pop culture habits, such as The DaVinci Code, paranormal belief, and Joan of Arcadia. It's an interesting study with lots of graphs and charts for the visually-minded. Check it out here. Click on the (somewhat scary) picture on the right side of the web page to download the PDF document of the survey data.

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