O Be Some Other Name

Hout, Michael; Fischer, Claude S.

doi:10.2307/1519772

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…People would stop consulting traditional authority for guidance and would lose faith, the churches would empty, and religious identification would die out. Fewer Americans affiliate with organized religion than twenty-five years ago, but evidence here and elsewhere (Hout and Fischer 2003) shows that secularization is hardly the cause of this trend.…”

mentioning

confidence: 59%

“…Evidence of secularization in the United States is weak at best (Greeley 1972;Edgell 2012;Marwell and Demerath 2003;Hout and Fischer 2003), but secularization remains relevant because many Europeans claim it explains religious change there (Bruce 1992). Though skeptical, we include secularization among our competing explanations in case the shift in our focus from period to cohort change might result in the anticipated evidence that beliefs are declining and shaping American religious affiliation.…”

Section: Explaining Differences Among Cohortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012

Hout¹,

Fischer²

2014

SocScience

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Twenty percent of American adults claimed no religious preference in 2012, compared to 7 percent twenty-five years earlier. Previous research identified a political backlash against the religious right and generational change as major factors in explaining the trend. That research found that religious beliefs had not changed, ruling out secularization as a cause. In this paper we employ new data and more powerful analytical tools to: (1) update the time series, (2) present further evidence of correlations between political backlash, generational succession, and religious identification, (3) show how valuing personal autonomy generally and autonomy in the sphere of sex and drugs specifically explain generational differences, and (4) use GSS panel data to show that the causal direction in the rise of the "Nones" likely runs from political identity as a liberal or conservative to religious identity, reversing a long-standing convention in social science research. Our new analysis joins the threads of earlier explanations into a general account of how political conflict over cultural issues spurred an increase in non-affiliation.

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mentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Explaining Differences Among Cohortsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012

Hout¹,

Fischer²

2014

SocScience

Self Cite

233

254

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hout and Fischer argued that the classic secularization thesis did not seem to explain the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in the United States, which followed a nonlinear pattern of persistence through the end of Reagan's presidency and rapid rise after it. Marwell and Demerath (2003) argued that Hout and Fischer's findings supported the secularization thesis, and Hout and Fischer (2003) responded that the data-including the nonlinear nature of religious change and persistent religiousness of many religiously unaffiliated Americans-provided more support for a political backlash explanation than for the classic secularization thesis.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Continuing Persistence of Intense Religion in the United States: Rejoinder

Schnabel¹,

Bock²

2018

SocScience

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In their comment on our article about the persistence of intense religion in the United States, David Voas and Mark Chaves (2018) claimed that "the intensely religious segment of the American population is shrinking. " In this response, we show that intense religion has persisted from the 1970s to the present, with a temporary uptick during the exceptional Reagan years. Voas and Chaves concluded otherwise because their analytical strategy was not sufficiently sensitive to nonlinear patterns. In addition to demonstrating the continuing persistence of intense religion, we also discuss criteria for measuring intense religion over time and the importance of avoiding unfounded assumptions in age-period-cohort analysis. We conclude that aspects of the classic secularization thesis championed by Voas, Chaves, and others are not supported by the data, and we suggest that scholars should look for better ways of thinking about religious change.

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Birth Cohort Changes in the Association Between College Education and Religious Non-Affiliation

Schwadel

2014

Social Forces

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O Be Some Other Name

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012

Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012

The Continuing Persistence of Intense Religion in the United States: Rejoinder

Birth Cohort Changes in the Association Between College Education and Religious Non-Affiliation

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