Tyler Cowen asks today why more intellectuals don't convert to Protestantism, and I figured the answer was simple: intellectuals tend to be nonreligious and rarely convert to anything. But no!
According to GSS data, level of education doesn't correlate in any way with being nonreligious. It doesn't really correlate with any other religious question on the GSS survey either. This surprises me, but maybe it was just vanity on my part to assume that smart people tend to be nonreligious?
However, there's a huge chasm when you look by age:
On the question of Protestantism, there is an educational difference: people with college degrees don't go in much for fundamentalist churches, but they have a high engagement with mainline denominations (Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.).
All depends on how you define religion, of course.
If you absolutely insist on skyman, then, sure you will get results like this.
If you treat religion more as "ideology", as a *closed* belief system that grounds and justifies all other behavior, then you capture the post-skyman religions like Communism and Woke.
This is a really great point - my wife and I were just talking about this. So many people have "a religion." Some others: veganism (I say this as someone who co-founded a vegan advocacy group), climate doomism, AI doomism, Effective Altruism, Trumpism....
"Communism" is not a "religion". It is an economic theory clothed in a nasty authoritarian business model.
Honestly, the same can be said about Evangelical Christianity. It's prosperity gospel clothed in a nasty authoritarian social model.
It's more business and authoritarianism than religion (that Jesus fellow was way too much of a woke hippie).
>Tyler Cowen asks today why more intellectuals don't convert to Protestantism
I ask again: why does anyone care what he thinks? I don't understand liberals love for him. Just because he's not obviously insane?
Intellectuals? Is that really a description of those with a college degree?
“ very educated and interested in studying and other activities that involve careful thinking and mental effort”
Clearly there is not any mental effort involved in Protestantism.
No effort? Seriously? It takes a lot of mental gyrations to square the concept that there is only the One God, but there are three of "Him."
Not to mention Adam and Eve being the only humans in existance, then they had two sons, then one killed the other, and... moved into town?? and shacked up with one of the women there???
The establishment Protestant denominations don't generally accept biblical literalism.
It looks like smart people (or at least college educated people) tended to be less religious back in the 1970's, but not any more.
There are religions such as Unitarian Universalism that don't require a belief in the supernatural, but I'm not sure they are widespread enough to affect the overall picture very much.
At one time, people might claim to live by some "philosophy", like Epicurianism, Cynicism, Stoicism, even Nihilism. Now, in the US, we seem to restrict ourselves to "some flavor of Christianity" as the only allowable "religions" to which a person may subscribe.
Today's Republican Party has it both ways: Protestant fundies with a Nihilistic world view.
"maybe it was just vanity on my part to assume that smart people tend to be nonreligious"
Being religious or nonreligious - nowadays with much less social pressure to conform - is likely unrelated to cognitive ability, and more "how you are built". E.g. taste preferences. Many (most?) people love coconut, but I've met a few that hate the taste or scent.
For the latter, I offer my services relieving them of their Peter Paul Mounds candy bars (much superior to Almond Joy).
I don't think that Mainline Protestants or Unitarians are going to get a lot of new adherents, simply because being a regular churchgoer involves a fair amount of work. The churches are small, and the social justice frame that a lot have requires a lot of effort to make happen. There are barely enough people to keep it all going.
On top of that, the theology doesn't let you lord it over anyone else. At least the fundamentalists can feel all their effort is going to save them while everyone else is damned!
That said, I enjoy my time at church. It is economically and socially diverse, and it has a lot of older people in it who are genuinely interested in my kids. I do a lot of work, but people who have ideas often get to run with them pretty quickly. When the pandemic hit, for example, we were able to quickly connect to other churches and get big food and toiletry drives going. We have space that lots of nonprofits can use, and we can adjust our open hours more readily than government buildings like libraries - all you need is a volunteer with a key to let people in and close up at the end.
It's not like getting rid of religion will end magical thinking. Mainliners get their vaccines and trust western medicine. I've met plenty of atheists who believe stuff that seems pretty woo-woo bonkers to me, including some who dont even believe germ theory.
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It has been several decades since I lived near a major university campus, but back in the day it was entirely typical that the mainline Protestant churches just off campus had a lot of faculty among their membership. And yes, this includes the hard sciences. This is not the contradiction it might seem once you realize that not all Christians regard the Bible and geology or biology textbook.