{"id":4387,"date":"2013-07-29T10:55:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T10:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=4387"},"modified":"2013-07-29T10:57:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T10:57:01","slug":"americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html","title":{"rendered":"Americans Divided on Definition of &#8220;Religious&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.religiontoday.com\/blog\/americans-hold-different-views-what-religious-means.html\"><em>Religion Today<\/em><\/a> recently posted the results of a survey of Americans&#8217; understanding of the term, &#8220;religious.&#8221; Apparently the old divide between those who define religiosity based solely on faith and beliefs (historically Protestants) and those who take the concept to mean primarily a person&#8217;s good works (historically Catholics) persists.<\/p>\n<p>The survey, carried out by the Public Religion Research Institute, measures religiosity by categorizing Americans in four groups: religious conservatives (28 percent), religious moderates (38 percent), religious progressives (19 percent) and the nonreligious (15 percent). And here&#8217;s how these various religious groups fell on the scale:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em> White evangelical Christians fall overwhelmingly (70 percent) into the conservative category.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> About four in 10 white mainline Protestants (44 percent) and white Catholics (43 percent) are moderates, as are seven in 10 Hispanic Catholics and more than half of black Protestants (54 percent).<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> The largest group of non-Christian religious people (42 percent) is classified as progressive.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em> A strong majority of the unaffiliated (59 percent) are in the nonreligious sector.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Notably, the group I am most interested in these days (the &#8220;non-religious&#8221;) were far more likely than religious Americans to call economic inequality the most serious economic problem facing our country.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Religion Today recently posted the results of a survey of Americans&#8217; understanding of the term, &#8220;religious.&#8221; Apparently the old divide between those who define religiosity based solely on faith and beliefs (historically Protestants) and those who take the concept to mean primarily a person&#8217;s good works (historically Catholics) persists. The survey, carried out by the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,180,119,136],"tags":[1880,1878,1876,1252,1879,372],"class_list":["post-4387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity-and-culture","category-christianity-in-politics","category-church","category-social-justice","tag-economic-inequality","tag-meaning-of-religious","tag-public-religion-research-institute","tag-religion-today","tag-rises-of-the-nones","tag-spiritual-but-not-religious"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Americans Divided on Definition of &quot;Religious&quot; - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Americans Divided on Definition of &quot;Religious&quot; - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Religion Today recently posted the results of a survey of Americans&#8217; understanding of the term, &#8220;religious.&#8221; Apparently the old divide between those who define religiosity based solely on faith and beliefs (historically Protestants) and those who take the concept to mean primarily a person&#8217;s good works (historically Catholics) persists. The survey, carried out by the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristina.robbdover\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-07-29T10:55:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-07-29T10:57:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kristina Robb-Dover\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@saintplussinner\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@saintplussinner\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Americans Divided on Definition of \"Religious\" - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Americans Divided on Definition of \"Religious\" - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","og_description":"Religion Today recently posted the results of a survey of Americans&#8217; understanding of the term, &#8220;religious.&#8221; Apparently the old divide between those who define religiosity based solely on faith and beliefs (historically Protestants) and those who take the concept to mean primarily a person&#8217;s good works (historically Catholics) persists. The survey, carried out by the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html","og_site_name":"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristina.robbdover","article_published_time":"2013-07-29T10:55:49+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-07-29T10:57:01+00:00","author":"Kristina Robb-Dover","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@saintplussinner","twitter_site":"@saintplussinner","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html","name":"Americans Divided on Definition of \"Religious\" - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-07-29T10:55:49+00:00","dateModified":"2013-07-29T10:57:01+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#\/schema\/person\/4c3cdf7104b785db2790c0ea54388e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2013\/07\/americans-divided-on-definition-of-religious.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Americans Divided on Definition of &#8220;Religious&#8221;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/","name":"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","description":"Beliefnet Voices...thoughts at the intersection between life and God for anyone converted, unconverted or under conversion","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#\/schema\/person\/4c3cdf7104b785db2790c0ea54388e75","name":"Kristina Robb-Dover","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dcf\/dcfc687b5670420584dc52026042422ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dcf\/dcfc687b5670420584dc52026042422ax96.jpg","caption":"Kristina Robb-Dover"},"description":"Thoughts at the intersection of life and God from one saint and sinner for anyone \"converted,\" \"unconverted,\" or \"under conversion.\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/author\/krobbdover"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/461"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4390,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4387\/revisions\/4390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}