In the book titled American Religion: Contemporary Trends, the author, Mark Chaves discusses many of the declining beliefs and practices that are occurring in the United States today. There is one exception, however, which is discussed in chapter two, diversity. In this chapter Chaves states that religious diversity is in fact growing rather than declining. In chapter three though, Chaves begins the pattern of declining beliefs and practices by discussing the decline in overall belief, and more specifically the decline in the belief of the literal word of the bible. It seems contradicting to begin with explaining the expansion in religious and then examining the decline in belief, however, the two concepts intertwine with each other bringing …show more content…
Chaves elaborates this idea by presenting Figure 2.1, on page 17 American Religion: Contemporary Trends, from the General Social Survey. The figure is titled “Americans’ Self-Reported Religious Affiliations”, and represents answers to the question “What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?” (Chaves, 17). Chaves states that it is important to remember that this graph shows the trends in peoples self-described religious identity and does not tell whether the person frequently attends services, their actual belief in God, or the importance the particular religion has in their life.
From the figure Chaves described three key points, which are, that the percentage of people in the United States who declare no religion or none has increased significantly. Second, there is an increase of people in the United States who are Muslim, Buddhists, Hindus, and others who do not specify as Christian or Jewish. Third, there has been a decline of Protestants in the United States as …show more content…
The first is the decline of belief in the Bibles literal word, and the second is the rise of a diffuse sort of spirituality. In this chapter the first figure presented, figure 3.1, is titled “Declining Belief in Inerrant Bible, 1976-2008” from the General Social Survey and Gallup Polls. This figure shows the trend of decline since the 1970’s in the belief in an inerrant Bible. In both the General Social Survey and Gallup Polls the same question, “Which of these statements comes closest to describing your feelings about the Bible”, was asked. There were several options which included, “The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word; The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word; The Bible is an ancient Book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men” (Chaves, 34). The chart then represents the percentage of people who agreed with the first option, and both have basically the same results. The amount of people who agree with the first option has declined from 40 percent to a little above 30 percent. Chaves explains that generation turnover is an important part of this trend. After learning about micro cultures and the generation micro cultures in my Consumer Behavior class, I agree with Chaves. For example, Millennial’s, ages 18-30, rely heavily on proof of information.