What Americans Really Believe | 
 enlarge | Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Baylor University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.24
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 83398
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 200
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1602581789
Dewey Decimal Number: 200.973090511
EAN: 9781602581784
ASIN: 1602581789
Publication Date: September 19, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A shocking snapshot of the most current impulses in American religion. Rodney Stark reports the surprising findings of the 2007 Baylor Surveys of Religion, a follow up to the 2005 survey revealing most Americans believe in God or a higher power. This new volume highlights even more hot-button issues of religious life in our country. A must-read for anyone interested in Americans' religious beliefs and practices.
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| Customer Reviews:
The rest of the story behind the common themes talked about in churches today November 27, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book does a great job giving the rest of the story behind the common themes talked about in churches today. For example, they explain where all those "missing" young adults are who have left church.Hint: Check their apartments, they may just be sleeping in as young people have done for as long as people have been paying attention to church attendance stats. Either that, or they are attending another church that has a program they prefer more.
"These examples also reveal how often even very reputable observers of American religion get things wrong and some of the potential costs of their errors. For example, it would be a waste of their funds for some churches to mount a campaign to save their young people from leaving the church, when no such thing is going on. On the other hand, some groups clearly are loosing their young (and many of their older members too), not to irreligion but to other denominations. For those churches, any effort to reverse their declines depends upon being able to motivate their current members to reach out to others." (page 14)
Amazing revelations about religion in America November 21, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Are Americans changing their basic beliefs about religion? Doubters and theists will find plenty of food for thought in this book.
"For several centuries, Western intellectuals have been predicting the death of religion" (p 115). Science, it was thought, would displace religion. Or politics. In the Soviet Union and other communist countries the clergy and devout worshipers were sent to the gulag or murdered. The entire educational system under communism taught against the belief in God. And today atheists like Dawkins sell books by the millions railing against belief.
Well...surprise. Even in the old Soviet Union belief is growing, not declining. And vast new numbers of converts in Asia and Africa are joining religions. (For further information on this topic read 'The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity' by Philip Jenkins.)
America remains stubbornly religious, although mainline Protestant churches are in decline. Women continue (even as they did in ancient Rome) to be more religious than men. Odd findings about atheists in America include the fact that they are "disproportionately from Jewish homes...and...are overwhelmingly on the political left" (p 122).
Believers may find it troubling that a growing number of younger Americans are more drawn to "spirituality" than to religion. In Europe especially, where belief in God has declined, huge numbers have returned to New Age, magic, and ancient pagan practices.
One small caveat about the book: Stark mistakenly states that Catholics no longer are required to go to Mass every Sunday.
Rodney Stark is one of the most enjoyable writers on the subject of religion today. If you haven't read "The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal, Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force" and "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success" do yourself a favor and run out and get them.
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