“Religiosity and American College and University Professors,” a scholarly article by Neal Gross and Solon Simmons in the summer 2009 issue of Sociology of Religion, gives new insight not only about the basic religiosity of faculty, but also about the work of Collegium. The article expands on some preliminary data reported here a few years ago.

The article draws on data from a 2006 national survey, the Politics of the American Professoriate Survey, which included questions about many issues, including religion. It examines data for faculty teaching in the twenty most popular undergraduate disciplinary fields (hence it excludes, e.g., those in medicine and law). The few questions in this large survey don’t allow us to look at faculty religiosity in much depth, but we do get some idea about belief in God (respondents could choose any of six responses ranging from “I don’t believe in God” to “I know God exists and I have no doubt about it.”

The survey suggests that less than a quarter of faculty in the U.S. describe themselves as nonbelievers. While that number is larger than the general population, it is smaller than most people assume. Professors at elite doctoral institutions are less likely than other faculty to be religious believers. 36.5% in those schools are atheists or agnostics, but even there, a solid majority at least believes in a “higher power.” 22% of faculty at four-year BA granting institutions, and 22.7% at nonelite doctoral institutions are atheists or agnostics. Surprisingly, 20.4% of the elite doctoral faculty have no doubt about God, compared to 38.5% at BA granting institutions.

In a multivariate analysis, the authors find evidence that having a research orientation (perhaps more than being at an elite institution) has a negative correlation with religiosity.
The results showed wide variations in relatively cognate fields. 50% of psychologists identify as atheists (“I don’t believe in God”), compared to 27.5% of biologists, and 17.9% of sociologists or 23.3% of economists. 7.4% of accountants or 8.6 % of finance faculty are atheists, compared to 20.9% of marketing faculty. 2.4% of electrical engineers showed up as atheist, and 33.3% as agnostics. Mechanical engineers were more sure of themselves: 44.1 were atheists, with only 2.9% agnostic.

Overall, 37.9% indicated affiliation with Protestant denominations, or simply identified as “Christian.” 31.2% identified as “none,” 15.9% as Catholic, 5.4% as Jewish. All other religious groups counted for less than 3% each.

The authors’ analysis is where the study gets most interesting for me. While some might see the university as a key force of secularization in society, most students are apparently taught by faculty who are sympathetic to religion.

As Gross and Simmons see it, the “problem” of religion and higher education is not as one might say, all those secularists in the academy. Rather, the academy seems to have plenty of people who are religious, thought perhaps less traditionally religious than the national norms. The authors find that “half of American professors…say that the term “spiritual person” describes them at least moderately well.” Thus, “the hypothesis that the university is a secular institution because of the irreligious tendencies of the faculty does not withstand empirical scrutiny: it is a secular institution despite the fact that most of its key personnel
are themselves religious believers.”

Gross and Simmons see a challenge for sociologists of religion: “an important and neglected topic for the sociology of academic life is to understand how the many professors who are religious straddle their religious and scientific or intellectual value commitments: the nature of the epistemic cultures they inhabit that allow them to do so, the practices they have learned to keep the two strands of their identity separate, and the ways in which they may attempt to bring them together and thereby be influenced in their work lives by their personal religiosity.”

In a less formal way, this gets to the heart of what Collegium
tries to do on a more personal basis – to explore where the divisions set up in their own fields might be costly, where they are necessary, and how to live whole and healthy intellectual and spiritual lives for the sake of ourselves,
our families, our students, and the common good.

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Fall 2009 : : Volume 2 / Issue 7
Spring 2009 : : Volume 2 / Issue 6
Fall 2008 : : Volume 2 / Issue 5
Spring 2008 : : Volume 2 / Issue 4
Fall 2007 : : Volume 2 / Issue 3
Spring 2007 : : Volume 2 / Issue 2
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