BY SIMON J. DAHLMAN
Professor of Communications Milligan College, Tennessee
Inner-directed “The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.” —Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), American journalist, author, and Nobel Prize recipient
“Beware the man of one book.” —Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), Christian theologian, priest, and philosopher
By the Numbers: College Degrees and Religion The share of Americans who have earned a four-year college degree varies not only by race and gender, but also by religion. Members of some faith groups are much more educated, on average, than others. The faith groups or denominations with the largest share of people with a college degree are: Hindu: 77 percent Unitarian-Universalist: 67 percent Anglican: 59 percent
Sad Reality “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.” —Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965), British prime minister during World War II
8 CHRISTIAN STANDARD
Train Up “Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” —Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson (1912–2007), first lady (wife of President Lyndon Johnson)
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Rise in Mixed Faiths
Episcopal Church: 57 percent Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): 47 percent Buddhist: 47 percent The groups with the smallest share of those with a college degree: Assemblies of God: 15 percent
Roughly one in five American adults (21 percent) were raised with a mixed religious background, according to a new Pew Research Center study. That figure includes about 9 percent who were raised by two people, both of whom were religiously affiliated but with different religions (e.g., a Protestant mother and a Catholic father or a Jewish mother and a Protestant father). Twelve percent were raised by one person who was religiously affiliated and another who was religiously unaffiliated (atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular”). While religiously mixed backgrounds remain the exception in the U.S., with almost 80 percent saying they were raised within a single religion, the number of Americans raised in interfaith homes appears to be growing. While one-quarter (27 percent) of young adults in the millennial generation were raised in a religiously mixed family, the percentages who say they were raised in such a household decrease with each older generation: Generation Xers (20 percent), Baby Boomers (19 percent), and adults from the Silent and Greatest generations (13 percent). —Pew Research Center (Religion and Public Life), October 26, 2016
Church of God in Christ: 13 percent Jehovah’s Witnesses: 12 percent American Baptist Churches USA: 12 percent Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee): 11 percent By comparison, 27 percent of all Americans have earned a college degree. —Caryle Murphy, “The Most and Least Educated Religious Groups in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, Nov. 4, 2016
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