Tag Archives: United States

Public Opinion and Support for the Separation of Church and State in the U.S. and Europe

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by Barry A. Kosmin, Research Professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

The idea of separating the institutions of the state, government and public life from the direct involvement and influence of organized religion arose during the Enlightenment. It became a feasible proposition as a result of the two great revolutions of the 18th century. In fact the American and French revolutions produced two intellectual and constitutional traditions of secularism and the secular state – a “soft secularism” and a “hard secularism”. Canadians, of course, rejected both these revolutions and so historically they are heirs to the Lockean tradition of religious toleration rather than of secularism per se.

Public Opinion and Support for the Separation of Church and State in the U.S. and Europe

One Nation, Losing God

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Interview with Barry Kosmin in Free Inquiry (Dec. 31, 2010).

Barry Kosmin is the nation’s leading expert on the “nones,” a group
that he studies through the ARIS, or American Religious Identification Survey. In this episode of Point of Inquiry, he discusses where America is heading with respect to its religious identity, why this change is occurring, and what the implications will be for secular advocacy in the future.
Barry A. Kosmin is Research Professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

US Latino Religious Identification 1990-2008: Growth, Diversity & Transformation

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by Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (Trinity College); Puerto Rican & Latino Studies Institute/Political Science (University of Connecticut), Barry A. Kosmin, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (Trinity College) & Ariela Keysar Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (Trinity College)

The ARIS Latino Report is the third major report based on the findings of the American Religious Identification Survey, ARIS 2008, and the earlier surveys in the ARIS time series. In this report we focus on three aspects of U.S. Latino religious identification – growth, diversity and transformation. First, we investigate the current demography and profile of Latino religious identification and how they have changed since 1990. The comparison of the patterns of Latino religious identification in 1990 and 2008 is based on a unique data set covering two very large representative national samples. Secondly, we analyze the differences among different religious groups of Latinos, according to national identity and origin and acculturation variables such as language use. The answers to questions regarding language preference and national origin were asked in English or Spanish to a subsample of 959 Latino adults in 2008. Finally, we discuss the impact of the changes in Latino religion on American society at large and for the main religious groups to which Latinos belong.

US Latino Religious Identification 1990-2008: Growth, Diversity & Transformation

Juhem Navarro-Rivera is a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College, Hartford, CT and Adjunct Professor of Latino Studies and Political Science at the University of Connecticut

Barry A. Kosmin is Research Professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College and Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

Ariela Keysar is Associate Professor, Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College and the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture

American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population

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ARIS Report by Barry A. Kosmin & Ariela Keysar with Ryan T. Cragun & Juhem Navarro-Rivera

Who exactly are the Nones? “None” is not a movement, but a label for a diverse group of people who do not identify with any of the myriad of religious options in the American religious marketplace – the irreligious, the unreligious, the anti-religious, and the anti-clerical. Some believe in God; some do not. Some may participate occasionally in religious rituals; others never will.

American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population

Secularization and Its Discontents: Courts and Abortion Policy in the United States and Spain

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by Adrienne Fulco, Associate Professor and Director of the Public Policy and Law Program at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut

Scholars who compare European and American political parties have custom-arily characterized the two major American political parties as distinctly non-ideological coalitions of voters who come together every four years to nominate and elect a president. Nicol C. Rae recently observed that “[i]n the comparative study of political parties in twentieth century advanced democracies, the United States has always been something of a problematic outlier owing to the absence of organized, disciplined, and ideological mass political parties.” Moreover, according to Rae, when compared with other advanced industrial democracies, “American national parties have traditionally been decentralized, loosely organized, and undisciplined, with party cleavages based on cultural or regional factors rather than social class divisions.” But today, according to researchers who have explored the problem of polarization in American politics since the 1980s, there is now “widespread agreement that the Democratic and Republican parties in the electorate have become more sharply divided on ideology and policy issues in recent decades.” Commentators agree that among the factors most responsible for the sharpening of distinctions between the two parties has been the infusion of white, Protestant, conservative, religiously motivated voters into the Republican Party. Thus, not only have American political parties become more ideologically oriented, but they have also come to resemble more closely the European model, in which parties represent distinct religious and secular constituencies.

Secularization and Its Discontents: Courts and Abortion Policy in the United States and Spain

The Salience of Secular Values and Scientific Literacy for American Democracy

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by Barry A. Kosmin, Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture and Research Professor, Public Policy and Law Program at Trinity College, Hartford & Juhem Navarro-Rivera, Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC).

Embedded in modernity is the idea that science is a major building block of the secular worldview, and that the progress of science is, de facto, the triumph of the secular worldview. This outlook arises from the close historical, philosophical, and intellectual relationship between the natural sciences and secular ideas and values. Both secular and scientifc values were entrenched within the Enlightenment project of emancipating humanity and actualizing the highest human potentials through the diffusion of knowledge. These goals, in turn, became linked to the quest for liberty, freedom of thought, and popular sovereignty—and thus democracy. The triadic relationship of secular values, scientifc literacy, and social and economic progress, and their role as the building blocks of democracy in the United States, is the subject of this chapter. Our purpose is to demonstrate that particularly in the 21st century, in order to achieve a prosperous society and a healthy, participatory democratic order based on secular values, a high degree of science literacy among the citizenry is necessary.

The Salience of Secular Values and Scientific Literacy for American Democracy

U.S. Public Education: A Battleground from the Ivory Tower to First Grade

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by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Professor of Psychology at the University of Haifa, Israel.

Sigmund Freud identifed two major blows to “human megalomania”—blows that destroyed our long-held self-image as unique and superior. The frst blow was the Copernican revolution, which deprived humans of their place at the center of the universe, telling them that earth was in a remote corner of one galaxy among billions. Then came Charles Darwin, putting us in our place as part of the animal kingdom, with no special creation needed for our appearance on earth.

U.S. Public Education: A Battleground from the Ivory Tower to First Grade

Science Education and Religion in America in the 21st Century: Holding the Center

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by Jon D. Miller, John A. Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies at Michigan State University & Robert T. Pennock, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Michigan State University in Lyman Briggs College, the Departments of Philosophy, Computer Science and Engineering, and the Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior program

For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, there has been an uneasy truce between science and religion in the United States. During the 60 years since the end of the Second World War, the United States has been viewed as the most scientific nation on the planet. American universities and laboratories have developed an extraordinary array of technologies, and are responsible for a substantial portion of our modern scientific understanding of nature. More Americans have been early adopters of new technologies—from automobiles and airplanes to antibiotics and new medical technologies—than adults in any other country. Nine out of ten Americans think that science and technology have made their lives “healthier, easier, and more comfortable.” And yet, on particular issues such as evolution and stem cell research, there has been active political resistance to scientific advancement from at least some religious quarters. Such religious opposition has led to a low-level but ongoing struggle over the content of science education.

Science Education and Religion in America in the 21st Century: Holding the Center

The Freethinkers in a Free Market of Religion

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by Ariela Keysar, Associate director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture and associate research professor of public policy and law at Trinity College & Barry A. Kosmin, Founding director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture and research professor of public policy and law at Trinity College

Secularity, like religion, takes many forms in American society. Also like religion, it varies in intensity along the trajectories of what are often referred to as the “Three B’s,” belonging, belief, and behavior. Our recently published book, Religion in a Free Market, shows that the American public does not subscribe to a binary system—religion or secularity. Our research found self-identifying Catholics and Lutherans who say they don’t believe in God, Mormons who claim a secular outlook, and religious people who, despite their religiosity, are comfortably married to people of other faiths or no faith at all.

The Freethinkers in a Free Market of Religion