Does education influence people's behavior? Or how about age--is it related to what people do and say? Or gender? Income? Ethnic background? Silly questions, you say: of course these factors relate to behavior. Most aspects of our daily lives, from where we live to what music we listen to, have linkages to such basic demographic characteristics as these--characteristics that help to define who we are and how other people perceive us.
But what about religion--does it influence people's behavior? 'Another silly question!' you respond; 'we read Monday Morning. Most of us are ministers of the Word. We have gone to school, studied in particular programs, chosen careers, taken jobs--all in the service of faith. And we could tell you about many other people--friends, colleagues, parishioners--whose lives have changed course in response to a religious call.'
Why, then, when one turns to the U.S. decennial census--the ultimate source of information on who Americans' are, demographically speaking--is there nary a mention of the 'r' word? 'Good question,' you reply; 'why is that?' Glad you asked, for in answering lies an interesting tale. (1)
From 1850, and continuing every ten years (with an interruption or two) until 1936, the U.S. government took censuses of religious bodies (CRB). That is, they compiled statistics on churches and synagogues by requesting membership numbers from the religious bodies themselves. The Bureau cancelled the program in 1946, in part because of the opposition of Christian Scientists (a group doctrinally opposed to enumeration). (2)
The end of the CRB was, coincidentally, a time of expanding survey research focusing on individuals, and many surveys asked questions on religion. Whatever the initial impetus, the interest in research on religion fed itself, as faith distinctions--particularly the broad divisions of Catholic, Jew, Protestant--were often found to be related to other aspects of behavior (e.g., childbearing, education, marital status). In short, the time was ripe for placing an individual question on religion on the decennial census.
Hence, the Bureau announced in 1956 that it was considering a religion question for the 1960 U.S. Census. This pleased social scientists, but opposition emerged from the American Civil Liberties Union and some religious groups, particularly Jewish ones. (3)
The basic arguments were that a question on religion (1) invades privacy, and (2) violates the 'separation of church and state' provision in the First Amendment. Some opponents feared that Census records could be used to identify individuals in some future wave of extreme religious hatred--understandable, perhaps, in the wake of the Holocaust, although the Census Bureau has a perfect record of maintaining confidentiality. In fact, during World War II, the U.S. government tried to use Census records to identify Japanese Americans for internment, but the Bureau refused, a position upheld by the Supreme Court.
Realistic or not, opposition to a Census question on religion went public, and several newspapers weighed in with editorials. While some of them favored asking a religion question, the ongoing debate led some staff in the Bureau to believe that the controversy might jeopardize the entire 1960 Census. On October 15, 1957, the Bureau decided that a religion question would NOT grace the 1960 census questionnaire.
Ironically, a test of such a question in March 1957 using the Current Population Survey--a Bureau-directed monthly survey of 35,000 households--found little opposition to this prototype question: 'What is your religion? Baptist, Lutheran, etc.' In fact, 96% of respondents complied, that is, they reported a religious preference.
As discerning readers may have intuited, my purpose here goes beyond recounting an interesting story. I remain hopeful that one day the situation will change and the census will contain a question on religion. Besides the obvious value to research and researchers, the information gathered would be useful in at least two ways to the church itself.
First, more attention would be given to religious aspects of life in the United States, because we would know more about it. Studies using census data that now focus on race and income would be able to include religion as well, and the ensuing discoveries that religion is, indeed, associated with other behaviors and characteristics would, over time, increase our overall awareness as a society of the significance of religion for individuals and communities. It might even help morale in denominations with declining memberships.
Second, there would be many practical applications for the church, particularly for new church development and congregational redevelopment. At the local and regional level, outreach committees could make decisions with the foreknowledge of the religious composition of their neighborhoods and communities. At the national level, studies of new church starts and redevelopment projects could assess how success or failure was related to the religious composition of the adjacent area. (4)
How do we get there from here? Time is quickly passing to add a question--any question--to the 2000 Census, but especially one on a controversial topic. Even before the Republican landslide of 1994, Congress was putting pressure on the Bureau to shorten its forms. If rumors are true, that pressure has only intensified.
Hence, I'm not exactly planning a study leave for 2002, when the next census's results are released, but at the same time I wouldn't discourage supporting letters from Presbyterians to their congresspersons--or, for that matter, a General Assembly resolution supporting a census question on religion.
Endnotes.
1. My discussion relies heavily on Charles R. Foster's paper, 'A Question on Religion,' Inter-University Case Program, Paper #66, 1961 (University of Alabama). I thank Carl Schmertmann for calling it to my attention.
2. This is Foster's account. A terser version from a 1994 Census Bureau library newsletter attributes the cancellation to a budget-cutting congressman, John Taber.
3. Interestingly, Foster notes, 'on two separate occasions the National Council of Churches refused to make any recommendation.'
4. Keep in mind that religious preference profiles would be provided only for areas, e.g., the Census would tell us the percentage of persons living in a particular geographic area who identified with each religious group. To protect confidentiality, no results would be released that might allow the identification of an individual's religious preference. The smallest geographic unit for which religious preference profiles would likely be provided is the block group, which averaged 406 households in 1990.
Email the author: Jack Marcum
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