Earlier this year USA Today ran an article and an interactive infographic about a recent survey of American religion. The American Religious Identification Survey has released data about the religion affiliations of Americans, finding that most religious groups have lost adherents since 1990.

One could find many things to quarrel with in either the survey’s design or especially in USA Today‘s visual presentation of the data. The most egregious problem is lumping religious groups into four categories: “Catholics,” “other Christians,” “other religions,” and “no religion.” Those categories are so broad and vague that they are essentially useless. Then too, the infographic suffers all the problems of bad data visualization. Someone at USA Today should buy Edward Tufte’s books.

Quibbles aside, the essential difficulty with these statistics is one of the classic problems of quantifying religion: the assumption that religious affiliation is closely linked to religious experience. Religious affiliation is the single most-used statistic about religion, because it is one of the very few facts about religion that can be quantified. The inference cannot be drawn, however, that a lower rate of religious affiliation implies a lower rate of religious experience (whatever that would mean). The ARIS study confirms what historians of recent American religion have known for a long time: that America religious experience since the 1960s has become less about institutions and groups and more about individuals and their experiences. To my knowledge, the study of religion or secularization has mostly resisted efforts at quantification. The best analyses, like Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, look at the aspects of religious experience which cannot be quantified. For more on Taylor, look for a future post.

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds [USA Today]

See how U.S. religious landscape has changed in nearly 2 decades [USA Today]

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) was a New England minister and scholar who holds the record for the most imprints of an early American writer: he published something more than four hundred editions of his books and pamphlets. One book that Mather never got published, though, was his massive commentary on the Bible. Mather’s Biblia Americana exists in six folio manuscript volumes at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Now an editorial team led by Reiner Smolinski will be publishing the Biblia Americana in ten volumes. The first volume, covering Mather’s commentary on Genesis, will be published in August 2010 by Baker Academic. That one volume will be 1,400 pages, which gives you some idea of the project’s scope. The best source for more information is the project’s website.

Mather’s Biblia will be a tremendous scholarly resource for historians, theologians, and literary scholars when it’s published. Even better, there are plans for an online edition once the print volumes are out.

It’s worth noting too that Jonathan Edwards’s Blank Bible, which was a similar biblical commentary, is available online with introductory essays from the amazing Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, published by the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.

Thanks to a Religion in America reader who sent me notes from a recent talk at Yale’s Beinecke Library about Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana.

I recently wrote a blog post about Charles M. Sheldon’s 1897 bestseller, In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do? The focus of the post is on copyright law, not religious history, so I didn’t post it here. Readers of Religion in America may still be interested.

“What Would Jesus Do?”: A Parable About Copyright

Religion and the Historical Profession
“Several scholars respond to the news that the proportion of historians who specialize in religion continues to climb, and to reflect on both the causes and the significance of of this distinct, and now confirmed, trend in historical studies.” The respondents are Jon Butler, David A. Hollinger, John Schmalzbauer, Jonathan Sheehan, and Grant Wacker.

• Pope’s Day in Colonial Boston

  In colonial America, November 5 used to be celebrated as Pope’s Day, an American version of Guy Fawke’s Day. This anti-Catholic holiday is remembered at both the Massachusetts Historical Society’s blog and the Boston Historical Society’s online exhibit.

• Q&A with Joel Carpenter

  An interview with Joel Carpenter, a professor of history at Calvin College and historian of religion, about being a Christian in graduate school. From the Conference on Faith and History.

• New Volume in the Joseph Smith Papers

  A new volume in the Joseph Smith papers has been published: The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations. John G. Turner reviews that volume at Religion in American History.

• Gordon-Conwell hosts "Renewing the Evangelical Mission"
  Gordon-Conwell hosts “Renewing the Evangelical Mission”:

  Evangelicals clash over the future path of evangelicalism.

• Mormonism’s Black Issues

  “While many Mormons would like to forget the Church’s history of discrimination against blacks, an Apostle’s recent statements comparing the post-Proposition 8 Mormon backlash to the Civil Rights-era harassment of black voters have brought that painful past back into the spotlight.” From Religion Dispatches.

• The Rise and Fall of American Transcendentalism

  David Voelker reviews Philip F. Gura, American Transcendentalism: A History (New York: Hill & Wang, 2007). See also Gura’s response to Voelker’s review on H-SHEAR. From H-Net Reviews.

• “When the Word of God Says One Thing …”: A Dispatch from the Scandal of the Evangelical Mind Conference

  Randall Stephens, one of the organizers of the recent Scandal of the Evangelical Mind conference, gives his report on the conference proceedings. He includes a video interview that he did with Mark Noll before the conference. From Religion in American History.

• How Mormonism Built Glenn Beck

  Joanna Brooks writes about Mormonism’s influence on conservative pundit Glenn Beck: “Some are familiar with Glenn Beck’s teary Mormon conversion story, but what many are not aware of is the extent to which Mormonism has given Beck key elements of his on-air personality and messaging—and how it may shape the future of American conservatism.” From Religion Dispatches.

• Review of Writing the Rapture

  Peter Althouse reviews Crawford Gribben, Writing the Rapture: Prophecy Fiction in Evangelical America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). From H-Net Reviews.

ShowForth recently released a website about the Great Awakening that is a companion to their documentary DVD. The site has supplementary resources for students and teachers, such as biographies, essays, and primary sources.