Reading Sociology for the Sake of the Gospel

Could it be part of a Catholic’s duty to read works of sociology? As a professor of theology most of whose students work as evangelists and catechists, I believe that I should. As St. Paul taught, it belongs to the work of the evangelist to “become all things to all people” and to “do it all for the sake of the gospel” (1 Cor 9:22–23). It is as true today as it was in the thirteenth century that quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur—“whatever is received, is received after the manner of the recipient.” The evangelist must know something about those he hopes to evangelize, and sociology promises insight into their views. Mindful of that duty, and having benefited greatly in the past from the work of sociologists such as Christian Smith, I turned to Tim Clydesdale and Kathleen Garces-Foley’s The Twentysomething Soul: Understanding the Religious and Secular Lives of American Young Adults (Oxford, 2019).

At the same time, the limitations and potential pitfalls of sociology were also on my mind when I read the book, due to two occasions in 2019 when reports of survey results concerning religion sent the media and Catholic opinion into convulsions. In the spring, it was announced that the 2018 General Social Survey (GSS) had revealed that the religiously unaffiliated, popularly known as “Nones,” now make up 23.1% of the population of the United States. This figure appeared consistent with the Nones’ meteoric rise over the last three decades. The Nones had seemingly caught up with Catholics and Evangelicals. Some, however, questioned mainstream interpretations of this data. It was pointed out that some journalists had erroneously equated Nones with atheists (most Nones do not self-identify as atheists). It was also observed that although there is good reason to recognize ours as a period of religious decline, there is little evidence of a major drop-off in fervor among the fervent. In other words, the new Nones are largely not yesterday’s committed believers but instead yesterday’s nominal box-checkers—those who had vaguely identified with their grandparents’ religious tradition despite its irrelevance to their way of life. It would be wrong to dismiss the GSS finding as a non-story, but it does seem that its significance was widely misconstrued.

Late summer saw another apparently momentous study hit the headlines. According to Pew Research, fewer than a third of US Catholics believe the Church’s teaching on transubstantiation. If accurate, this would seem—based on earlier studies, whose accuracy may themselves be questioned—to indicate a drop of nearly 30% in a mere eight years. Once again, however, close examination of the data gave good reason to suspect that the findings were being misinterpreted. Mark M. Gray of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) noted that the wording of the survey was potentially misleading. In addition, the “US Catholics” in question are all “self-described Catholics.” That would include those who rarely or never attend Mass. It would thus be wrong to conclude, as some did, that the study meant that only 31% of Catholics at Sunday Mass believed in the Real Presence. It is evident, then, that if evangelists are to profit from sociological studies, they must look beyond the headlines and ask careful questions about data and methods.

Both of these sensational findings and the considerations that rendered them questionable were fresh in my mind when I began reading The Twentysomething Soul. In differing ways, the book confirmed my misgivings about popular reporting on sociology. Near the beginning, the authors summarize the “major claims” they wish to make. The most interesting of these have to do with religious stances that prove unstable over time. Some Nones are proponents of “philosophical secularism.” Yet it turns out that philosophical secularism tends to atrophy outside universities and urban centers. Journalists often use “None” as if it meant atheist or principled agnostic. In fact, Nones are most likely to be “Indifferent Secularists,” who simply devote little attention to religious or philosophical questions (54%). Another third of Nones are either “Unaffiliated Believers,” who think there is a personal God but do not identify with any religious tradition, or “Spiritual Eclectics,” who find “spiritual growth” important but do not belong to a faith community (17% apiece). Only 12% of Nones qualify, on Clydesdale and Garces-Foley’s telling, as “Philosophical Secularists.” It is also noteworthy that Clydesdale and Garces-Foley confirm something we might have intuited: those who are only “tepidly affiliated”—who attend services inconsistently, who pray sometimes but not regularly—tend to slide over time towards disaffiliation. The center does not hold (see Lk 11:23).

Both insights from The Twentysomething Soul—the minority status among Nones of philosophical secularists and the fragility of nominal religious affiliation—confirm the need for circumspection over breathless headlines about the rise of the Nones and the decline of religious faith. The Twentysomething Soul is thus a salutary corrective to popular interpretations of the GSS finding mentioned above.

Nonetheless, The Twentysomething Soul suffers from some of the methodological difficulties that beset the Pew study on Catholics and the Eucharist. First, categorization of religious identity is among the thorniest problems that sociologists of religion face, and Clydesdale and Garces-Foley’s admirably transparent “Methodological Appendix” shows that this task presented an enormous obstacle to their project. Second, the wording of several of the survey items in the National Study of American Twentysomethings (NSAT), the centerpiece of the authors’ data collection, raises doubts about their validity—that is, their success in measuring exactly what they are intended to measure.

Finally, the usefulness of The Twentysomething Soul may be diminished by the age of the data. The volume was released in August 2019, but the data that inform it were collected between 2006 and 2014, with the NSAT being administered in 2013. Many of the individuals whom the authors studied, and whom they present in the book as “today’s twentysomethings,” are in fact by now thirtysomethings, and a few are likely in their forties. The rapidity and volatility of cultural shift in the 2010s was considerable, to say the least, and 2020’s foot seems to be firmly planted on the accelerator. Data as fresh and precise as possible are a special desideratum in such times.

Shortcomings of the present volume aside, it is an example of the kind of work that evangelists and catechists may find it useful to read for the sake of the gospel, provided they are prepared to sift what they read patiently and judiciously.