A change was gonna come

Americans have become less committed to organized religion in the past few decades.  But does that mean that we are becoming more secular or that religion is becoming more individualized--ie, religious feelings are less connected to organized religion?  In 1962, the Gallup Poll asked "Would you say that you have ever had a religious or mystical experience--that is, a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening?"  20% said yes, 73% no, and 7% were listed as "no code or no data."  If the last group was "don't know" I'd count it as "no," but since that's not clear I'll treat it as missing.  Gallup asked the question again in 1976, and other organizations asked in 1994, 2006, and 2009.  The results:

1962     22%    78%

1976     31%    69%

1994     34%    66%

2006     48%    52%

2009     51%    50%

The 2009 question came near the end of a Pew survey that focused on religion, which may have increased the number of positive answers.  The 2006 survey also contained a number of questions on religion, although I don't have the whole questionnaire.  But even if you discount those, it seems like there has been an upward trend.  I looked at group differences in 1962 to see if they gave any hints that a change was coming--e. g., were younger or more educated people more likely to say yes?  The only factors that made a clear difference were one's own religion and region--Protestants and Southerners were more likely to say yes.  Breaking it down by both religion and region, it appeared that it was specifically Protestants in the South--37% said yes.  Outside the South, there was little difference between Protestants and Catholics (18% vs. 15%).  Jews were lower, and "other" and "none" were a little higher than Catholics, although the numbers are too small to be very confident.  There also seemed to be an interaction with education--in the South, less educated people were more likely to say yes, but outside the South, the relationship was weaker or maybe reversed.  But overall, a sociologist who looked at the data in 1962 would probably have predicted a decline, on the grounds that the South was likely to converge with the rest of the country.  I'll look at the more recent patterns in a future post.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]