Religious participation: it's not just about switching

Lots of folks have posted about the recent Pew survey on the U.S. Religious Landscape. Apparently the biggest news is that, among the 35000 people who participated in the survey, over one quarter switched away from the religion they were born into. OK, I guess that's interesting, except that most of the people I know have made that switch. Yes of course, the kinds of people I know tend to be highly-educated and geographically mobile...but still.

I find other results more note-worthy. I had to grab some of Pew's data and play around with it. The relationship between education level and religion is interesting. Here's a graph of religion for college grads and those with post-graduate degrees. Having Hindus, Jews, and Unitarians on the right isn't surprising, but I am somewhat surprised by the fact that Evangelical Protestants and New Agers are so similar. And I didn't expect this sizable difference between Mainline and Evangelical Protestants. I feel a desire to opine on these findings, but I'm going to restrain myself.

What I found really fascinating was the gender composition of different faith groups. Farther right coincides with more women. Religions that are less likely to have female clergy, and that have more stringently-defined gender roles, have more female practitioners. Women form the majority in Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, and Conservative Jewish religions. But they are the minority among Unitarians, Hindus, Buddists, and New Agers (I assume New Age includes Wicca and Goddess religions). And there's a stark difference among Jews, with 47% female in Reformed, and 54% in Conservative.

For me, this is truly a stumper. Why are women more likely to be in religions that are more restrictive about their role both within the faith community and in society in general? Perhaps we can see the Simpsons as Any-Family-USA, where Marge keeps the family going to church, and when asked what religion the family follows, Homer replies, "You know, the one with all the well-meaning rules that don't work in real life -- uh, Christianity." Why do women so regularly follow in Marge's footsteps and keep the family going to church?

I want to know more, I want to get my hands on the raw survey data. I want to see the breakdown among the people who switched religions. Who were they? What did they switch to? Were they mostly male or female? Hmmm if I ask Pew really nicely do you think they'll just hand over the data to me? If I say pretty please? Yeah, I don't think so either.