religious people are happier..?

david campbell wrote 'American Grace. How Religion Divides and Unites Us'

it is a fascinating and sweeeping look at american religion since the 1950's. the books makes its points based on copious data collected through from surveys of americans.

the book has been mentioned in prominent national news publications (wall street journal, new york times, washington post to name a few.)

on times and seasons there was a two-part interview of campbell placed in print here and here. while i had read in the new york times a halting treatment of one idea coming out of the book (that religious people are happier), i was further intrigued to find one of the co-authors of the book was mormon and that there were a few mormon fact gems to be found within its pages.


returning to the book as a whole though, i will present to you a few of the recent reviews of the book and then a passage from the book itself.

from the washington post (by Michelle Boorstein):

Even as a religion reporter, I was surprised by some of the findings in this hefty new book about American religion by political scientists Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell.

Among them: Secularism is increasing most rapidly among the less educated (the opposite of what happened in the 1960s and ’70s); the growth of evangelicalism ended nearly two decades ago; and evangelicals diverge most from the rest of the country in their opposition to premarital sex, not in their views on abortion or same-sex relationships.

…American Grace is still perhaps the most sweeping look yet at contemporary American religion. It lays out the broad trends of the past 50 years, assesses their sociological causes and then does a bit of fortune-telling….[American Grace] is packed with fun facts: The intensity of one’s religious belief is more predictive of one’s politics than religious denomination; about 60 percent of people who switched religious identities didn’t do so because of marriage; 89 percent of Americans believe heaven is not just reserved for people of their own faith. The book also brings to life complex issues such as how politics play out in a synagogue in suburban Chicago and in a megachurch in Minneapolis.”

from the wall street journal (by Wilfred Mcclay):

Perhaps the best and most interesting chapter in this respect is "Religion and Good Neighborliness," which convincingly argues that, contrary to the stock depiction in popular culture, religious Americans make better neighbors by almost every index. They are more generous, with both their time and money; more civically active, in community organizations and political reform; more trusting; more trustworthy; and even measurably happier. The only exception to this list of positive traits: religious people tend to be less tolerant of views that clash with their own. These results hold even when the authors control for such factors as gender, education, income, race, region and age.

and finally, points about religious people's happiness from the book itself (by David Campbell and Robert Putnam)

• As with good neighborliness, the correlation between religiosity and life satisfaction is powerful and robust. It remains strong even when we hold constant the same long list of other factors that might have made the correlation spurious. Other thing being equal, the difference in happiness between a nonchurchgoer and a weekly churchgoer is slightly larger than the difference between someone who earns $10,000 a year and his demographic twin who earns $100,000 a year.

• As with good neighborliness, religious people are more satisfied with their lives mostly because they build religious social networks, thus reinforcing a strong sense of religious identity. A person who attends church regularly but has no close friend there is actually unhappier than her demographic twin who doesn't attend church at all.
  

• As with good neighborliness, religious friends remain very important, even when we compare people with equal numbers of friends overall, and in that sense religious friendship seems supercharged. Moreover, as with good neighborliness, the effects of religious social networks do not depend on maintaining a religiously homogeneous social environment; on the contrary, people whose closes friends are all from the same religion are, other things being equal, less happy than those who friends are diverse.

what think ye? do these ideas fit with your worldview? do they fall short? are they repugnant? life-affirming? do you figure these 'facts' are just a conspiracy of the religious right to recruit new republicans? i haven't read the book in its entirety, but i purchased it from amazon and plan on delving in..:)

obama and president monson...

a nice image of our church leaders reaching out in civility to democratic president..:)

you can read the lds newsroom statement here

and obama's official statement regarding the meeting here...

under the banner of heaven...

twice, since moving to california, i have been asked, "have you read 'under the banner of heaven'?"...both people who questioned me looked at me with the hint of a grin and a glint in their eye that made me slightly uncomfortable. they were expecting me to have an answer and/or be ashamed of what they had discovered. in both cases, ironic in retrospect, i didn't respect the academic honesty of either questioner at the time. this lack of academic honesty became a theme as i read 'under the banner of heaven'.

'under the banner of heaven' was written by jon krakauer. jon is the author of 'into thin air' and 'into the wild'--the movie i recently reviewed. with this krakauer experience under my belt--and a positive one at that--i decided i would tackle this book that had people glancing at me askance as if with a secret knowledge about my own heritage and existence that they'd pulled from the writings of a mountain climber's research.

the book starts out in a fascinating manner. telling the story of a man from payson killing his sister-in-law in american fork. the story is told in a frank, matter-of-fact way. this is powerful stuff, and one of the men lived in my birth city before committing the crime. krakauer is at his best when speaking of his interviews with modern day monsters as he delves into the inner thoughts of dan lafferty, mark hoffman, brian david mitchell, rulon jeffs and other eccentric fundamentalist figures...

however, early on krakauer's book bumps off the smooth tracks of personal history, storytelling and pyschoanalysis into the world of anti-religion, unsubstantiated, poorly researched and outright attacks on the current lds religion. his most common tactic is to share unspeakable acts of immoral cruelty by FLDS practitioners and conflate their religious beliefs with that of the mormon mainstream. while i am not a mormon historical expert--by any means--time and again krakauer made blatant mis-statement and misrepresentations of the simplest elements of my faith. his mis-statments became so great, that not long into the book i found myself scurrying to find corroborating evidence for my realizations. i was not disappointed. i found several pearls in my search for more scholarly critics of krakauer's work.

to quote two: from terryl givens, author of 'by the hand of mormon' and a well-respected american historical scholar,

"Insofar as Krakauer recounts Mormonism’s past, he does it poorly, using outdated sources and discredited reports to portray a Joseph Smith and a Mormonism reminiscent of 19th century caricatures (Smith emerges as a two-dimensional serial seducer). His picture of contemporary Mormonism is also seriously misinformed, leaving us with far more overlap between Mormons and renegade polygamists than really exists and grave misperceptions about the first: most Saints do not believe the world will end 7,000 years after creation (321); there is no “official (or unofficial) LDS [policy]… strongly admonish[ing] white Saints not to marry blacks” (331); today’s church does not pressure women “to give birth to as many children” as possible (78); and Mormons certainly do not teach that because man is inherently virtuous an atonement is unnecessary (112). He irresponsibly misinforms as well on subjects from the Book of Mormon to the Mountain Meadows Massacre—all in an effort to link deluded modern murderers with a skewed depiction of Mormonism’s past and present. His book is ultimately more about doing violence to a faith, than uncovering the violence behind a faith."

and from one of my favorite mormon bloggers, david king landrith,

"Krakauer’s story belies the notion that truth is stranger than fiction and showcases Krakauer’s uncanny talent for adding interesting detail to otherwise mundane historical events. The result is generally good reading, but Krakauer exposes the poverty of his scholarship by riddling his story with simple mistakes and mangling his sources...In view of Krakauer’s abundant blunders, it is quite remarkable that his book has been generally well received. Whether from ignorance or bias, reviewer after reviewer (Hilary Spurling in The Telegraph, Douglas Kennedy in The Independent, Edward Morris in BookPage.com, and many others) failed to detect even the slightest defect in Krakauer’s story. As a matter of fact, his book is lowbrow enough to raise real questions about the qualifications of those who gave it passable reviews...Also, Krakauer goes to great length to document the unbridled welfare fraud, physical abuse, sexual molestation, and incest that occur in polygamous cults. But Krakauer carefully avoids the question of whether early Mormons committed such crimes. Make no mistake: They did not. Early Mormonism bore little resemblance to the practices of polygamous cults. When the LDS church sanctioned polygamy, fewer than 1 in 8 members actually practiced it. And the LDS church had surprisingly progressive views on women’s rights for the time. Utah readily permitted women to divorce their husbands and remarry if they chose. Utah was the first state to elect a woman (Martha Cannon) to its state Senate.† Utah was the second state or territory to allow women to vote. LDS women were among the first women from the west to attend colleges in the east. Physical abuse, sexual molestation, and incest were un-heard of. Krakauer’s silence on these issues implies otherwise, and so it will not do to claim that Krakauer’s story is evenhanded...Krakauer misrepresents the LDS church nearly every time he mentions it. Ostensibly, he is trying to provide some insight into its history and operations, but he is wrong on the facts; he mangles his sources; and he lacks even rudimentary background knowledge. Gullible readers and reviewers notwithstanding, Krakauer’s work does not bear scrutiny...Traditional bigotry has always been best represented by charismatic figures writing compelling prose that mixes outright lies with sweeping generalizations from shockingly small samples. This formula marshals anecdotal evidence alongside pseudo-science and pseudo-history to subjugate women, bully minorities, and malign religions. Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith falls squarely within this tradition."

thank you for indulging these two long quotes, but they were too good to pass up. publishing these two reviews is cathartic in many ways after the knots into which my insides were tied while reading krakauer's defamation of a faith so dear to my heart.

this book is not one you should read if you have not first read an even handed biography of joseph smith like "rough stone rolling" by richard bushman or donna hill's, "joseph smith: the first mormon". there is enough about our history that can shock and suprise a faithful latter-day saint when told from an objective observer. krakauer's brand of sensationalism when describing the story of joseph smith and the book of mormon, makes it hard to find any redeeming qualities from his chapters about our mormon founder and about the mainstream church at large.

in conclusion, am i sorry i've read krakauer's book? probably not. should you read it? probably not. can i make an informed and intelligent response the next time someone looks askance at me and says, "have you read 'under the banner of heaven'?"...probably.