“What fresh hell is this?” was poet Dorothy Parker’s question when her phone or doorbell rang. Opinion-surveyors and telephone-pollsters may often be greeted by Parkeresque answerers, but data now suggests that many of the called choose to be nice to the phoners and to themselves.

To the point of our “public religion” business, Religion News Service (RNS) headlines Cathy Lynn Grossman’s on-line report (May 17, 2014) with this summary: “Poll: Americans Stretch the Truth on Attending Church.” In her report, Grossman quips: “You skipped church. And then nearly one in seven of you fibbed about attending.”

The source of data about this sort of “fibbing” is a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which recently presented its findings at the national meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. PRRI’s survey was, to quote Grossman, “designed to measure the ‘social desirability bias in self-reported religious behavior.’ The survey finds that many Christians—and unbelievers, too—will exaggerate about attending worship in live phone interviews. However, when asked in an anonymous online questionnaire, people will answer more realistically.”

When polled by phone, 36 percent report attending services weekly or more, while 30 percent say they never go. When polled online, far smaller percentages say they attended at least weekly and far more respondents said they seldom or never go.

Robert Jones, CEO of the Institute, says that people who don’t attend worship—but say they did—may not mean to lie. “There’s an aspirational quality here. People see themselves as the kind of person who would go.” So, “remove the social pressure of speaking on the phone, and people will feel less pressure to conform.”

The findings and the comments, including some by Dr. Jones, who knows so much about this, do point to certain anomalies and possible contradictions. Thus “white mainline Protestants” first, and Catholics second, “lie” most. “Lie” is the term that loathers of such Protestants and Catholics use to speak of reported exaggerations.

Many factors have to enter into analyses. Aren’t white mainline Protestants, for example, usually seen as caring least about being typed as pious church-goers? If so, and if they are at best apathetic or, in other terms, critical of religious worship, why do they feel social pressure when talking to a nameless, faceless, featureless phone interviewer? And why does on-line transmission remove social pressure?

Among the many who show disdain for “organized religion,” “the institutional church,” and the practice of piety, why, when the phone rings and they answer, do they turn nicely dishonest?

Bloggers busied themselves with on-line, not phoned, bluster. This kind of topic brings out the self-identified “atheists” who leaped on the suggestion that religious practitioners lied or, in the critics’ terms, simply were “liars?”

More staid and serious commentators on the much-much commented-upon survey and report, raise significant issues. The PRRI and the RNS people are experienced and sophisticated, and express caution about over-interpreting findings of their surveys. They consider who in the population does not get represented in the samples of the surveyed—for example, those who never answer the phone in their effort to avoid fresh hells. The experts also take into consideration the difference between land-lined phoners and cell-phone users.

Still, the new findings confirm what pollsters have known and the public surmises: there are and for a half-century have been fewer people in the pews than observers noticed or congregants claimed.

References:
 
Grossman, Cathy Lynn. “Poll: Americans stretch the truth on attending church.” Religion News Service, May 17, 2014. http://www.religionnews.com/2014/05/17/christians-church-atheists-prri/.

Cox, Daniel, Robert P. Jones, and Juhem Navarro-Rivera. “I Know What You Did Last Sunday: Measuring Social Desirability Bias in Self-Reported Religious Behavior, Belief, and Identity.” Public Religion Research Institute, May 17, 2014.http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/AAPOR-2014-Final.pdf.

Photo Credit: Andy Dean Photography / Shutterstock


Author, Martin E. Marty, is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. His biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

Editor, Myriam Renaud, is a Ph.D. Candidate in Theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School. She was a 2012-13 Junior Fellow in the Marty Center.