Pie in the Sky While You’re Alive:
Life after death and Supply Side Religion

Andrew Greeley
The University of Chicago
The University of Arizona

Introduction

A furious battle is raging in social science about religion. Traditional theories have emphasized the decline of religion as part of an inevitable process of "secularization." (Wilson 1966, Berger 1967) In the face of scientific progress, the growth of rationality, and the elimination of superstition, religion is seen retreating, as Durkheim said it would, to the periphery of society (references). More recently, however, American theorists have advanced a "market place" or "supply side" model of religion.(Chaves and Cann 1992, Chaves and Sprindys 1994, Christiano 1987, Finke 1984, 1989, 1990, 1992, Fink, Guest and Stark, 1996, Finke and Iannaccone 1993, Finke and Stark, 1988, 19989a, 1989b, 1992, Iannaccone 1988, 1990, 1991, 1995a, 1995b, Iannaccone, Finke, and Stark 1996. Stark 1992, Stark and Iannaccone 1994) They argue that the "demand" for religion is relatively constant since the need of "compensation" because of death and suffering (Stark and Baimbridge 1987) is a given in society and that the different levels of religious behavior that one can observe in various regions of a country like the United States and in various countries are the result of the available "supply" of religious services. In a controlled religious marketplace, they assert, religion becomes a lazy monopoly because the Established Church (or Established Churches as in Germany) need not compete for "customers." On the other hand, when there is no legal monopoly various "firms" must compete for "customers" and hence provide more industrious personnel and more services. In such situations religious activity increases.

Many of the supporters of the "supply side" theory have turned to the "new paradigm" (Warner 1993) because the empirical evidence does not indicate a strong decline in religious behavior. "Secularization," they contend, is not a useful predictor variable because it explains little if any variance. Generally the response from the other side (Blau, Land and Redding 1992, Breault 1989, Bruce 1992) is either to question the "supply side" use of data or an angry protest against the use of "rational" models to study religion, which, they insist, is inherently irrational.(Demerath 1966)

For the "new paradigm" to succeed it must do more than generate testable hypotheses which cannot be rejected. It must also provide researchers with a perspective that will force them to ask questions that they would not have asked (in all probability at any rate) without the "supply side" or "market place" or "rational choice" perspective and indeed questions which turn out to be fruitful. If a newly proposed paradigm forces scholars to probe into hitherto uninvestigated corners of their field and generates useful insights and unexpected findings about what is happening in that corner, then it will stand a good chance of finding acceptance no matter how strong suspicion and even bias against it might be.

In this paper an investigation will be made of whether the "supply side" theoretical perspective is more useful in considering belief in life after death in the United States, explaining changes in that belief, and illuminating processes that have occurred and to some extent are still occurring in American religion which about which there hitherto has been little awareness

The expectation of an afterlife may be the most central of religious doctrines because it asserts, in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary, that there is purpose and grace in the human condition. Humankind is born with two incurable diseases, life from which it inevitably dies and hope which hints that death may not be the end. A conviction that life does not end with death is a tentative endorsement of the validity of hope.

Data

Evidence to address the question of belief in life after death in the United States is taken from the General Social Survey, an ongoing probability sample study of the American population conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (since 1972). Between 1973 and 1994 interviewers have asked respondents fifteen times whether "You believe that there is a life after death?" (N=19,381)

Over time there is a slight change in belief in life after death among Americans. In the nineteen seventies 77% believed in life after death, in the nineteen eighties 79% believe in life after death, and in the nineteen nineties, 81% believed in life after death. The coefficient of deviation from linearity is .03, a statistically significant but very modest increment. Unless this perhaps astonishing finding about an increase during the last quarter century of belief in live after death can be eliminated or perhaps even reversed, however, there is little consolation in it for the proponents of the "secularization" theory. Unless, however, one can show that the increase in conviction that life might be gracious is connected in someway to religious competition, there can be no confirmation of the "supply side" paradigm. However, even if the supply side approach fits the data better, it will increase its acceptance among scholarly skeptics if it forces an analyst to explore obscure dimensions of American religious life which have rarely been explored before.

Analysis

Surprisingly Protestant belief in life after death has not increased over the last quarter century (Table 1). Approximately four out of five Protestants have believed that life does not end with death and that proportion has not changed with time. (Among "Liberal" Protestants – as defined by the General Social Survey – there is an increase but it falls short of statistical significance.) There are two more surprises in the data:

1)Catholics have "caught up" with Protestants only in the most recent years in belief in life after death despite the strong doctrinal orthodoxy of American Catholics on most religious (as opposed to sexual) matters. At the beginning of the General Social Survey 74% of American Catholics believed in life after death. In the early nineties the rate had increased to 81%, a statistically significant increase.

2)Even though belief in "resurrection and the world to come" are part of the Jewish religion as expressed in the Mishna, this belief is not nearly as important in the Jewish tradition as it is in the Christian; nonetheless Jewish belief in life after death has increased in the last quarter century from 19% to 48%, a statistically significant increase despite the small size of the Jewish samples.

Furthermore the conviction that humans survive death has increased from 44% to 57% among those who have no religious affiliation, also a statistically significant change. There is not only a period effect of the last twenty five years on belief in life after death, it is an effect that is limited to religious groups which are not Protestant.

Scholars must consider findings about a change in religion (and many other phenomena) cautiously because religion clearly relates to life cycle -- older persons are generally more religious than younger persons. (Hout and Greeley 1987). Thus one must take into account the stage in the life cycle of various birth cohorts, particularly when some cohorts are much larger than those who preceded them or came after them (such as those born in the United States in the United States in the nineteen forties and the nineteen fifties).

Figure 1 depicts the relationship between cohort age and belief in life after death. The more youthful cohorts (those born after 1940) are clearly more likely to accept life after death than those born before 1940 when they are at similar positions in the life cycle as measured by age. Cohorts born in the fifties and sixties are more likely to believe in life after death when they are in the thirty year old age bracket than those born in the nineteen forties and the nineteen thirties when they were the same age. Similarly those born in the fifties are higher than those born in the forties and those born in the forties are higher than those born in the thirties when they were in the forty year old bracket and when they were in the fifty year age bracket. Belief in life after death does indeed correlate with age but the intercept for each cohort seems higher than that of the previous cohort. Each succeeding cohort therefore seems to be more likely to believe in life after death – a shattering blow to those who think that religious belief in America is going down over time.

Thus the modest change which one observes in considering the marginal proportions over time may mask a much more dramatic change among the birth cohorts. The size of the General Social Survey and its replication at many points in time make possible cohort analysis, a comparison of those who were born in every decade of this century with life cycle held constant by the inclusion of variables for age and age² in regression equations. Thus a sketch can be made of the history of belief in life after death as this belief changes (or does not change) among eight of the ten cohorts of the present century. Those born in the nineteen forties were the comparison group in a dummy variable multiple regression analysis because they seem to represent a decisive turning point for the change. Table 2 shows the results of that analysis.

There has been a steady increase in belief in life after death among the cohorts of the 20^th century from low seventies for the early cohorts to the low eighties for the later cohorts. Only the most recent cohort born in the nineteen seventies (n=211) is not significantly different from the nineteen forty cohort. Thus when one considers belief in life after death by cohort, the modest increase of seven percentage points over time in marginal trends increases to eleven percentage points from those born during the second decade of the century as compared to those born in the nineteen sixties.

Moreover this change is concentrated among certain religious groups -- Catholics, Jews, and those with no religious affiliation. In the fourth column of Table 1 we observe that among the first three cohorts of Catholics belief in life after death, net of life cycle, is under 70%, that belief leaps to 74% in the nineteen thirties cohort and then into the low eighties for those born after 1940. Between the cohort born in the second decade of the century (the World War I decade) and those born in the fifth decade (the World War II decade) belief has increased sixteen percentage points.

Among Jews a similar increase has occurred. Belief in life after death remains under thirty for the first three cohorts, reaches 30% among the nineteen thirties cohort, and moves to 40% for those born after nineteen forty. Jewish belief in life after death has increased then eighteen percentage points across cohorts while Catholic belief has increased seventeen percentage points.

Among those with no religious affiliation the increase in life after death is eighteen percentage points between those born during the World War 1 decade and those born during the Vietnam decade (nineteen sixties). Among the three early cohorts of those with no affiliation belief is in the low thirties, it moves into the low forties in the nineteen thirty cohort and then, after the nineteen forties to the fifties.

Thus in all three groups the turning point in belief after life after death seems to occur among those born during the depression and the War. It then either remains stable or in the case of those with no affiliation increases among subsequent cohorts. In terms of proportion change, the Catholic increase has been by a quarter, the Jewish by four fifths, and the no affiliation group’s increase represents almost a doubling of the proportion believing in life after death. Since there are almost three times as many Catholics in the sample (n=4875) as there are Jews (n=358) and those with no religious affiliation(n=1350), much of the change in belief in life after death in the American population is among Catholics.

Thus this analysis concludes with three startling conclusions:

1)The cohorts born since 1930 and especially since 1940 are substantially more likely to believe in life after death than those born before those years.

2)The changes in marginal proportion believing in life after death since 1973 mask a much more dramatic cohort change in this century among groups which are not Protestant.

3) The largest contribution to this phenomenon comes from a change among Catholics.

The Search for an Explanation: Rounding up the Suspects –Religion

In other cohort analysis we discovered that church attendance has not changed over cohorts, that prayer has declined somewhat, as has intensity of religious affiliation, that there has been no change in belief in God, that belief in the literal interpretation of the bible has not increased, but membership in fundamentalist denominations has, that proportion mainline Protestantism has fallen in half and that proportion Catholic has remained unchanged. The proportion of Americans who say they do not believe in God has increased by 1% across cohorts, but when life cycle is taken into account this increase is not statistically significant.

None of these variables had had any impact on the increase in belief in life after death. Nor have any measures which might tap in to "new age" religion, such as experiences of contact with the dead, ecstatic or para-psychological experiences, or changing images of God or the afterlife.

A complicated logistic regression model (available upon request to the younger author) demonstrates that people in homogamous marriages and widows are more likely to believe in life after death than are people in mixed marriages, the divorced, the separated and single people. Blacks are less likely than whites to believe in life after death, women more likely than men, people in the twelve largest metropolitan areas are less like as are those in the North East, the East North Central and the Pacific regions. Education positively correlates with belief for Catholics, and negatively for Jews and those with no religious affiliation. None of these variables contribute in any substantial fashion to explaining belief in life after death.

One cannot attribute the increase in belief in life after death to deaths or other traumas in one’s family, to an increase in a dyspeptic view of other humans (they’re not helpful, they are not fair, they can’t be trusted), to a decline of confidence in American institutions (courts, congress, the executive, business for example), to changing levels of personal happiness, marital happiness, satisfaction with one’s health, city, family, or financial situation, or political attitudes.

Thus, having rounded up all the usual suspects to which survey analysts turn when faced with a mystery, one has no choice but to take a walk through the religious market place.

The Religious Market Place

Catholics and Jews have in common that they both came to this country in great numbers at the turn of the century. The Catholics at any rate came from countries where there was little religious competition. "Supply side" theory would lead one to expect that as they moved into a free market of religions, they would experience more competition among religious professionals only too eager to respond to their need for what Stark and Baimbridge call "general compensation." They would therefore be entering a society in which religious devotion would be higher than in the societies they left behind. Thus the longer immigrant families are in America, the more religious they would become., either because of efforts on the part of their clergy or exposure to the higher levels of belief among American Protestants or to a mixture of both. Moreover, the Catholic cohorts born before 1930 were disproportionately immigrants or the children of immigrants (Table 3). Might generation in American lead to an increase in belief in life after death? Stark has already asked this question for German Americans and found evidence of substantial increase in religious behavior with increase of generation in America. (Stark 1997).

Table 4 presents the proportion believing in life after death for four American ethnic groups and compares the post immigration belief with that of those in the native land today who have not migrated to America (as measured by the International Social Survey module of 1991). It is clear that for the Germans and the Irish those who live in the "old country" today are not as likely to believe in life after death as are those German Americans and Irish Americans who are immigrants. Moreover faith in life after death increases for German Americans with generation in America. First generation Italians are less likely to believe in life after Death than those who have not migrated but by the third generation have surpassed them. So too are third generation Poles higher than Poles who did not migrate. Activity in the religious market place seems to lead to higher levels of belief in the ultimate graciousness of the universe, a greater probability of exercising the hope option.

While the evidence is somewhat different for the different ethnic groups there is a clear pattern of belief in life after death relating to generation in this country, as the "supply side" theorists would have expected. Might generation then be the magic key that would unlock the mystery of the increase in faith in life after death among more recent cohorts?

In a logistic regression for Catholics only, when cohort was related to faith with only the life cycle variables also in the equation, the coefficient was .39. (Table 5) (Logistic regression coefficients should be divided by six to obtain the equivalent in percentage points when p=.80). When generation was taken into account the coefficient diminished to .37. Then when the interactions between cohort and generation were added the coefficient fell to statistical insignificance. The same phenomenon occurs both among the combination of Jews and those with no religious affiliation – the second column in Table 5 -- and when all the groups showing an increase in faith in life after death are combined -- the third column in Table 5 . The cohorts who predominated in the early years of the century were disproportionately first and second generation and account for the cohort differences in belief in life after death. By the third generation the immigrants and their children no longer shaped the cohort and there was no significant impact of interaction between cohort and generation(Table 6) on life after death. To put the matter differently, the differences among the cohorts is the result of the facts that the immigrants and their children are less likely to believe in life after death and that the proportion of such folk has declined among the cohorts born since nineteen thirty and especially since 1940. The children and especially the grand children of the immigrants were socialized in the American religious market place into higher levels of faith in life after death, just as the supply side theory would have predicted. Note that there is no evidence that such socialization increased church attendance or prayer or intensity of religious feeling among cohorts born after 1930. The notable increase across cohorts has been limited to belief in life after death among the religious measures available in the General Social Survey.

How did it Happen?

One suspects that supply side theorists would not have chosen hope as a variable to test their paradigm – church attendance, membership in church related organizations, financial contributions would all have seemed to have been better indicators of the impact of competition in the market place of religious denominations; but belief in survival after death does not seem to be the kind of product that competing firms would try to sell to their potential customers. Admittedly it is an attractive product – what could be more so? However, it is rather an interior orientation than an observable devotional behavior. The social pressure of more devout people in a congregation and of a competitive clergy might have a direct effect on a person’s propensity to join a church-related organization than to become a person of hope.

Indeed, granted a competitive religious market place, one can easily imagine a scenario for an increase in observable religious behavior. One’s family, friends, neighbors, even one’s children might easily become allies of the hard working clergy in modifying one’s church attendance. Perhaps there is so little difference in church attendance among the immigrant and the second (children of immigrant )on the one hand and subsequent generations on the other is that these pressures are perhaps brought to bear at once and one quickly catches up to a level of religious practice expected in this new and more religious society. It takes awhile perhaps for something more subtle and more profound like hope (or perhaps only professed hope) to increase. One must be exposed to confident statements about survival at wakes (or shiva evenings) funeral services, and cemetery burials to begin to accept the possibility that these assertions of faith may actually offer a hint of an explanation. Only over time, indeed over a generation or two does it become possible to accept the statement as both a matter of personal conviction and as a socially required stance.

Is this increase the result of measurably increased activity on the part of religious functionaries competing in the market place for customers searching religious compensation? Or is merely the result of pressure for greater faith which American culture imposes on its participants? Were the immigrants and their children recruited to greater levels of belief in life after death or merely pressured into it by the cultural norms of the larger society? And why is this form of faith and this one alone liable for either such pressure? And how was the pressure brought to bear on them?

In an attempt to answer these questions equations were constructed to measure the impact of education, membership in church-related organizations, and church attendance on belief in life after death for the four groups in which there has been an increase – Catholics and Jews and those with no religious affiliation. Strong main effects were found for the first two groups from both membership in church related organizations and church attendance. The devout and the active are more likely to believe in life after death. However, these variables do not account for the increase in belief in life after death over generations. However as Table 7 demonstrates, the increase in belief in life after death is stronger across generational lines for Catholics for those who do not belong to a church affiliated organization than for those who do belong, perhaps because the members are more likely to come from the more devout.

For Catholics, education and Catholic school attendance, provide an explanation of a third of the variance across generational lines. The 15% (1/6 of the logistic regression coefficients in Table 8) difference among the generations is reduced to 12% when educational attainment is taken into account and to 10% when Catholic schooling is considered. The latter effect is not changed by holding constant parental education and religious practice. If educational attainment represents in some fashion exposure to the values of the larger society and if Catholic education represents the activity of the ecclesiastical institution, then some of the Catholic increase in hope can be attributed to larger social and cultural pressures and some to the direct influence of competing denominational personnel. It is interesting to note that, while Catholic schools were established in part to protect the faith of the immigrants and their children, they in fact seemed to have enhanced that faith.

The Jewish story is somewhat different because among Jews, unlike among Catholics, educational attainment relates negatively to hope for survival (second column in Table 8) and in fact masks the relationship between generation and belief. Since there is little emphasis on life after death in present Jewish teaching, the Jewish story must involve considerable influence on Jews from non-Jewish sources, a form of "self-socialization," as Robert K. Merton called it (in personnel conversation with the older author).

Perhaps the answer to the question of denomination versus society is that the question of denominational influence versus the "osmosis" of religion from the larger society and its culture is inappropriate. The religious socialization of newcomers, (as Will Herberg pointed out long ago)proceeds at both the cultural and structural levels and is the work of both individual agents and larger institutions.

Unnoticed by scholars at the time or since that time, American society and its open market place of religious firms was exercising substantial influence on the religious belief of immigrants since the turn of the century. Among other things this influence increased dramatically across generation (and hence cohort lines) belief in life after death. This discovery simply cannot be explained by the "secularization" theory and is quite compatible with the "supply side" theory: religious competition does seem to generate and increase in hope.

Is the phenomenon still going on? Table 9 suggests that among Catholics the process continues to be at work, though not quite so dramatically. The increase in hope for human survival in the generations is approximately twenty points for the cohorts born before 1940 and eight points in the cohorts born after 1940. Educational attainment and Catholic schools attendance, each with an independent impact reduce the difference to zero. There is no increase in hope of survival, however, among Catholic Hispanics who are the major component of present day Catholic immigration.

Conclusion

Generation in America accounts for the major shift upwards in hope in life after death from the early cohorts of the present century. The impact of generation, which "supply side" religious theory would have predicted cannot be explained by the variables available to us, save that approximately one third of the change among Catholics is attributable to educational attainment and Catholic school attendance. It would appear therefore that no great spiritual revival accounts for the increase in belief in life after death among Americans. Rather this increase is to be explained by immigration of ethnics (Catholic and Jewish especially) into a more devout society than the one from which they came, a society in which high levels of religious practice are generated by a fiercely competitive religious market place, whether that market place operated directly through the efforts of religious "firms" or indirectly through the normative religious values of the host culture. The immigrants were playing "catch up" with the beliefs of Protestant Americans and the earlier arrivals from their own religious background. As long as there are immigrants, one presumes, these pressures will continue to operate, if somewhat less dramatically.

If one had not begun the investigation of the apparent period increase in belief in life after death with the "supply side" theory in mind, it is most unlikely that one would have discovered this mostly unexplored phenomenon of the socialization of immigrants into higher levels of religious belief. The theory then does not only generate hypotheses that can survive testing against empirical data, it also forces an analyst to explore areas that otherwise might have been missed. The theory then turns out to be useful indeed, especially since it leads one to a finding that directly contradicts the assumption of many sociologists that the immigration of peasants into cities necessarily leads to a decline in religious faith.

(Might it be that the "increase of faith" recorded here is merely the result of clarification of terms? Might the phrase "life after death" mean less to first generation peasant immigrants than to second and third generation native born Americans? Might the immigrants believe in heaven indeed but not necessarily in life after death? A question about heaven is asked in only one General Social Survey year. Ninety percent of those who believed in heaven also believed in life after death. )

Is not this analysis a materialist, not to say capitalist, explanation of religious behavior? Perhaps it is, though it is no more materialist than the secularization model. One would have to ask what impact belief in life after death has on other variables such as relations with other human beings to see if it makes any "spiritual" differences. (Those who believe in life after death are significantly more likely to think that others can be trusted and are fair and helpful and to be satisfied with their family life.)

On the other hand if one accepts Stark’s contention that religion is a response to ("compensation" for) the uncertainties of the human condition, one could say that what has happened to immigrants and their children in the United States in this century is that they have been offered by the religious firms in the market place, a firmer and richer product than was available to them in the old countries where the activities of the firms was much less intense.

Or to state the same thing another way, in a competitive religious market place like the United States, the clergy must work hard at what they are supposed to be doing: preaching a message of hope in the face of the tragedies of life.

Does not this "compensation" which is offered and perhaps pushed in an open religious market place merely deceive people into wish fulfillment? Do they not finally believe that life persists, despite the lack of scientific evidence to sustain that wish, because they want to believe?

Perhaps they do.

When Dick hopes desperately that Jane loves him, he may be engaging in wish fulfillment. Perhaps Jane cannot stand the sight of him. His wishing and hoping for her love does not mean that the love is actually there. However his hope does not prove that Jane does not love him. His hopes are not automatically falsified because he so desperately wants them to be true. And if Jane does love him despite all his fears that she does not and all the warnings from his friends that he’s kidding himself, then that is very good news indeed.

In the meantime, until he knows for sure, he perhaps lives in the limbo of Pascal’s wager: Better to go with the possibility of love that might not be there instead of risking the loss of love that is there.

Except that the religious believer might say that God is unlike Jane, unless, like God, Jane refuses to hold it against Dick that he doubts her love and rejects its possibility.

 

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Table 1 Belief in Life After Death by Year of Survey and Denomination

% Believe in Life After Death

*Not statistically significant

Table 2

Cohort Differences in Belief in Life After Death by Religion

% Belief in Life After Death

*Not statistically different from 1940 Cohort

Table 3 Generations by Cohorts for Catholics and Jews

% First and Second Generation

Table 4

Belief in life after death by ethnic Group and Generation

*Based on data from the ISSP

**ISSP data from Israel

Table 5

Life After Death by Cohort and Generation

(Net of age and Age²)

(Logistic Regression Coefficients)

*Not statistically significant ** Significant at .02

Table 6

Impact of interactions between Cohort and Generation** on Belief in Life After death

(Logistic Regression Coefficients)

*Not significant

**Compared to Fourth Generation

Table 7

Belief in Life After Death by Generation and Membership in Church Organization

(Catholics Only)

Table 8

Belief in Life After Death by Generation by Education

(Logistic Regression Coefficients)

Table 9

Belief in Life After Death by Cohort and Generation

(Catholics Only)

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