Religion in Wyoming and the West: The Religious Landscape Survey

The Pew Research Center for Religion and the Public Life has just released a new survey about the religious identity of Americans. The researchers interviewed more than 35,000 people so that they were able to provide results not just for the United States as a whole, but also for each state. This is the first time that a scientific study of Wyoming’s religious character has taken place.

The big story for Wyoming is that the state has a large percentage of people without religious affiliation. More than a quarter of the population, 26 percent, checked the box labeled “none of the above” when asked what religion they belonged to.

Before looking more closely at Wyoming, it is worth a moment to take a look at the United States overall and the Western region generally. The national headlines from this study will be that the number of “nones” has grown 7 percent since this study was first done in 2007. Across the nation, the percentage of the religiously unaffiliated has increased from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014. The West has the highest percent of unaffiliated of any of the four regions of the country at 28 percent.

Although America is growing more secular, this should not arouse panic among the religious. If 23 percent are unaffiliated, that means about 77 percent or more have a religious affiliation. Even the data from Vermont, which has the highest number of nones at 37 percent, show that 61 percent of the population is religious and 54 percent follow a form of Christianity.

In this light, the data show that 66 percent of Wyoming’s people adhere to Christianity and about 4 percent follow other religions, with Buddhism being the most numerous (7 percent did not answer this question). So, even though a quarter of Wyoming’s population claims no religious affiliation, 70 percent do. That’s well over two-thirds.

Wyoming’s religious character stands out when we look at it in the context of the other Western states. Wyoming’s percentage of nones is lower than the average for the West, 26 percent vs. 28 percent. Indeed, it is third lowest in the West, with only New Mexico (21 percent) and Utah (22 percent) being lower. But that is still a high number, for no state in the Midwestern or Southern regions has a higher percentage of religiously unaffiliated people.

More significantly, Wyoming has the highest Protestant population in the West. It has the highest number of mainline Protestants (16 percent, tied with Idaho) and the third highest number of Evangelical Protestants (26 percent). At a total of 43 percent, this puts it far ahead of all but Montana, Colorado and Oregon, which are only a couple of points behind.

If you picture the United States map, you will realize that Montana, Wyoming and Colorado make a north-south line and, just to the east of them, are North and South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. These Midwestern states, like the rest of the Midwest region, have a high percentage of Protestants, ranging from 49 percent to 57 percent. So, the Protestant character of Wyoming and these other two Western states derives from Midwestern influence.

By contrast, Wyoming’s Catholic population is certainly not following the lead of Western states like California or the Southwestern states. In those states, the Catholic population ranges from 21 percent to 34 percent, while Wyoming comes in at just 14 percent. That is well below the national average percentage of Catholics per state. Indeed, it is lower than any state in the Midwest or Northeast regions.

Interestingly, Wyoming is more influenced by Mormonism. At 9 percent, Wyoming has the third highest Mormon population in the West (after Utah and Idaho) and, indeed, in the entire USA.

So, Wyoming’s religious character is overwhelmingly Christian (66 percent) and solidly Protestant (43 percent). Its Evangelical Protestants make up the largest religiously defined group (27 percent).

This is closely followed, however, by those who identify with no religious tradition or organization (26 percent). Only 6 percent of these registered as atheist or agnostic; the other 20 percent selected “nothing in particular.” And, although the number of Mormons in Wyoming ranked third highest in the nation (9 percent), that was still outnumbered by the Catholics (14 percent), even though the state ranked among the lowest in the nation in that category.

‘Thinking with the Church’: The Pope Engages the People

Pope Francis is an impressive guy. Impressive not in the sense of his “wow” factor, coolness, charisma or even power, but impressive in his calm inner humility. It is not what he shouts that is gripping, but what he speaks in a whisper (to borrow Frank Bruni’s characterization).

In a recent interview in the Jesuit publication “America,” the Pope characterizes himself as a “sinner.” And then, realizing how that remark will be interpreted, he goes on to say, “This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

When he thinks about his church -- and as a Jesuit he emphasizes “thinking” -- Pope Francis sees the overwhelming problems it faces. To solve them, he wants to “think with the church,” the “people of God.” Why? Because the people of the church “considered as a whole, are infallible in matters of belief.” Of course, as a Catholic leader, he means the “‘holy mother, the hierarchical church,’…the church as the people of God, pastors and people together,” not some form of “populism.”

This “thinking with the church,” in the Pope’s view, can and should lead to changes in “human self-understanding.” He spoke of slavery and the death penalty as mistakes from which humanity and the church have learned and changed. And what test indicates when a past understanding is no longer valid? “When it loses sight of the human, or even when it is afraid of the human or deluded about itself.”

In that light, the Pope sees each individual human being as more important than the church’s doctrine. The message of salvation for all should be its front and center, not its doctrinal condemnations. While Pope Francis does not want to change church doctrine, he does want to alter how church leaders present it.

The church has sometimes “locked itself up in small things, in small-minded rules.” When talking about divorce and remarriage, abortion and homosexuality, he almost turns folksy, giving several anecdotes emphasizing a loving attitude toward individual humans, “sinners” and their life choices.

Instead of condemning sinners, the church should do triage. “I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds.”

Francis repeats this phrase, “Heal the wounds. Heal the wounds.” The church needs to return to the world and “accompany” the people who live there, wherever they live: in poverty, in sickness or in spiritual need. He points particularly to the bishops, who should not only support the “movements of God” among their flock, but should “accompany the flock that has a flair for finding new paths.”

“Finding new paths” seems to apply to Francis’s thoughts about women and their place in the church. “Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed … the church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church.” He even states, “We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman … the feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.”

Unfortunately, the tone has suddenly changed here. No more anecdotes. No love of the individual. Instead, dealing with women directly, the church should create a generalized “theology of women.”

But a theology of women is not what the 2 billion women and men who belong to the Catholic Church need. A “theology of women and men together” would be a better idea, since Catholicism exists in a world that men and women increasingly share as equals.

Most adults have a wide experience of the opposite sex. In marriage, women and men are partners, working together in the most intimate ways: companionably, intellectually, emotionally and sexually. Together, they create and raise families, loving their children with a bond and strength only they can experience.

In today’s workplace, men and women work together more and more: as colleagues, workers, members of a team, as subordinates and as supervisors. Increasingly, over the decades, women and men have grown accustomed to working with each other in these different roles.

A theology is not what is needed, but a practical guide for the relationships and community dynamics of people’s daily lives; a guide through which the hierarchy can learn how church members live their lives, lives that the priestly, celibate commitment to the church prevents them from experiencing directly.

Pope Francis is bold to challenge himself and the church’s leadership to “think with the Church,” with all the people of God. For their sake, I hope he truly sees and enacts the full potential of his goal.

Note: The interview with Pope Francis appears online at America Magazine: http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview.

How did People Vote? The Religious Breakdown

America’s voters are overwhelmingly Christian: 78 percent of voters identified themselves as Christians in exit polls Nov. 6. That is down just 3 percent from 81 percent, the highest Christian participation in the previous three elections. Despite some of the pre-election rhetoric about the nation being overrun by non-believers of various stripes, this obviously did not happen.

Of the remaining 22 percent of voters, 9 percent followed other religions, such as Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. Twelve percent fell into the “unaffiliated” category, which includes atheists and agnostics, but primarily consists of people who are religious but did not choose to identify themselves with a particular religion.

Further study of this information from polls conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals several important conclusions.

First, white evangelical Protestant voters continue to punch above their weight. Even though they make up only 19 percent of the nation’s population, they accounted for 23 percent of the voters. The same held true for mainline Protestants, although to a lesser degree; their 15 percent of the population resulted in 16 percent of the electorate.

Both Protestant groups voted for Romney, the evangelicals by a margin of almost 4-to-1. Despite theological misgivings about Romney’s Mormonism, they actually gave him a higher percentage of their vote than they did to McCain four years earlier. This also was a point higher than he gained among the Mormon population.

Second, white Catholics voted for Romney in percentages similar to mainline Protestants. While mainline Protestants preferred Romney 55 percent to 44 percent, white Catholics voted for him by a margin of 59 percent to 40 percent.

Third, minority religious voters favored Obama. More than 75 percent of Hispanic Catholics voted for Obama, while 95 percent of black Protestants did so. Together, they accounted for 14 percent of the electorate, compared to 61 percent of the white Christian vote.

Nothing is particularly surprising in these numbers. They are similar to the voting preferences for Republican and Democratic candidates in the previous three elections.

One religious trend within the country’s population did not play out as expected. The role organized religion plays among the U.S. population has been decreasing. This year, for the first time, the number of people who report themselves as unaffiliated with any religion has hit 20 percent, according to Pew’s pollsters. While this group went overwhelmingly for Obama, they did not actually vote in large numbers. They made up only 12 percent of the voters on election day. This poor turnout indicates that neither party is addressing their concerns.

A third of young people (ages 18-28) belong to the unaffiliated crowd, those who check the “none of the above” box when it comes to religious identity. Many pundits have identified this as a problem for the Republican Party, fearing that this identification will continue as these voters get older. This will probably not be the case. College-age people, as a group, always rebel against their parents when they leave home and dropping out of church is part of that. When they marry and have children, they tend to join churches and other religious institutions again.

The real problem for the Republican Party is its identification with religious policies and views that are insensitive to women. The reopening of the debate over reproductive matters has alienated many female voters. The suggestion that workers at religious institutions should have fewer health-care rights than those employed at other businesses does not sit well with many women. Similarly, the views on rape expressed in religious terms by some male Republican candidates further damaged the party’s image among women.

In the end, it seems that people largely voted for the party that made them feel welcome. Republicans attracted those who were white, Christian and male, winning their votes by large numbers. Democrats attracted majorities among those voters who did not belong to all three of these categories. Add these results to the roughly 40 percent of the white male Christians who voted for Obama, and that explains the election’s outcome, at least from the religious perspective.