Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Americans are much more likely to exaggerate their attendance at religious services than are people in many other countries, says a new study. While people in the USA have long been viewed as exceptionally religious — if not condescending — when compared to other nations in the developed world, this study suggests that American religiosity is exceptional in identity, but not in actual behavior.

In the United States (and to a lesser extent in Canada) there is a substantial gap between what is said about religion and what professed adherents actually do. This has been true for the last several decades, says Philip Brenner.

Social conflicts between believers and non-believers are often framed on the basis of presumed church attendance and doctrinal allegiances. However, opponents can find themselves on uncertain ground when making absolute critiques of their adversaries' positions when the very basis for their characterizations are unproven.

Study Parameters

The countries studied were: Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and the United States.

The data came from a variety of time use studies and cross-cultural surveys, including the ISR World Values Survey (WVS) and the American National Election Studies (ANES). Data selections were from 1975 through 2008.Philip S. Brenner is a University of Michigan (U-M) research fellow at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) and author of the study that appears in Public Opinion Quarterly.

This study extracted data from public surveys, potentially useful for referencing actual facts when debating public policy, and providing a springboard for further research.

Brenner analyzed two types of evidence about religiosity for each country: conventional survey questions asking respondents how often they attend religious services, and time diary data recording Sunday activities.

While conventional survey data show high and stable American church attendance rates of about 35 to 45 percent, the time diary data over the past decade reveal attendance rates of just 24 to 25 percent — a figure in line with a number of European countries.

America maintains a gap of 10 to 18 percentage points between what people say they do on survey questions, and what time diary data says they actually do, Brenner reports. The gaps in Canada resemble those in America, and in both countries, gaps are both statistically and substantively significant.

Outside of North America, the largest gaps are found in the Catholic countries of Europe, but even in high-attendance Ireland, the gap only ranges from about 4 to 8 points.

"The consistency and magnitude of the American gap in light of the multiple sources of conventional survey data suggests a substantive difference between North America and Europe in overreporting."

Given these findings, Brenner notes, any discussion of exceptional American religious practice should be cautious in using terms like outlier and in characterizing American self-reported attendance rates from conventional surveys as accurate reports of behavior. Rather, while still relatively high, American attendance looks more similar to a number of countries in Europe, after accounting for over-reporting.

"American religion may however, be considered exceptional in a new way in light of these findings: unlike the other countries examined, American behavior continues its consistent failure to match self-reported rates. American religiosity as an outlier is a concept that may be better applied to identity and self-concept rather than behavior," he said.

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