Item Detail
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11705
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0
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0
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English
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The Impact of Education on Religiosity : A Study of Mormons and Southern Baptists
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Carbondale, IL
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Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
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181
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Ph.D. diss.
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"Past findings focusing on the relationship between educational level and religious involvement are mixed and at times inconsistent. These mixed findings are, in part, due to variations in the populations sampled, the operationalization of the key variables, and what, if any, control variables were used. Taking account of these variations this study controlled for denominational affiliation, multiple measures of religiosity, precollege religiosity, college major, and socioeconomic status. Central to the study if the premise that denominational orientation towards secular education is a key variable influencing the association between education and religiosity. The Sample. Two denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), were selected for analysis. These two denominations were selected because they present divergent orientations towards education, are large and growing denominations, and tend towards fundamentalism in belief which should, theoretically heighten the supposed conflict between education and religious belief. A probability proportionate to size sampling procedure was used to select the names of 500 Southern Baptists and 500 Mormons from the Southern Baptist and Mormon congregations in St. Louis country and the northern portion of St. Charles county. Two hundred thirty-eight Baptists and 261 Mormons returned usable questionnaires. Findings. The Baptists and Mormons though quite similar on many of the religious measures noticeably differed on educational attainment. The Mormons were nearly twice as likely to be college graduates as were the Baptists. A moderate positive association was found to exist between precollege religiosity and educational level for both denominations. Postcollege church attendance, however, compared to precollege church attendance, increased for the Mormon college graduates but decreased for the Baptist college graduates. The widely held view that science is a powerful secularizing force in higher education is challenged by my data. The Baptist science majors were noticeably more likely than the nonscience majors to score high on religiosity measures and the Mormon science majors scored just as high as the Mormon nonscience majors. Socioeconomic variables, i.e., education, occupation, income, and class, individually and collectively proved to be, at most, only mediocre indicators of religiosity. Interestingly, the associations between the socioeconomic variables and the measures of high school religiosity were noticeably stronger than the associations between the socioeconomic variables and the measures of present religiosity. Conclusions. Denominational affiliation appears to be an important variable influencing the relationship between religiosity and educational attainment. The supposed secularizing influence of college in general and scientific training in particular was not evident. My findings suggest that future studies of religiosity should control for denominational affiliation, might wish to consider the influence of religiosity on status, and ought to look to other influences besides socioeconomic status to explain religiosity." [Author's abstract]