Sources: America's Four Gods by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, based on a 2008 survey of 1,648 U.S. adults Credit: Produced by Frank Pompa and David Merrill, USA TODAY
See where your beliefs measure up concerning God's judgment and engagement in your daily life. Click the hyperlinked questions below to vote:
God's judgment
Track your score: Give yourself 5 points for every Strongly Agree, 4 points for every Agree, 3 points for every Undecided, 2 points for every Disagree, 1 point for every Strongly Disagree
God is ...• Critical?• Punishing?• Severe?• Wrathful?• Angered by human sin?• Angered by my sin?
Your view of God's judgment is considered high at 18 and up, low at 17 or below.
God's engagement
Track your score: For the questions below, give yourself 5 points for every Strongly Agree, 4 points for every Agree, 3 points for every Undecided, 2 points for every Disagree, 1 point for every Strongly Disagree
God is ...• Ever-present?• Concerned with the well-being of the world?• Concerned with my personal well-being?• Directly involved in worldly affairs?• Directly involved in my affairs?
Track your score: For the questions below, give yourself 1 point for every Strongly Agree, 2 points for every Agree, 3 points for every Undecided, 4 points for every Disagree, 5 point for every Strongly Disagree
God is ...• Distant?• Removed from wordly affairs?• Removed from my personal affairs?
Add your two Engagement scores.Your view of God's engagement is considered high at 32 and up, low at 31 or below.
Results:
High judgment score, high engagement score = Authoritative God
You have a strong conviction that God judges human behavior and sometimes acts on that judgment. You think God can become angry and punish the unfaithful. This judgment may be leveled on a large canvas via natural disasters or on a personal scale through illness or misfortune. In Judeo-Christian tradition, this is the God of the Old Testament. You don't focus on the judgmental aspect of God's character to the exclusion of more caring or compassionate characteristics. You're as likely to see God as a loving being as those with other conceptions of God. The difference is that you show a greater tendency to think that God is willing to judge and punish, and that the bad and good things that happen to us are likely of His making. You often view human suffering as the result of Divine Justice.
High judgment score, low engagement score = Critical God
You imagine a God that is judgmental of humans but rarely acts on Earth, perhaps reserving final judgment for the afterlife. Ethnic minorities, the poor and exploited often believe in a Critical God, perhaps because they may not see the blessings of God in the here and now and take comfort in the idea that God's displeasure will be felt in another life.
Low judgment score, high engagement score = Benevolent God
Like believers in the Authoritative God, you see His handiwork everywhere but are less likely to think God judges and punishes human behavior. You see God as mainly a force of positive influence in the world, less willing to condemn individuals. You think that whether sinners or saints, we all are free to call on God to answer our prayers in times of need.
The issue of tragedy clearly reveals an important distinction between the Authoritative and Benevolent Gods. Two people with different images of God may see signs of divine intervention in the midst of the same event, yet interpret God's actions and motivations differently. Someone with an Authoritative view of God is more likely to believe that God either caused a bad event to happen or allowed it to happen to teach someone a lesson. Someone with a Benevolent image of God is unlikely to see God's hand in the tragedy itself, but does see evidence of God's presence in stories of amazing coincidences or apparent miracles that saved people from disaster.
Low judgment score, low engagement score = Distant God
You view God as a cosmic force that set the laws of nature in motion but does not really "do" things in the world or hold clear opinions about our activities or world events. You may not conceive of God as an entity with human characteristics and are loathe to refer to God as "he." You think images of God in human terms are inadequate and represent naive or ignorant attempts to know the unknowable. When describing God, you're likely to reference the natural world, such as a beautiful day, a mountaintop or a rainbow.
You believe God doesn't require offerings or praise and is not an entity that responds directly to our personal wants. Nevertheless, you still may be a regular churchgoer and may draw inspiration from the idea that a greater power exists and is essentially a force for good. This good is much more abstract for you than for believers in an Authoritative, Benevolent or Critical God. You rarely speak of miracles or judgments in afterlife. Instead, the calming effects of meditation, contemplation and the beauty of nature are ways in which you tap the positive force guiding the universe.
Source: Paul Froese and Christopher Bader
Percentage of Americans who identify with these types of Gods:
When you sing God Bless America, whose blessing are you seeking?
In the USA, God — or the idea of a God — permeates daily life. Our views of God have been fundamental to the nation's past, help explain many of the conflicts in our society and worldwide, and could offer a hint of what the future holds. Is God by our side, or beyond the stars? Wrathful or forgiving? Judging us every moment, someday or never?
FAITH & REASON: Does your view of God match public figures'? TWITTER: Follow reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman @faith_reason ON THE WEB: America's Four Gods
Surveys say about nine out of 10 Americans believe in God, but the way we picture that God reveals our attitudes on economics, justice, social morality, war, natural disasters, science, politics, love and more, say Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, sociologists at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Their new book, America's Four Gods: What We Say About God — And What That Says About Us, examines our diverse visions of the Almighty and why they matter.
Based primarily on national telephone surveys of 1,648 U.S. adults in 2008 and 1,721 in 2006, the book also draws from more than 200 in-depth interviews that, among other things, asked people to respond to a dozen evocative images, such as a wrathful old man slamming the Earth, a loving father's embrace, an accusatory face or a starry universe.
Researchers from the USA to Malawi are picking up on the unique Baylor questionnaire, and its implications. When the Gallup World Poll used several of the God-view questions, Bader says, "one clear finding is that the USA — where images of a personal God engaged in our lives dominate — is an outlier in the world of technologically advanced nations such as (those in) Europe." There, the view is almost entirely one of a Big Bang sort of God who launched creation and left it spinning rather than a God who has a direct influence on daily events.
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