Survey of Beliefs by the Middle School Class
Middle School class project – reported by Lucia Wyss
At the end of January 2008, as part of our curriculum on UU faith, the Middle School class conducted a Beliefs Survey of the congregation. We requested that everyone at church on January 27 fill out a form and turn it in. The response was very gratifying. We got 176 replies! The class spent time on Feb. 3 trying to sort out the answers, and here are the results.
“Were you born a UU?”
The first question asked on the survey was, "Were you born a UU?" The response was a practically unanimous "No". Out of all the surveys, we only got 12 who said "Yes". Next, we asked, “What religion, if any, was practiced in your home?” Most people apparently grew up in a Christian background. That includes Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congregationalist. The former three were the most common. Our third question was, "What other faiths have you tried?" It seems that our congregation has dabbled in everything from the traditional to the occult. The distribution of replies was fairly uniform among the major religions.
“When did you start to question your religious beliefs?”
The answers to the next question, "When did you start to question your religious beliefs?" got a wide range of answers, so we compiled them into these general categories:
- 43% of the people who responded said as a child, or in their teen years.
- 10% said while they were in their twenties.
- 6% said as adults.
- The remaining answers were mostly years, 1974, 1982, and the like, and therefore, difficult to categorize, although, as you will find, we did come up with a system for the next question, which was, "When did you become a UU?"
“When did you become a UU?”
Predictably, we received more years. But we also got ages, and stages of life, like “after college”, or “when I married”. Eventually, we ended up with this:
- 8 people became a UU as a child or teenager
- 11 people became a UU as a young adult in their 20's
- 14 people became a UU as an adult
- 11 people became a UU when or soon after their children were born
- 8 people are still deciding whether or not to become a UU
- 3 people indicated they became a UU due to their parents and/or friends
- 19 people joined in the 1950's or 1960's
- 18 people joined in the 1970's or 1980's
- 47 people have joined since 1990
Current beliefs
The last question requested that participants check the box or boxes that pertained to their current belief, and gave the following terms along with short definitions:
- Humanism (Human nature is the basis of all religion) -112 people
- God is Nature (Instead of a supernatural God) - 95 people
- Agnosticism (I simply don’t know the truth about God) - 59 people
- Ethical Christianity (Jesus and the Bible are my basic teachings for living) - 20 people
- Mysticism ( Humans have a deep connection to the cosmos) - 51 people
- Atheism (No belief in God) - 24 people
- Paganism (Based on earth centered religions) - 20 people
- Christian (Jesus is a unique revelation of God) - 9 people
- Other (please define) - 27 people. The Other category included Buddhist, cosmology, supernatural and many very individual categories.
Thanks!
We hope this has given you some idea of how diverse people's beliefs are, even in so small a community. We’d like to thank everyone who participated, or helped us put this together. Thank you.