Largest Baptist universities face watershed leadership

Tests of Faith

I'm curious about Baylor…is this an explicitly Christian university?

From the university website: "Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas, Baylor has an enrollment of about 14000 and is the largest Baptist university in the world."

On that note, though, I'm curious about Baylor...is this an explicitly Christian university? Or private secular with conservative tendencies? That might have some bearing on the interpretation of their results, but, as jumping to conclusions about organizations with which one is not familiar tends to be, it's probably a mistake to conclude that they were trying to deliberately underreport our existence before we actually know anything about their motives, practices, and policies.

I'm simultaniously insulted and complimented by that; insulted that they underreport our existence, but complimented by the fact that they see my kind as a threat (as well they should because we will be knocking on their front door within the next few decades).

Imagine what our numbers could be if we had the same kinds of recuitment drives the gays have?

First of all, just because a pollster samples a high number of people doesn't mean he is going to get accurate results. The common example is Landon vs Roosevelt in the 1936 presendential election. Literary digest mailed 10 million questionares to its readers (2.3 million responded) and predicted the race would be won by Landon, 57%-43%. There were obviously problems in the sample, notably volentary response. Gallop polled the same race with a sample of 50,000 and correctly predicted Roosevelts victory. Now, as you note, all things being equal a 50,000 sample size should be more accurate than a 1,750, but all things might not be equal. In this case it appears that the ARIS study is more accurate, but it has nothing to do with the sample size.

Second, I am not saying that Europe's declining religiosity is a bad thing, but what is happening that concerns me more than a christian Europe is the immigration of fundementalist Islam. Nothing against muslims in general, and I largely support immigration wherever it is occuring, but Europe moving from a (mostly) sensible non-fundy christian continent to a much more radical Islam continent is not something I cheer. And it will happen; it is predicted that by 2050 Europe's population could be half muslim. Again, I'm not saying all or even most muslims are radical. But outside of perhaps Ireland, fundy christians are not dangerous (in the sense of killing others.) Fundementalist Islam is.

And despite that study's problems, I do think it valuable that it pointed out differences in opinion about the nature of the God(s) that people believe in; it didn't have a tone of "We all believe in the exact same God, down to every last detail."

I myself have written on this study in Baylor U Study: What Kind of God?

People were polled on how active in the world they believe God to be, and how angry and judgmental they believe God to be. This leads to a two-dimensional spectrum of possibilities that the researchers divided into four possibilities:

A, the Authoritarian God: active and angry
B, the Benevolent God: active but not angry
C, the Critical God: inactive but angry
D, the Distant God: inactive and not angry

Atheism might be called F for Faithless, as a LA Times article pointed out

The more fundie one is, the more one tends to believe in God A, with B and C being in the middle and the least fundie believing in God D. Believers in God A tend to have Religious-Right positions, while believers in God D are often secularists.