Rise in Mixed Faiths

By the Numbers: College Degrees and Religion

The share of Americans who have earned a four-year college degree varies not only by race and gender, but also by religion. Members of some faith groups are much more educated, on average, than others. The faith groups or denominations with the largest share of people with a college degree are:

 Hindu: 77 percent

 Unitarian-Universalist: 67 percent

 Anglican: 59 percent

 Episcopal Church: 57 percent

 Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): 47 percent

 Buddhist: 47 percent

The groups with the smallest share of those with a college degree:

 Assemblies of God: 15 percent

Train Up

Roughly one in five American adults (21 percent) were raised with a mixed religious background, according to a new Pew Research Center study. That figure includes about 9 percent who were raised by two people, both of whom were religiously affiliated but with different religions (e.g., a Protestant mother and a Catholic father or a Jewish mother and a Protestant father). Twelve percent were raised by one person who was religiously affiliated and another who was religiously unaffiliated (atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular”).

While religiously mixed backgrounds remain the exception in the U.S., with almost 80 percent saying they were raised within a single religion, the number of Americans raised in interfaith homes appears to be growing. While one-quarter (27 percent) of young adults in the millennial generation were raised in a religiously mixed family, the percentages who say they were raised in such a household decrease with each older generation: Generation Xers (20 percent), Baby Boomers (19 percent), and adults from the Silent and Greatest generations (13 percent).

Pew Research Center (Religion and Public Life), October 26, 2016

 Church of God in Christ: 13 percent

 Jehovah’s Witnesses: 12 percent

 American Baptist Churches USA: 12 percent

 Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee): 11 percent

By comparison, 27 percent of all Americans have earned a college degree.

Caryle Murphy, “The Most and Least Educated Religious Groups in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, Nov. 4, 2016

Quick Quiz: St. Valentine

One of these statements about the historical St. Valentine is false. Which one?

A. The man who inspired the holiday was an actual Christian priest, Valentinus, who was martyred in Rome on February 14, 269.

B. The most common legend surrounding him was that he secretly helped Christian couples wed, against the emperor’s wishes.

C. There was a Pope Valentine, who reigned briefly in the ninth century.

D. St. Valentine’s Day was not associated with romantic love or courtship until the Victorian Era, when greeting cards first gained popularity.

E. St. Valentine is also known as a patron saint of beekeeping, epilepsy, and traveling.

work.

he may have even “invented” the connection with that connection in a poem he wrote about 1375. Some think known for The Canterbury ),Tales who referred to the

Chaucer, the great medieval English author (best

Answer: D. Scholars think that the romantic associations began around the time of Geoffrey