Musings of a Catholic Convert

After seeing numerous talking heads speaking of this latest Pew Forum report, I thought it best to download the report and read it myself.  I would like to see not only how the Pew Forum data looked, but also how they arrived at their reported conclusions.  The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey can be found online.  I do not have permission to reprint it on this site, but you can get a copy for your own personal use from them.

The American religious landscape is something I've studied quite a bit, both in my spiritual journey and discovery of the Catholic Church and in my studies toward becoming a pastor and teacher.  It makes sense when you think about it.  If one's religious history goes back only as far as the 16th century (if even that far), what does your Church history class look like?  You spend a few weeks, maybe a semester looking at the New Testament, a brief glance at the early Church Fathers so you can mention St. Augustine and the early Christological heresies, then you jump several centuries to the Schism that created the Orthodox Churches, then skip another 500-600 years and start talking about the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation.  Having covered a good 1500 years in one semester, one is then free to spend the remainder of the year on the past 500 years or so, and particularly the last 200 in the US.  

With that thought in mind, you can understand why my studies of the American religious landscape are filled with details.  It was mostly self study, aided by my studies of world history, that allowed me to see the rest of Christianity from the time of Christ to today.  Perhaps you can understand my curiosity with this new study.  

I am just starting my reading so I'll let you know what I find.  Right now I'm most interested in looking at the actual questions asked in their surveying.  Asking the wrong questions or asking leading/assumptive questions are dangerous data collection methods.  There are several pollster organizations that are guilty of this.  I suppose on some level or another, there isn't an easy way to avoid leading or assumptive questions altogether, especially with regard to religion, but at least try to be objective, right?

Have any of you read the study?