I think that @socofthesacred are going to start an entire research agenda based on religion and pet ownership.
We can analysis pet memes. Or dog references in sermons. Maybe, mentions of animals in the sacred texts. The sky’s the limit! https://t.co/dwPyH2fmiu
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) January 7, 2020
Tired of all those statistics about white evangelicals and Citizen Donald Trump?
Tired of charts about soaring “nones” and imploding Mainline Protestants?
This time around, political scientist and progressive Baptist pastor Ryan Burge has served up something different. I mean, who doesn’t want to read a Religion News Service essay with this headline: “Atheists prefer cats, Christians love dogs, study shows.” Click here for a .pdf of the original academic paper.
Let me interject, as a personal confession, that my wife and I have had our share of cats and dogs, even in the same household. However, as an adult, I developed a strong allergy to cats — except for a beloved black cat. Go figure.
But back to this week’s dose of Burge material, in the text of the RNS piece:
Dogs are the most popular household pet. In fact, there’s no religious tradition in which fewer than half of adherents own a dog.
However, there are some interesting differences among faith groups. Evangelicals and Catholics are more likely to have dogs than are mainline Christians. Mainliners are more likely than evangelicals and black Protestants to own cats. Jews prefer dogs to cats. Jewish families are also more likely than other traditions to own a small mammal or a bird.
Those who claim no religious identity are most likely to have a cat.
Let’s continue:
We also found one other interesting piece of data. For our study, we put together a regression model that predicted how many pets were owned at each level of church attendance while controlling for a number of factors that could impact pet ownership, such as income, geography, gender, race and education.
While not conclusive, it appears that the more someone goes to church or other religious worship service, the less likely they are to own a pet.
Why is this the case? Read it all.
ybvdadminuser
