In What God Do We Trust?

by Terri Jo Ryan

We may be "one nation, under God," but Americans actually worship at least four versions of the Lord, according to a study released Monday.

More than two dozen questions about God's character and behavior were asked of 1,721 Americans nationwide in the survey, "American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights into the Depth and Complexity of Religion in the United States," conducted by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion.

Respondents perceived God in one of four ways:

• Authoritarian God: Individuals who follow this model feel God is highly involved in their personal lives and world affairs, they give the Deity credit for their decision-making, and they feel God is angry and meting out punishment to the wicked.

• Benevolent God: These believers also think God is very active in their daily life, just not as wrathful. They believe God is mostly a force for positive influence in the world, and is reluctant to condemn individuals.

• Critical God: The faithful of this subset believe God is not meddling in world affairs but is nonetheless looking on in disapproval. These people tend to believe God's displeasure will be felt in another life, and that divine justice is not of this world.

• Distant God: Individuals in this group think God is not active in humanity's affairs, and is not especially angry, either. Believers consider the deity more of a cosmic force who sets the laws of nature into motion.

Which of the God models you follow is an accurate predictor of a number of factors, including race, political stances, even where you live, said Paul Froese, a Baylor sociologist who worked on the project. For example, belief in God has a strong gender difference. Women, he said, tend toward the more engaged versions (types A and B), while men tend toward the less engaged and are more likely to be atheist.

More than half the blacks in the study said they believe in the authoritarian God. None surveyed said they were atheist.

Lower-income and less-educated people were more likely to worship types A or B, while those with college degrees or earning more than $100,000 were more likely to believe in the distant God or be atheists, the Baylor study concluded.

Froese noted that geography also seemed to correlate: Easterners disproportionately seem to believe in a critical God; Southerners tend toward the authoritarian God; Midwesterners worship the benevolent God; and West Coast residents contemplate the distant God.

Catholics and mainline Protestants are more apt to see God as distant, as are Jews.

Evangelical and black Protestants lean toward the authoritarian God. People who see God exclusively as "he" also worship this image.

Conducted with the Gallup Organization, the sampling of more than 1,700 English-speaking adults was conducted from October to December last year. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.