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9/15/2005 12:07:00 AM

Spirituality high among university scientists

As the debate over stem cell research persists, so too does the question over the role of religion in the natural and social sciences.   How do scientists, for example, reconcile their religious beliefs or lack of religiosity with their scientific fact-based perspective?   To answer that question, a Rice researcher is collecting data on the religious identity and practice of university scientists.   Her initial findings suggest that even scholars who don't believe in God consider spirituality important for themselves and others.

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Until recently, studies showed that scientists were less likely than the general population to believe in God, although scholars in the natural sciences were more religious than their counterparts in the social sciences.   New data by a Rice researcher now indicates that college and university faculty may not be as irreligious as some in academia and the general public believe. While close to one-third of both the natural and social scientists claimed they do not believe in God, significant percentages of them said they considered spirituality important.

"Thus far, the data reveals that natural and social scientists may have very similar beliefs about the content of spirituality and its relationship to religion," says Elaine Howard Ecklund, a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University who, along with Christopher Scheitle of Pennsylvania State University, recently presented her findings on "Religion Among Academic Scientists" at the annual meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion.

"Rather than leaving religion altogether, many academics instead have pieced together a personal spirituality."

In contrast to earlier studies which relied on more traditional measures of religiosity, Ecklund also examined subjects' "non-traditional" aspects of religion and spirituality, such as the frequency in which they meditate or take part in yoga or other spiritual exercises. She also compared demographic differences between and within different science categories.  

Some of her initial data shows that:

-   Biologists rank highest at 63.4% among those faculty claiming no religious affiliation, with physicists following at 51.5%

-   The number of Jewish faculty has declined, and the number of Catholics have increased in the natural and social sciences.

-   There are no significant differences among social scientists or natural scientists in the frequency of religious service attendance; almost one-half of who said they had not attended religious services in the past year.

-   Over one-half of the Protestant and Catholic respondents identify with their liberal labels.

- Both natural and social scientists place the same importance on spirituality, but social scientists engage in more spiritual practices than natural scientists.

-   Of those scientists who participate in "non-traditional" religious practices (6.6% natural scientists and 8.6% social scientists), 20.4% of the natural scientists and 27.3% claim affiliations with Buddhism.

Ecklund believes these findings may reflect demographic differences she also uncovered in her study. For example, a large number of university economists whom she surveyed were non-citizens, and there were more first-generation immigrants among physicists than any other group of faculty.   Increasing numbers of women were among the younger faculty, with the highest percentage of females in the social science versus natural science faculty.

"Previous studies indicate that women tend to be more religious than men," Ecklund says. "So if the proportion of women increases in a particular discipline, the percentage of religiously involved individuals might also increase in that field."

Ecklund's initial findings were drawn from data on biologists, physicists, chemists, sociologists, economists, psychologists and political scientists at 21 top U.S. research universities. The subjects participated in a web survey, which included questions from the General Social Survey and other national surveys. From those participants, she randomly selected 500 faculty for face-to-face interviews, which will probe deeper into how faculty use religion and spirituality in their interactions with students, in their research and in their personal lives.

A graduate of Cornell University, where she earned her undergraduate, master's and Ph.D. degrees in sociology, Ecklund has written a number of articles on the Korean community in America, and she is the author of the forthcoming book by Oxford University Press, titled Korean American Religion: Race, Ethnicity and Civic Life.

Her other areas of research focuses on immigrant groups and how religion shapes gender and ethnic identities, specifically in Asian-American communities and among Catholic women.

For more information on this research, contact Ecklund at ehe@rice.edu or B.J. Almond in the Office of News and Media Relations at balmond@rice.edu .