Question 1

When all 22 countries were combined, what were the strongest childhood predictors of believing in God as an adult?

Accepted Answer

When averaging across all countries, only three factors were significant predictors of adult belief. The strongest was religious service attendance at age 12, with those attending weekly being 1.29 times more likely to believe than those who never attended. The other two significant predictors were gender, with women being slightly more likely to believe than men, and birth cohort, with older generations generally being more likely to believe than the youngest cohort (ages 18-24).

Question 2

Did difficult childhood experiences, like poverty or abuse, make people more likely to believe in God?

Accepted Answer

No, the study found no consistent link between hardship in childhood and belief in God in adulthood when results were pooled across all countries. Factors such as parental divorce, childhood socioeconomic status, abuse, or feeling like an outsider did not have a significant overall effect. While these factors were associated with belief in a few specific countries, the effects were inconsistent and sometimes pointed in opposite directions, highlighting a lack of a universal pattern.

Question 3

How did the researchers define and measure 'Belief in God' for this study?

Accepted Answer

The study measured belief using a single survey question that asked participants if they believe in "one God, more than one god, an impersonal spiritual force, or none of these." For the analysis, researchers created a simple binary category. Anyone who affirmed belief in one God, multiple gods, or a spiritual force was classified as having 'Belief in God,' while those who selected 'none of the above' or 'unsure' were classified as non-believers.

Question 4

What is the main takeaway from the finding that predictors of belief vary so much between countries?

Accepted Answer

The primary conclusion is that there are no universal childhood predictors of adult religious belief, and that the influence of any given factor depends heavily on its cultural context. For instance, childhood religious attendance was a very strong predictor in less religious societies like Japan and Sweden, but had no significant effect in highly religious societies like Tanzania or Nigeria. This suggests that theories about religious development based primarily on Western cultures may not apply globally.

Question 5

Did the study confirm the common assumption that women are universally more religious than men?

Accepted Answer

Not entirely. While women were more likely than men to believe when the data was averaged across all countries, this pattern was not universal. The gender difference was statistically significant in 14 of the 22 countries, including Australia, Sweden, and the U.S. However, the association was not significant in the other countries, and in no country were men found to be significantly more likely to believe than women.

Question 6

Why did some factors, like having divorced parents, predict higher belief in one country but lower belief in another?

Accepted Answer

The study found that the effect of many childhood experiences is highly context-dependent. For example, having divorced parents was associated with a higher probability of belief in Japan, but a lower probability in Israel and Poland. The authors suggest such differences underscore that the social meaning and consequences of events like divorce, immigration, or feeling like an outsider vary dramatically across cultures, which in turn shapes their relationship to religious belief.

Question 7

What were the main limitations of the study that the authors acknowledged?

Accepted Answer

The authors noted two primary limitations. First, the study's design can only show associations between childhood experiences and adult belief, not prove a direct causal link. Second, the research relies on adults retrospectively reporting on their childhoods, which could be influenced by recall bias, meaning their current beliefs might affect how they remember and report past events.

Why We Believe: A Global Story of Faith

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