Faculty and Faith

According to a chapter in the forthcoming book, The American University in a Postsecular Age, about the secularization of universities in America, professors in American institutions aren't nearly as anti-God as they're often portrayed. Make no mistake, as a group professors are more atheistic/agnostic than the American public, but the numbers aren't terribly lopsided. According to the chapter in the book by Gross and Simmons, their survey found 23.4% of professors are atheist or agnostic, compared to roughly 7% in the general US population. The percentage of atheists is higher in elite institutions (37%), but so is the percentage of those professors claiming to believe in God (33%) or "Believe in Higher Power or God some of the time" (29%). The rate of professors who believe in God is higher at community and 4-year colleges. Interestingly, professors in my own field of Psychology have the highest percentage of atheists/agnostics along with Biology (61%). Frankly, I expected to see Philosophy up there, too, if not higher. Not surprisingly, the disciplines with the highest rates of belief in God are the non-scientific ones like accounting, finance, elementary education, criminal justice, nursing, etc. 

I was able to find a draft of the chapter by Gross and Simmons (the latter is from George Mason, by the way) describing this survey and its results. There was a short summary published in Harvard Magazine this past summer (Gross is from Harvard). 

I guess I'm a rare bird to be a Psychology professor who believes in God. 

**I'd love to post the figure of results, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a copyright violation.**