WASHINGTON -- Large percentages of Americans link faith to their everyday lives, a new poll reveals. But overall, faithful Americans acknowledge a gap between what they believe and how they act. The findings are part of a new joint effort to examine "The Spiritual State of the Union" by the Gallup Organization and the Center for Research on Religion & Urban Civil Society.
Among the findings: -- 77 percent of Americans believe the overall health of the nation depends a great deal on the spiritual health of the nation. -- 72 percent said their lives have meaning and purpose because of their faith. -- 60 percent said their faith is involved in every aspect of their lives.
"You really cannot understand America if you do not understand her spiritual underpinnings," said George Gallup, who presented survey findings at a briefing Tuesday (March 4). "This survey makes that point, loudly and clearly."
The joint research effort also has resulted in a new national "spiritual index," which was determined to be 74.7 percent out of a possible score of 100 percent. The index will serve as a base-line indicator for future studies. The index has two components, "inner commitment," which gauges people's connection with God, a higher power or divine will, and "outer commitment," which looks at how they live out their inner commitment through service to others, their community and society in general.
The average score for inner commitment of the survey respondents was 79.8 percent and the score for outer commitment averaged 69.5 percent. Gallup, director of the George H. Gallup International Institute, said the index will "measure faith as a change agent." It was developed by the institute, the Gallup Organization and the research center at the University of Pennsylvania.
"The index shows that the American public is much more spiritual than perhaps we ever believed possible," said Byron Johnson, director of the center. The research also involved an in-depth look at Christians, who were found to account for 80 percent of Americans. The Rev. Scott Jones, a Tempe, Ariz., pastor involved in that portion of the research, noted the differing viewpoints of some Christians on matters of belief, practice and character. The poll found 76 percent of Christians agreed completely with the notion that all people, regardless of race, creed or wealth, are loved by God and therefore they should love all. But just 44 percent said the notion that "God calls me to be involved in the lives of the poor and suffering" applies completely to them. "I think what that's telling us is that it's easy to believe something," Jones said. "It's harder to put it into play."
Some of the other findings regarding Christians were that 74 percent believe God is actively involved in their lives, 67 percent find hope from their faith in Jesus Christ during a crisis and 58 percent believe no task is too menial if God calls them to it. Those percentages reflected Christians who "agree completely" with those statements.
Other findings in the general poll reveal that more than a third of Americans -- 39 percent -- prefer to call themselves spiritual rather than religious. Forty-nine percent said they were religious; 9 percent said they were both religious and spiritual. Two percent said they were neither and 1 percent did now know or refused to answer the question. "Being labeled religious is not as popular as it was, I guess, in earlier years," Gallup said.
Spirituality was defined by respondents in a number of ways, ranging from belief in God or a higher power to seeking to be a good person or reaching human potential. While 80 percent of those surveyed described themselves as Christians, 13 percent said they had no religious tradition and 6 percent said they were non-Christians.
The spiritual index, which researchers hope will be announced annually, was based on telephone interviews of 1,509 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.