Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer

Mike Hout is a professor of sociology and demography at UC-Berkeley. He uses demographic methods to study non-demographic topics like social inequality, voting, and religion. His recent books are Century of Difference: How American Changed in the Last One Hundred Years (with Claude Fischer; Russell Sage, 2006) and The Truth About Conservative Christians (with Andrew Greeley; University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Claude S. Fischer is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972. He is the co-author with Michael Hout of Century of Difference: How American Changed in the Last One Hundred Years and the author of Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character (forthcoming from University of Chicago Press). Fischer received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University. He is currently a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York.

Posts by Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer:

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Unchurched believers

In 2002 we reported that the fraction of American adults with no religious preference doubled from 7 to 14 percent during the 1990s. Data from this decade show that the trend away from organized religion continues, albeit at a slower pace. Our analysis of the entire time series, presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in 2009, led us to the conclusion that the trend probably started earlier than we had thought—probably around 1985, 1986, or 1987—and that our previous estimate of the rate of change was, consequently, too high.

Read the rest of Unchurched believers.

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