While less religious than most Americans, professors are more religious than might be commonly assumed, according to a new survey.
The survey -- described in a working paper titled "How Religious Are America's College and University Professors?" -- was conducted by Neil Gross, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University, and Solon Simmons, a researcher at George Mason University's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. They surveyed nearly 1,500 professors in different disciplines and at different types of institutions across the United States.
What they found is that most professors, contrary to the stereotype, are not atheists. In fact, only 10 percent of professors surveyed said they did not believe in God, while 13 percent said they did not know whether there was a God and did not believe there was any way to find out. Those responses, taken together, show that professors are more than twice as likely to be nonbelievers or skeptics than, for instance, college-educated people in general, of whom only 11 percent consider themselves atheists or agnostics.
But the findings also mean that the majority of professors entertain at least the possibility of God's existence. Nearly one- fifth of respondents said they believed in a "higher power of some kind." An additional 36 percent said they had no doubts about the existence of God, while 17 percent generally believed in God but had some doubts.
The survey found that professors at community colleges tended to be more religious than those at elite, doctoral institutions. It also found that whether a professor believed in God tended to vary across disciplines: Biologists and psychologists were more likely to doubt the existence of God, while the majority of accounting and elementary-education professors professed faith in an almighty being.
In March the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles released the results of a survey that found that 81 percent of faculty members considered themselves "spiritual." That survey, though, was less concerned with the specifics of professors' religious beliefs, focusing on more- nuanced questions of spirituality.