Discuss Trends and Correlates of Religion.

For this week’s written exercise, you will browse one of two data sites for recent trends in American religion — Pew Research Center (Links to an external site.) and/or Gallup Poll (Links to an external site.). Using data from these sites, choose TWO recent trends in American religion (within the past fifteen years) and answer the following: What are the salient (that is, important) facts about this trend? What do the data show? What are the independent and dependent variables that are identified in this research? What is the relationship between the two? How do the data demonstrate the social correlates of religion? That is, do people in different categories (age, gender, education, occupation, political affiliation etc.) or status experience religion in similar or different ways, according to the data? Provide your own analysis of how learning this data affects your understanding of religion as an institution and its role in American society.