God & I: Tricia C. Bruce

YOU are a well-known sociologist interested in religion. Would you like to explain to our readers what the sociology of religion is?

Sociology is concerned with the ways people interact together in groups, and how those groups and identities influence people’s lives. Religion, of course, is both a group and an identity, so the sociology of religion is concerned with what people experience together when they are united through religion.

Through this study we are able to understand ourselves and our world, and navigate the challenges in front of us.

What can you tell us about your religious upbringing?

I was baptized and raised Catholic. My mom had a huge role in that. I was born in a family where our Catholic identity was a strong part of our lives. My mom is an Irish Catholic; the rituals and habits she introduced in her own life really impacted me, even with the simplest things, such as kneeling by her bedside to pray every night and praying before meals. We always went to Mass, where I was exposed to the deep reverence and sacredness of the rituals and the Church environment.

Later, in high school, I was influenced by Sister Therese. She is a person who has great zeal for her faith. Quite literally, she often danced around the room with guitar in hand. She guided one of the music groups I was in, and taught religious education. Her faith spilled out as joy onto all of us. I experienced my faith and my Church as a safe place where I could also find community, joy, and comfort when things were hard.

When did you become particularly interested in collecting different types of data to discern and explain the patterns of religious life in your country?

My dad was in the US army. That entailed moving around quite a bit when I was in my early years, including living in what was then West Germany. From an early age I therefore saw different cultural contexts and languages. This differentiation drew my interest, also with regard to religion.

Whenever we were in a new place the local church was the first place we went to, and the local congregation, the parish, was our homing device. It was the place where we began to link with our neighborhood and local community.

I was intrigued by the differences, but also by the commonalities in the various Catholic churches I went to. Catholicism became for me a stabilizing thread through all of these different cultural and social experiences, and this also activated in me a deeper curiosity about Catholicism.

Once I got into college I learned more about the language of sociology as a different way of looking at religion. At college I was able to hone sociological research skills and build a methodological background.

Many scholars see the growth of the unaffiliated as the main trend in the American religious landscape. Do you agree?

It is definitely true that non-affiliation as a phenomenon has increased sharply across the US religious landscape in recent decades. However, this phenomenon masks other realities.

One is the fact that affiliation is not the only marker of religious or spiritual connection. So, people who will not claim a particular religious affiliation might nonetheless believe in God or incorporate religious rituals into their life and discern moral values.

As social scientists we don’t yet have the language or cognitive tools to put a name on this type of people because the terms ‘disaffiliation’ or ‘un-affiliation’ do not fully characterize them.

To me, this is also a question of belonging and community. We know that there are millions of Catholics in the US who still affiliate with the Catholic Church and yet feel no sense of belonging or pride in their Catholic identity. So we have to ask: what are the roots of this so-called ‘un-affiliation’? Maybe it has to do with a loss of community and connection.

Why, in your opinion, are Christian churches in the west disproportionately attended by women?

This is an empirical fact. Women tend to be more active religiously; they tend to be the carriers of religious messages, of religious socialization in their families and communities. Women are also overwhelmingly represented among lay ministers, and are doing a huge amount of work in parish and dioceses.

Why is that? The parish has often been a deep arena of community and support and meaning for women. Also, the Church is in great need of support right now, and women in many parishes are meeting those needs.

What are the main characteristics that differentiate US Catholics from those in other countries?

US Catholics are a fascinating group to study. One of the things that stands out about the history of the Catholic Church in the US is that it started off as a minority movement in a largely Protestant country, where religious freedom was an established fact. That is not the case for the Catholic Church in many other countries. Because of this the US Catholic Church required a special sense of identity coherence and also of institutional building. This started off with immigrant Catholics from mostly European countries and continues through today with incoming Catholics from Latin America and Asia.

Catholics here in the US have this experience of coming together and saying, “We need to build something in order to sustain and support our people.” This way parishes, hospitals and schools were built in a country that was largely Protestant.

Over time, because of all that institution building, Catholics came to wield a higher level of power. The economic advancement and class mobility that has occurred among Catholics over the past century is really quite remarkable. The US also now has a Catholic presence in the Supreme Court and in the White House, with Joe Biden as the second Catholic president in US history.

Of course, the percentage of foreign-born Catholics in the US is still quite high, and there remains a massive amount of ethnic diversity and class inequality in the US. That means that the historic social and economic gains by US Catholics are not experienced equally by all, which makes US Catholicism very complex.

In October 2023, the first session of the biennial synod in Rome concluded its work and issued a final document. How was it received by the average American Catholic?

First of all, many Catholics had no idea that the synod was happening, despite the widespread attempt to keep people informed about it.  

Those who are aware responded with mixed reactions. The invitation to listen and share, reaching out to the margins, was well received. Many expressed deep appreciation for those who were at the synod to create this document, a synthesis of deeply felt theological, doctrinal, and structural realities. However, some American Catholics wanted additional direction or solutions.

 The document amplified the role of many in the Church to co-responsibility, empowering them. It also brought to the fore how certain issues are experienced differently in different local contexts. It further advocated structures of greater accountability within the Church.

Finally, the synod cultivated the virtue of sitting together and talking about Church issues in a peaceful way.

You have published a study on how Americans understand abortion. What conclusions did your research come to?

In the US we have plenty of statistics that summarize people’s legal views on abortion, but very few studies on what is behind those numbers and the overlap between its legal aspects and its moral implications. My team set out to do a representative study of attitudes to abortion by interviewing 217 randomly selected Americans across the US. We sat down with each, face-to-face and confidentially, for more than an hour to ask them about abortion.

First of all, we found that there’s a deep level of ambivalence and uncertainty with the way Americans think about abortion. So, while outwardly Americans seem very polarized on this issue, in reality they are not neatly divided into two camps. Oftentimes they’re still thinking through the issue, or don’t have a moral language to clarify different views. Most say that it’s a hard issue to think through, and that there are so many different aspects of it to consider. We therefore have some skepticism towards those statistics because they don’t necessarily reflect Americans’ actual views on abortion.

Secondly we discovered that the ways Americans form opinions about abortion are deeply personal. People reference personal experiences with abortion, experiences they themselves or a loved one have had. They reference not only experiences about abortion itself, but also experiences about infertility, pregnancy, miscarriages, and more.

What factors in contemporary society are most destructive to psychological well being?

We could mention factors like individualism, capitalism, or our reliance on technology. These are social facts that don’t necessarily have an inherently good or bad aspect about them. But when we look at the patterns of what happens, for instance when individualism leads to isolation, then it’s clear that these factors can impact people in a negative way, especially those not connected to others in their community.

For example, heat waves disproportionately impact elderly residents who do not live with anyone else. Individualism may not be destructive in itself, but it can have unintended impacts when it comes to people’s ability to thrive and flourish in their local communities.

What do you think are the key issues facing the Catholic Church in the next decade?

The synod is happening in a pivotal moment in the history of the Church because of the great diversity in the Church. Through the synod, the global Catholic Church is better equipped to be able to think together about how we should respond to the challenges of issues like inequality or the environment.

Right now it’s harder to labor together communally because the Church is structured in such a way that the clergy bears a heavier responsibility than the laity. The clergy is therefore experiencing an extraordinary amount of stress and burnout.

At the same time within the Church there are feelings of disconnection and polarization, in part because of the inability to talk together. The synod is happening in this moment to address these issues, and to look at how we can move forward collectively.  

What image do you have of God?

I live close to the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee. Your question evokes my experience of being in the Smokies, which arouse for me a great sense of awe and beauty. It’s something that is hard to put to words, and even to understand. As a sociologist I value analytical, rational thinking, but that kind of beauty and awe is something that I can’t capture with only analytical and rational thinking.

When I hike in the mountains, I am constantly stopping to admire little things like mushrooms, flowers, or little running creatures. Each of them has this profound expression of uniqueness. So, when I think about God, I think about this fusion of awe and incomprehensibility, but with a deep sense of feeling uniquely known.

I have a deep sense of gratitude for the resources and privileges I have, which many people do not. There is the danger of taking things for granted and of not giving back to God.

Has there ever been a moment in your life when you felt God was particularly close to you?

Yes, during the early Covid years. At that time everything was broken, everything was put on pause, and the world seemed strange. The things that I thought I knew and could trust were no longer knowable and trustable. That became a moment when I understood I had to cede control; that I had to give up the illusion of being in control.

I think Covid introduced and corrected the illusion so many of us had of being in control. There is something that is far beyond us, in so many ways, and I’m immensely grateful for that time because of this lesson it taught me.

Do you have any particular tie with St. Anthony of Padua?

My mom, whenever anything was lost, especially her glasses, would always invoke St. Anthony. This was common parlance in our house. I also feel connected to St. Anthony because he used his mind and body to uplift others in his ministry, and I try to imitate him in this regard as best I can.

BORN in San Antonio, Texas, Tricia C. Bruce obtained a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. Her areas of specialization are in the sociology of religion, Catholicism, social change, generational change, parishes, social movements and applied public sociology.

Her award-winning books and reports include Parish and Place; Faithful Revolution; American Parishes; Polarization in the US Catholic Church; Called to Contribute; and How Americans Understand Abortion.

Her writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal; Time Magazine; Science Advances; Review of Religious Research; U.S. Catholic Historian; and more. She is the incoming President of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, Past-Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Religion Section, an affiliated scholar of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, and Director of Springtide Research Institute.

Tricia lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her husband and two teenage children.