America's Four Gods

The Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion just published a study called The Baylor Religious Survey. One of their findings is that American's have four different Gods. When they analyzed their data, they found two distinct dimensions concerning belief in God. The two dimensions were God's level of engagement defined as "the extent to which individuals believe that God is directly involved in worldly and personal affairs," and God's level of anger defined as "the extent to which individuals believe that God is angered by human sins and tends towards punishing, severe, and wrathful characteristics." These two dimensions when mixed in all possible combinations result in four arrangements: 1) Type A: Authoritarian God is high on engagement and high on anger; 2)Type B: Benevolent God is high on engagement but low on anger; 3) Type C: Critical God is low on engagement and high on anger; and 4) Type D: Distant God is low on engagement and low on anger.

I hope to discuss the findings of this survey over the next week, but for now I think we might ask ourselves what kind of a God we believe in (not intellectually but operationally, the way we really behave) and what God do you think we believe in as a church? What do you make of this categorization? Do you think there are other "God's" as well?