Title: God Images: Attitudes, Beliefs, and Faith in Practice.

Author: Dr. Amanda J. Kaminski

Department: Theology/Philosophy/Class Lang

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Abstract: To introduce students to the use of mixed methods research in the field of religious studies, this activity investigates the perennial question in theology of how social groups imagine the Divine. The design seeks to include students in the dynamic process of research as they participate in the creation of a new data set about their social group’s religious imaginations. Further, it empowers them with basic skills to consider how God images may or may not correlate with actions, attitudes, and beliefs. This unit builds on America’s Four Gods wherein the researchers posit that four distinct imaginations of the Divine exist among the adult population of the US: God as Benevolent, God as Distant, God as Critical, and God as Authoritative.1 Recent studies have shown that despite the ongoing influence of religion in the US, “Gen Z is the least religious generation… [with] one third [claiming] no religion.”2 Among this population segment, which Oxford Learners have defined as those born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s,3 atheism has doubled in comparison with the rest of the adult population.4 One study shows that over half of those between the age of 14 and 26 have lost all trust in organized religion, though over 20% still claim some traditional affiliation despite not self-identifying as “religious.”5 Many in this generation express genuine curiosity and commitment to spirituality, deep conversations about meaningful topics, and practices that heal trauma and moral injury. As the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort in the US population, they care more than previous generations about global connectivity, suffering, and issues of justice.6 Going beyond observing how qualitative and quantitative studies worked to catalogue the theological images of an older generation, this unit guides students through the critique of outdated God images, the collection of new data, and research prompts that invite them to discover possible correlative relationships suggested by crosstabulation.