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Manufacturing consent: polling and the creation of religious unity
The reach of polling goes beyond politics.
Today, pollsters are ever-ready to tell us what Americans think about a variety of things, including our views on religion.
In his new book, “Inventing American Religion” Princeton University sociologist Robert Wuthnow looks at how polls and surveys, despite how they claim to the contrary, ultimately fails to give us a provable understanding of our evolving relationship with faith.
Guest:
Robert Wuthnow, Author of “Inventing American Religion: Polls, Surveys and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation’s Faith” (Oxford University Press, 2015) and a professor of sociology at Princeton University