**2. Literature review**

318 Sociological Landscape – Theories, Realities and Trends

As pointed out by Glaeser (2002) in the context of religion and education, the most natural omitted factor is the degree of religious belief, i.e. the extent to which individuals believe that there are returns to religious activity. Measures of religious belief are strongly correlated with religious attendance and negatively associated with education. Less educated people are more likely to believe in miracles, heaven, devils, and the literal truth of the Bible. Furthermore, denominations are, to a significant extent, defined by their beliefs, and unsurprisingly sorting across denominations on the basis of religious beliefs is stronger than sorting across denominations on the basis of education. As such, religious belief is a natural omitted factor that is negatively correlated with education, positively correlated with attendance and very important for sorting across denominations. For the analysis of

In this paper, first I apply the cross-tab method to investigate the relationship between one's highest education attained and other various religious variables: whether a person's education level will affect his or her religious activities. Second, I use the regression model to test whether education, occupation, and other variables are associated with his or her church attendance. I rely on the General Social Survey1 (GSS), a nationally representative survey that collects data on religious preference and religious participation. In this paper, I craft a simple statistical model of religious attendance, education and belief and then I estimate that model. I try to explore whether other factors also affect church attendance. In the literature, there is a negative relationship between education and church attendance; however, this relationship is proved to be statistically insignificant. This negative relationship may be the result of omitted factors (such as interests and social skills), which relate both to church going and school attendance. Both activities require sitting still, listening, being interested in abstract ideas and putting future gains ahead of current gratification. There is the connection between church attendances and a wide range of

this study, I try to separate the measure of religious facts and religious belief.

formal social activities that require similar skills and interests as church going.

1 I use the most recent data available from GSS, which is from the year 2010.

important according to the literature.

My results are striking. I find that there is significant association between "one's highest degree" and "their feelings about the bible", "agree to allow anti-religionist to teach", and "how fundamentalist was one at age 16. Similarly, a significant relationship exists between "one's highest degree earned" and "how fundamentalist was one currently". Other variables that are significantly associated with "a person's highest degree earned" include the following variables: "feelings about the bible", "confidence in the existence of God", "The Pope is infallible on matters of faith or morals", "how often does one pray", "whether one should agree that there can by Bible prayer in public schools or not", "whether one agrees that sinners must be punished or not", "whether one has ever had a 'born again' experience", "how often does one take part in religious activities", etc2. Besides, I find that there is a significant effect between one's religion attendance and other control variables. Education has a significant negative effect on the religious attendance; however, the effect is insignificant. Other variables that have significant effects on a person's religious attendances are the following: the number of children a person have, whether the person is married or not, and the marital status of the person. As the number of children increases, the days of church attendance will increase; if a person is from the Catholic denomination, his or her

2 In the result part, I do not report all the significant associations; I only report those ones I considered
