"Desperately Seeking Sheila": Locating Religious Privatism in American Society.

This paper examines a battery of questions on personal religiosity that were included for the first time in the 1988 General Social Survey. Combined into a composite measure, the questions predict privatized religion in American society. Privatized religion ("Sheilaism") was found to vary inversely with institutional religious loyalty. Men, whites, young Americans, liberal Protestants, Nones, and people living in the Pacific states and in New England are apparently the most privatized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]