Polling a Nation

As a young man, George Gallup Jr. planned to become an Episcopal priest. He even spent a couple of years working at a church in Galveston, mostly coaching the softball team, certainly nothing "too high-level," he says.
Of course, he could have gone right into the family business. George Gallup Sr. had pioneered the area of scientific survey research to support his work in advertising in the 1930s when he was a rising star with the Young & Rubicam agency in New York.
"My dad was doing surveys for his PhD in psychology," Gallup says. "That's how they started doing this market research, to see if the advertising was working."
Gallup Sr. made quite a name for himself in advertising circles. He started the Gallup Poll in 1935, giving Young & Rubicam the distinction of being the first advertising agency to have a research department. He worked both jobs until 1948, when he left Young & Rubicam to focus on the Poll. Gallup Sr. chose to locate the Poll office in Princeton because it had two essentials to support his vision for the new company -- one of the nation's finest universities and a post office. 
Still, it wasn't until Gallup Sr. convinced his son that the survey business could be a way to fulfill his call to ministry that Gallup Jr. decided to join his father in the company. "My dad told me this would be a form of ministry, to find out what people's responses are to God," Gallup says. "It was an area that was unexplored scientifically."
Gallup was an undergraduate majoring in religion at Princeton in the '40s and his thesis was on Americans' beliefs in God. "I remember spending hours talking with my dad about proofs of God and so forth, endlessly," he says. "Out of those discussions came new questions in the area of religion."
The first question about religion was included in 1936, but the religious questions intensified in the 1950s and have continued, Gallup says. He and his father would throw in random questions about religion in a survey about another topic. "We'd be sitting around a kitchen table with someone asking how many pets they owned and then ask them about near-death experiences -- just because we wanted to know."
It was not only through polls that the organization gathered information on the American religious experience. Gallup estimates the company has done more than 100 separate studies for denominations and religious groups throughout the years.
For Gallup, who oversees the nonprofit portion of the organization, it is fulfillment of the ministry to which he first felt called. His organization's two most recent books (see main story) are focused entirely on this topic, and the Gallup Guide is the realization of a dream.
"I've wanted to do a Gallup Guide for a long, long time," he says. 
"I think it's one of the quickest routes to bringing about specific, dramatic improvement, church by church, across the country. We're giving ministers and others a chance to use this tool to save an awful lot of time, energy and money to help people grow spiritually."
The books were written in collaboration with his protégé, Baylor graduate D. Michael Lindsay. Frank Newport, another Baylor graduate who serves as The Gallup Poll's editor-in-chief, introduced the two in 1997 when Lindsay arrived in Princeton. "He's been a wonderful mentor to me," Lindsay says of Gallup, "and I'm honored he's asked me to work with him on these projects."
The two have developed a close, respectful working relationship in the five years since. For Gallup, meeting Lindsay was providential. "We're both people of faith, and I feel the Lord has put him in my path. I think we have a great team. He's brilliant, but also has a pastor's heart, and I think that's very rare to get those two things together," he says. 
The Gallup Guide provides 11 reproducible surveys to use in congregations to help pinpoint needs and leadership directions. Gallup says it's his way of offering his gifts to a larger body and is part of his continuing legacy of helping Americans understand their religious practices.
"I use the God-given tools of survey research to find out where people are in their lives as Christians, how they're responding to God," he says. "We think the Guide provides a focus for these churches so they won't waste time trying to figure out what's actually going on." 
For a man who's spent his lifetime asking people to share their religious stories, Gallup says he believes there are more stories to hear and more important projects to undertake. He and Lindsay have outlined several for the coming year, and all revolve around giving people a voice.
"Survey research is the most useful instrument democracy has ever devised," Gallup says. "Through surveys, you're able to give people all over the world a chance to speak. Everybody has a beautiful story to tell. It's a challenge to those in the survey research field to provide the opportunity for those stories to be told.
"To try to gain insight into the spiritual resilience of the country, something that's been pretty much ignored over the years, is exceedingly important," he says. "You can argue it's the most important area for determining the future."