I don't know what sources Ryan Burge used to construct this chart, but it's definitely a conversation-starter for religious studies at The New School, whose student body is almost entirely committed to the majors at the far upper right corner!
What is being shown here, though? Different majors might shape religious proclivities/aversions (one reason Evangelicals think "the university" is the enemy), but it's at least as likely that student sensibilities shape major choice. And not just "religious" ones, however defined. Burge shared the graph above on his facebook feed but kept for the truly inquiring some other related charts.
Now, I do feel like I am only showing you one side of the coin here. It’s been all religion to this point—belonging and behavior. But we all know that those two factors are intimately related to political viewpoints. I write about this ad nauseam now, but to be Republican/conservative is to be religious. And the opposite is true for the left side of the political spectrum: there are a whole lot more nones among the ranks of liberals.
So Burge next offers the graph below taken from the same data set. Sure looks like the flip side of the same coin! But, as Burge helps us appreciate, there are a lot of things going on here...! Any claim like "XYZ major makes students more/less religious" is simplistic.
