Frequently Asked Questions
Below are answers to commonly asked questions regarding the Perspective Worldview Segmentation.
Geographical Scope
The Perspectiva Worldview US segmentation is solely based on current data specific to the United States (see FAQ related to data). While many of the segments and clusters appear in other countries globally, users are cautioned to draw any conclusions from the data and apply them to other settings outside the US.
Overarching Four-Fold Classification
While the segmentation is a hierarchical taxonomy, each segment is also classified into one of four categories:
All segments related to historic Christianity are classified as part of "Religious Christianity."
This category includes American Native Religion and Spirituality and other non-Christian religions that came to America through immigration since 1600.
While some NRMs have been based on Christianity (albeit with doctrinal, religious, spirituality, and worship-related deviations), other NRMs are based on non-Christian religions.
These movements are not based on Christianity or non-Christian religions. Instead, they are based on various forms of spirituality, philosophies, pre-Christian European beliefs and practices, magico-religious practices, and non-theistic orientations.
Belief System Dimensional Schema
Each of the 450+ belief systems being tracked in the United States is evaluated based on its Belief Perspectives, Faith Dimensions, and Value Orientations reflected across 150+ dimensions. Belief Perspectives include beliefs regarding sacred texts, theism, theology, Christology, humanity, demonology, and the supernatural. Faith Dimensions include views on ethics, religiosity, spirituality, and worship. Value Orientations include values regarding human activity, human nature, cosmology, destiny, the environment, epistemology, morality, ontology, praxiology, sociality, teleology, and temporality. Together these dimensions shape the cluster-segment taxonomy.
Since organizing the relationship between various belief systems is a daunting task with many different organizational structures based on the source (and thus a lack of standardization), we chose a hierarchical taxonomical approach rather than a classification approach. Classification sorts items into groups based on one or two pre-established attributes. Taxonomies describe relationships between items based on many different attributes. (See here). The Perspectiva segmentation utilizes more than 150 dimensions across belief system groups in the United States to create the segmentation taxonomy.
The naming of the segments and clusters arises from the major shared propensity of the underlying 450+ belief system groups across 150 variables - with a heavy emphasis on shared overarching propensity based on the data.
In particular, historic religious Christian belief system groups were categorized in terms of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox segments and placed in the Religious Christianity cluster. Thus, even though there are similarities between some Protestant, Pentecostal, Christian Restorationist, or other historic Christian denominations with some of the non-historic New Religious Movement entities, their categories are distinct. The Restorationist Cluster encompasses non-historic NRM entities whose primary orientation is a type of "restoration" of doctrine that is outside historic Christianity. The Unity Movement cluster groups comprise segments whose major self-designation is that of unifying all religions and spiritualities together.
Immigrant church groups that are part of historic Religious Christianity categories are categorized within the Religious Christianity cluster and segments. Typically these are church groups with ties back to historic Christian denominational families. Thus these African Christian churches appear within Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox categories.
However, some immigrant church groups are handled differently. For example, several overlapping terms related to immigrant African churches exist that denote: African-initiated churches, African independent churches, African indigenous churches, and African-instituted churches. We have chosen to refer to these as "African-Initiated Churches" and place them in the African Religion cluster because their belief perspectives, faith dimensions, and value orientations place them closer to some aspects of African folk religion than the historic African Christian groups.
Asian Initiated Churches in the United States, while originating from parts of Asia, place themselves within historic Christianity based on their belief perspectives, faith dimensions, and value orientations.
The Perspectiva Worldview segmentation does not categorize belief systems into segments and clusters solely on one or two dimensions such as their country or continent of origin.
The Perspectiva segmentation employs Grid-Group Cultural Theory to map the clusters and segments conceptually. Grid-Group Cultural Theory has been used in Biblical studies and missiology to develop conceptual maps of worldview orientations. Perspectiva Lifeways may be mapped using two axes: Group – Individual, and Cognitive – Experiential. The diagram on the right plots the 15 cluster groups in their approximate location in this grid. The cognitive approach analyzes lifeways intellectually, asking "why," while the experiential emphasizes sensory and communal aspects, focusing on "how." Both provide unique perspectives, with the cognitive exploring of the mind and experiential highlighting of real-life expressions. Group-oriented lifeways boost community, while individual-oriented favor autonomy, with each approach related to the lifedesigns of each lifeway.
Because the lifeways are based on 150+ worldview dimensions times 450+ belief system groups supported by 650,000+ survey respondents, the two-dimensional diagram "flattens" more than 70,000 dimensions into a 2D representation.