FAITH IN AMERICA: THE PEW STUDY

• First a summary of the key findings. 
  1. The survey confirmed that the US is on the verge of becoming a minority Protestant country; for the number of Americans who report that they are members of Protestant denominations now stands at barely 51%.  Moreover, the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of different denominations loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions:  Evangelical Protestant churches (26.3% of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1%) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9%). 
  2. The number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today is 16.1%, more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children.  Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.  Of this 16.1%, those who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic comprise 1.6% and 2.4% of the adult population respectively, while the majority of the unaffiliated (12.1%) simply describe themselves as “nothing in particular.”
  3. More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion—or no religion at all.  If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.
  4. Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses as a result of affiliation changes.  While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as Catholic.  Another way of looking at this is that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics.  These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration.  Among foreign-born adults in the US, Catholics outnumber Protestants nearly two-to-one (46% Catholic vs. 24% Protestant); among native-born Americans, Protestants outnumber Catholics by an even larger number (55% Protestant vs. 21% Catholic).  Immigrants are also disproportionately represented among several world religions (e.g., Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism). 
  5. In the category of “Christian” there is also Orthodoxy (0.6 %), Mormons (1.7%), Jehovah’s Witnesses (0.7%) and others (0.3%).
  6. Other key highlights of the report include:
     • Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. 
     • Among people who are married, nearly four-in-ten (37%) are married to a spouse who is of a different religious affiliation.
     • Mormons and Muslims have the largest families.
     • Of all the major ethnic groups, blacks are most likely to report a formal religious affiliation. 
• Second,  this important survey causes me to draw several conclusions.
  1. The political affiliation of evangelicals has changed, according to this survey.  Whereas in 2001, 55% of white evangelicals 18 to 29 identified themselves as Republican, by 2007 that figure had dropped to 40%.  This group is still deeply pro-life for example, but its moorings in the Republican party are not as strong.  Michael Gerson comments that “These trends highlight a simple fact:  Many evangelicals are center-right voters who respond to a message of social justice and community values, not only to a message of rugged individualism and unrestricted markets.  Over the years, religious conservatives have made common cause with movement conservatives within the Republican Party—but they are not identical to movement conservatives.”
  2. This survey confirms something what we have been observing for some time now—denominational loyalty is eroding and Americans are far more fluid than ever in their religious choices.
  3. This survey also confirms the importance of religious affiliation and its connection to behavior in general.  Michael Lindsay, assistant director of the Center of Race, Religion and Urban Life at Rice University echoes:  “Religion is the single most important factor that drives American belief, attitudes and behaviors.  It is a powerful indicator of where America will end up on politics, culture, and family life.  If you want to understand America, you have to understand religion in America.”
  4. Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, makes a wise observation:  The large number of Americans leaving organized religion and large numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity point to the same desires.  “The trend is towards more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that. . . Those losing out are offering impersonal religion and those wining are offering a smaller scale:  mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.” 
  5. As Elesha Coffman of Christianity Today has observed:  the definition of evangelical is a slippery one.  “. . . [E]vangelicals care less about one’s church affiliation than about one’s beliefs (about Atonement, the inspiration of Scripture, and so forth) and behaviors (such as church attendance, daily devotions, and various measures of morality).”  She continues that “we are talking about a tradition in which a substantial portion of the congregations are not affiliated with any denomination, or any other church, in any formal way.  Evangelicals do not lend themselves well to generalizations.”  So, even with a most helpful survey like this from the Pew organization, generalizations about evangelicals must be done with care.

See Coffman’s article in www.christianitytoday.com (26 February 2008); Neela Banerjee, New York Times (26 February 2008); Michael Gerson, Washington Post (27 February 2008); and Jacqueline L. Salmon and Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post (25 February 2008), which also provides a link to a “Summary of Key Findings.”

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