The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

The Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life released an extensive survey on religious affiliation and the American Public. It details shifts and trends in the religious landscape.

For an overview: Summary of Key Findings

The survey covers so much ground. The complete report is enormous with detailed tables.

Media reports on the survey basically lift points from the summary and give a regional spin. Some look at the findings and consider the ramifications on behavior and policy.

In short, the survey is so loaded with information that the media are just scratching the surface in their accounts.

That doesn't stop the media from trying to reduce a complex survey into a few paragraphs.

As written in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, religious ties are shifting, "many switch faiths or drop them entirely."

America remains an overwhelmingly Christian country, but the nation's religious life shows great fluidity, with many adults switching religious affiliations or abandoning ties to organized denominations altogether, according to a survey released Monday.

The study also suggests that Protestants soon might no longer make up a majority of Americans.

Barely 51% of Americans are Protestants, and among people ages 18 to 29, 43% identify with this branch of Christianity, according to the study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Evangelicals, at 26.3%, make up the nation's largest religious tradition, followed by Catholics, who make up about 24% of Americans.

But Catholics also lost more adherents than any other religious group in the United States, with 1 in 3 adults who were raised as Catholics no longer in that church, the study says.

Immigrants are twice as likely as U.S. natives to identify with the Catholic Church. One in three adult Catholics is Hispanic.

Forty-four percent of adults have switched religious affiliations, moved from being unaffiliated with any faith to affiliated, or abandoned any ties to a specific religion, according to the study. But the study also says Americans who identify themselves as Christians has remained constant, nearly 8 in 10.

The study says 16.1% of the population is unaffiliated with any religion.

The Wall Street Journal also dwells on what it calls "big declines among major denominations" and rejection of religion altogether.

Nearly half of adults in the U.S. have switched to a faith other than the one in which they were raised or have dropped affiliation with any organized religion, according to a large survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The study also found that one-third of respondents who were raised Roman Catholic had left the faith as adults. Yet, the overall number of Catholics in the U.S. has remained steady -- about 25% of adults -- buttressed by a wave of Catholic Latino immigration, Pew says.

America's shifting religious landscape could affect voting patterns, scholars say. Pew has found, for example, that when Latinos leave Catholicism for evangelical churches, they often become more politically conservative. The changes also could have financial implications for religious schools and social services -- homeless shelters, food pantries and clinics -- that rely on donations from religious denominations.

The survey, of 35,000 adults by telephone, offers an unusually comprehensive picture of faith among the nation's 225 million adults. This is in part because of the sheer number of people who answered questions, especially about their childhood religious affiliation. Several of the findings echo those of earlier studies, including the precipitous drop in mainline church membership and the rise in membership in nondenominational churches, the majority of which are evangelical Protestant churches.

Scholars say the Pew survey's most surprising finding is the fluidity of religious preference. The study found that 44% have left the faith in which they were raised, including Protestants who now practice another form of Protestantism and people who no longer worship at all. Sixteen percent of adults say they are unaffiliated with any religion -- including those who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics and "nothing in particular." That is double the number surveyed who say they were raised unaffiliated -- a trend noted by other religion surveys.

"Every single group in this country loses members at a considerable rate," says Luis E. Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, which conducted the study, part of the nonprofit Pew Research Center in Washington. "It is a highly competitive religious marketplace."

I find it fascinating the way people take statistics, treat them as hard facts, and "discover" truth.

To begin, one must have be confident that the numbers are reliable and present an accurate picture. That's a leap in itself. One must confront more uncertainty when interpreting those numbers. The interpretations of the survey, what the numbers mean, aren't hard facts. They don't reveal truth. They're several ways of reading the numbers. What's revealed is actually how meaning is applied to them.

They can be used to push an agenda or support a theory or as a springboard for fund-raising. They can be used to indicate dissatisfaction and a crisis of faith. Those same numbers can be used to highlight the importance of God and religion in people's lives.

I have difficulty looking at faith and seeing "a highly competitive religious marketplace" as revealed by the survey.

We're not talking about fast food here.

We're talking about God and our existence. I think it's weird to speak in terms of a marketplace. It may be fitting, but it still seems strange to me.

Two points that I find interesting:

1. In spite of all the fluidity, "Americans who identify themselves as Christians has remained constant, nearly 8 in 10." There isn't a decline in believers. There are significant shifts but those shifts don't result in a move away from Christ in the nation as a whole.

2. Only 1.6% of adults in the U.S. identify themselves as atheists.

It's quite amazing that society seems to have an increasingly secular focus even though the overwhelming majority of citizens embrace religion as a part of their lives.

It makes me wonder why the freedom to worship and expressions of faith are under attack so often.

I object to such infringements on my civil rights. Perhaps the survey can aid in eliminating the injustice of that.