Creative Class

“Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often” is a headline on CNN.com. It reports on a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life that says:

Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change religion do so more than once. These are among the key findings of a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The survey documents the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S. and describes in detail the patterns and reasons for change.

The reasons people give for changing their religion – or leaving religion altogether – differ widely depending on the origin and destination of the convert. The group that has grown the most in recent years due to religious change is the unaffiliated population. But this group’s growth seems to have less to do with the belief that science disproves religion than with disenchantment with religious people and institutions. Many people who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they did so, in part, because they think of religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules or because religious leaders are too focused on power and money. Far fewer say they became unaffiliated because they believe that modern science proves that religion is just superstition.

This follows on a recent Newsweek cover story titled “The End of Christian America” which begins:

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

While there may have been been a 10-point drop, the end is still a ways away – 76 percent of Americans call themselves Christian. This is also from a Pew study, laid out on this website.

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite books of 2001, A New Religious America by Diane Eck. A Harvard religion professor, she discovered that one of the ways immigration is shaping America is by bringing in non-”Judeo-Christian” faiths: Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and many others. How does “One Nation Under God” apply to non-theistic Buddhists  or multi-theistic Hindus? Her Pluralism Project’s website shows examples of new religions all over the U.S.

We’re in a time of fundamental change in many ways – financial, environmental, political are in the news. But behind the scenes, America, while still the world’s most religious developed country, is re-examining how all of this fits into the REALLY larger picture.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.