scott miller has posted a great list of the various summaries reporting the new pew study of shifting religious affiliations in the united states:
The news is all over the place:
Boston Globe: A sweeping new study of religious affiliation in the United States finds a country in which Protestants are becoming a minority, Catholicism is becoming heavily Hispanic, and the number of people who say they are not affiliated with any religion is growing.
CNN: The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether, a new survey finds.
TIME: A major new survey presents perhaps the most detailed picture we’ve yet had of which religious groups Americans belong to. And its big message is: blink and they’ll change. For the first time, a large-scale study has quantified what many experts suspect: there is a constant membership turnover among most American faiths.
USA Today: A new map of faith in the USA shows a nation constantly shifting amid religious choices, unaware or unconcerned with doctrinal distinctions. Unbelief is on the rise. And immigration is introducing new faces in the pews, new cultural concerns, new forces in the public square.
New York Times: More than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood to join another religion or no religion, according to a new survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
US News and World Report: The first American colonists were Protestant, and for roughly four centuries their descendents, along with successive waves of Protestant immigrants, have been the country’s dominant religious group. But now Protestants are on the verge of becoming a statistical minority in the U.S., according a study released today.
Los Angeles Times: America remains an overwhelmingly Christian country, but the nation’s religious life also shows great fluidity, with many adults switching religious affiliations or abandoning ties to organized denominations altogether, according to a new survey released today.
The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life can be found here.
I’d love for someone to clarify this study for me. Are we talking about switching denominations or religions? One of the articles that I read emphasized that among Christians Protestantism is on the decline, but the “unaffiliated” population has risen. I just wonder how many of the “unaffiliated” are members of non-denoms and just don’t realize that they’re actually Protestants. Can somebody shed some light on this for me?
Unfortunately, Christians are struggling to show the world the difference between following Him and following the world. What we know as “church” is sadly following the world in many ways. Marko – Have you read or heard about PAGAN CHRISTIANITY, I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on it. It presents an convincing argument against the current representation of church and some of its traditions.
Has anyone else noticed that on the USA Today site, if you go into their state by state map (it’s a link half way down the article) that it lumps Mormon and Jehovah’s Witness in with “Christian”. Sad. That’s not a denominational switch, that’s a religion switch.
If there are any Mormon’s or JW’s who read this, I’m not trash talking you guys, just pointing out that you don’t believe Jesus is God and that’s a big fundamental difference. I think many “Christians” even have a hard time with that one sometimes.