Many U.S. Catholics, Protestants leave their churches

February 26, 2008
Chicago Tribune

By Margaret Ramirez

TRIBUNE REPORTER

February 26, 2008
Many Roman Catholics and Protestants in America are leaving the
churches of their childhood and either embracing other faiths or claiming no
religion at all, according to an extensive national survey released
Monday.

The findings from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life illustrate
the fluid dynamics of American religion. More than a quarter of adults,
or 28 percent, said they had left the faith in which they were raised.
If changes among types of Protestantism are included, 44 percent have
switched affiliation.

Sixteen percent of adults said they are not members of any religious
group, making that “unaffiliated” segment the fourth-largest religious
tradition in the U.S., comparable in numbers to the mainline Protestant
churches. The three largest religious groups, the study found, are
Protestant evangelicals at 26 percent, Catholics at 24 percent and historic
mainline Protestants at 18 percent.

“One can certainly make the case that America will be a less Protestant
and a less Christian nation a century from now. But how much less
Protestant and how much less Christian — that’s a little bit hard to gauge
because of the dynamism,” said John Green, a report author and a
senior fellow at the Pew Forum.

The Catholic Church has lost more members than any other religious
group, the survey found, making roughly 10 percent of all Americans former
Catholics.

Those losses, however, have been largely offset by Catholic immigrants
entering the country, most of them from Latin America, the report said.
The result is that the total percentage of the population that
identifies as Catholic has remained stable.

Pew Forum director Luis Lugo said the fact that Catholics are leaving
for Protestant churches or reporting no religious affiliation reflects
stiff competition in the nation’s religious marketplace.

“Everybody in this country is losing members; everybody is gaining
members,” Lugo said. “It’s a very competitive marketplace, and if you rest
on your laurels you’re going to be history.”

Researchers also found such a sharp decline in American Protestantism
that “the United States is on the verge of becoming a minority
Protestant country.”

The number of Americans who said they were members of Protestant
denominations now stands at barely 51 percent. The Protestant population also
is diverse and fragmented, encompassing hundreds of denominations. The
largest groups of Protestants are evangelical churches, mainline
churches and historically black churches.

Just 4 percent of Americans called themselves atheist or agnostic. The
rest of the unaffiliated — 12 percent of Americans — are almost
equally divided between the “secular unaffiliated,” who say religion is not
important in their lives, and the “religious unaffiliated,” who say it
is at least somewhat important.

Other major findings:

*The Midwest is a “microcosm of American religion” closely resembling
the religious makeup of the nation. The South has the heaviest
concentration of evangelical Protestants. The Northeast has the most Catholics,
and the West has the most unaffiliated people.

*Mormons and Muslims are the groups with the largest families; more
than one in five Mormon adults and 15 percent of Muslim adults in the U.S.
have three or more children living at home.

*Of all the major racial and ethnic groups, black Americans are the
most likely to report a formal religious affiliation. Even among
unaffiliated black people, three in four are in the “religious unaffiliated”
category.

*Hinduism exhibits the highest overall retention rate, with 84 percent
of adults who were raised as Hindus saying they were still Hindu.

The findings came from a survey of 35,000 adults conducted last summer.

http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?id=120S4860625&type=NEW