Survey aside, religion still drives American behavior

david yount

Survey aside, religion still drives American behavior

When religion attracts front-page attention in the nation’s newspapers, you can count on it being bad news — more clergy scandals or conflicts among the faiths.

Sure enough, when a major study of Americans’ religious affiliations appeared recently, media coverage fixed on “winners” and “losers” among the nation’s faiths. The Washington Post’s headline announced, “U.S. Religious Identity Appears Very Slippery.”

The evidence: 44 percent of respondents to a Pew Forum poll of 35,000 Americans revealed that they have changed their religious affiliation since childhood.

The “winners”: adults with no religious affiliation. Their numbers jumped to 16.1 percent of Americans from only 7.3 percent during their childhood. Also winning: the Evangelical and black churches, which now claim the adherence of nearly two-thirds of American Protestants.

The “losers”: Protestants overall, down from 53.9 percent of adult Americans to 51.3 percent. Catholics are down from 31.4 percent of the adult population to 23.9 percent; and adherents of the mainline denominations, down to 18.1 percent of adult Protestants.

Readers may be tempted to conclude from the survey that Americans have become fickle about their religious faith, either dropping out of religious observance altogether, or shopping around among the denominations to find a church that better pleases them.

Resist that temptation. The poll also reveals that only 4 percent of adult Americans consider themselves to be atheists or agnostics. We remain overwhelmingly a nation of believers in God.

Moreover, it is misleading to refer to the nation’s churches as a “marketplace” of faith, as if the denominations are commercial businesses competing for a bigger market share. Transferring among churches is a consequence of our moving so often, and of couples of different faiths seeking a common church “home” for their families. It also reflects a declining sense of what distinguishes one denomination from another.

Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, says, “The trend is toward more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that.” The churches that are “losing out are offering impersonal religion, and those winning are offering a smaller scale.” Mega-churches succeed, he suggests, “not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”

Jim Wallis, the celebrated evangelical pastor, predicts, “Churches that just merely focus on theological doctrine or on social principles, will continue to lose people to churches that offer a personal faith that cares for the world.”