ShareThisRecent reports have suggested that Americans are becoming less religious in general.
The religious naysayers piled on top of that news.
However, a new report out this week from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests otherwise. Not because it quibbles with earlier studies about overall rates of religious commitment in the United States. But, ironically, because it shows how often Americans shift religious traditions during their lifetimes.
Far from suggesting religion's demise in the United States, this study seems to reveal a vibrant marketplace for religion in America.
The findings? Forty-four percent of adults do not currently belong to their childhood faith. Fifty-six percent still do, with almost 10 percent of these folks having left their faith for a while. Of those who have left their childhood religion -- including those who were "unaffiliated" as kids -- a large majority of them have become affiliated with another religious tradition.
Most interesting to me is, first, the finding that while the number of adults who are "unaffiliated" with a formal religion has grown in recent years, the majority of these folks aren't unaffiliated because they think science disproves faith, but rather because they are disenchanted with religious leaders and organizations. Interestingly, while the number of folks who say they don't believe in God or a universal spirit has increased, it still remains at under 5 percent of the U.S. population. Only a small percentage of that number actually identifies as atheists.
Second, as a parent I was intrigued but not surprised at the findings that those adults who continue to be most religiously committed to their childhood faith today are most likely to have had a strong religious tradition as a child, meaning they attended services regularly, had a strong faith commitment and so on.
As a side note, you know all those entertaining children's church programs that separate young people from their parents during worship? It seems we might do well to reconsider them. James White shows in his book, "Intergenerational Religious Education," that children and youth who consistently worship in church with their parents are more likely to regularly worship as adults than kids who instead routinely attend "children's church" and similar programs during the regular worship service.
Anyway, as John Green, senior fellow with the Pew Forum, told me, Americans have always been more likely to "religion switch" than people in other countries. After all, where religion is dead one typically doesn't care enough to change. (Never mind those countries where one is not free to follow, or change, religion.)
Green said that while specific polling numbers over the decades haven't followed "religion switching" closely, there is a general understanding that it is on the rise. So doesn't that at least show a certain level of religious dynamism, that religion continues to be important enough to us that we change and churn over it?
Yes, in general, I oppose "church hopping." Meaning, when one who officially belongs to a church switches for a superficial reason. Of course, I reject the notion that true religion can be whatever you want it to be. Not everyone who is switching religions is finding truth, just because it's "their truth."
Still, countless studies show the purely secular benefits that religion bestows upon individuals and societies. So just from a "what's good for America" perspective, and in contrast to recent negative reports about religion and America, I think we should be encouraged by the dynamism and diversity of our religious life this latest study reveals.
(Betsy Hart hosts the "It Takes a Parent" radio show on WYLL-AM 1160 in Chicago. Reach her through betsysblog.com. For more stories, visit scrippsnews.com.)
FROM THE HART
