So there has been much chin music about how people are losing their religion, how America is no longer a Christian nation, and how Blu-Ray is really not worth buying yet another copy of Titanic. (One of these things is clearly not like the others.)
Now we have a new Pew survey that purports to put a spin on what we’ve been reading about Americans’ supposedly declining religiosity:
More than half of American adults have changed religion in their lives, a huge new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found. And there is no discernible pattern to the change, just “a free for all,” one of the lead researchers told CNN.
“You’re seeing the free market at work,” said Gregory Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. “If people are dissatisfied, they will leave. And if they see something they like better, they will join it.”
Many people switch because they move to a new community, and others because they marry someone of a different faith, he said.
Some don’t like their ministers or pastors; some like the pastor at another church better.
And many people list more than one reason for changing, Smith said.
“The reasons people change religions are as diverse as the religious landscape itself,” he told CNN by phone.
So it appears that people are not so much losing their religion as simply changing their religion.
The survey supported a study released last month in that it found about 16 percent of Americans are not affiliated with any religion. The American Religious Identification Survey, from Trinity College in Connecticut, found the number to be about 15 percent.
But Smith warned against labeling those people “secular.”
“Upwards of one-third of newly unaffiliated people say they just haven’t found the right religion yet,” Smith said.
And many people who had no religion as children later join one, he said.
First of all, are people truly changing religions or merely denominations? There doesn’t seem to be a distinction made in this CNN analysis — and it makes a big difference in how you interpret this phenomenon.
In any event, does this really come as news to anyone? Most of the people I know have changed denominations — sometimes after drifting away from any religious observance for quite some time.
Some conservative evangelicals actually see this as a good thing.
As the researcher said, people change “religions” for all kinds of reasons — some good (theological conviction), some questionable (to please a spouse and so unify the family in one faith), and some dopey (hipper music, better mini-muffins).
Is this a distinctly American phenomenon? Do you see this kind of church hopping in Europe — or do people simply leave and never come back? (Or leave, then come back to the church of their youth when it’s time to get married, baptize the kiddos, and drop dead?) Latin America and Africa have seen an explosion of Pentecostal sects — presumably pulling believers from Catholic churches, other Protestant churches, and indigenous non-Christian religions. I would think a public confession of Christ and believer’s baptism would suffice for “conversion.” (Must one also exhibit one or more gifts of the Spirit?)
Is there relative confessional stability among Asian Christians, I wonder? Do family ties and traditional affiliations have a stronger pull than among Westerners?
It’s also easier to enter some denominations — even religions — than others. Becoming a Catholic is not like joining the store-front evangelical church around the corner. Some traditional Reformed/Presby churches still require not only membership classes but a rather intensive sit-down with an elder and a deacon, in order to discuss your understanding of the faith, your spiritual journey, and your personal experience of regeneration. Your membership is then brought before the consistory for a yea or nay.
Converting to Islam would I would think be easier than becoming an Orthodox Jew. And I don’t think it’s even appropriate to speak of “conversion” to Buddhism, as much as it is a question of embracing Buddhist practice.
Sociology of religion can be a slippery slope to relativistic thinking for many. I have argued before that people of good will can disagree about what constitutes religious “truth” or the true church or the will of God or foundational doctrine as opposed to ”adiaphora.” But because people in this fragmented and fallen world disagree does not mean there are no answers or that the answers don’t matter.
It just means it’s work. Deeply humbling work.
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So some guy named Diederik Stapel has been “outed as one of the biggest frauds in scientific history.”Peer-reviewed journal articles that to normal human beings would have seemed too dopey to say anything definitive about human behavior have turned out to be based on, wait for it, fictitious data.
Once upon a time, there was this study of 300 workers …
