The results should not be surprising to those who keep an eye on religious trends, but they provide valuable empirical documentation that could spark further study (a nice interactive version of the report is available here).The study shows that America is becoming less Protestant than in earlier days. Protestants once claimed two-thirds of the population, but now hold a bare majority at 51 percent. Still, Protestants remain the largest group by far, with Catholics next at 24 percent.
The study did not show a marked increase in atheism or agnosticism, but it did reveal an increase in the number of people who consider themselves to be religious, but unaffiliated. While 16 percent of the population said they had no religious affiliation, only a quarter of those claimed to be agnostics or atheists.
The most notable learning is the increasing fluidity of faith expressions: 28 percent of Americans are no longer associated with the denominational church of their childhood. If movement between Protestant denominations is figured in, a whopping 44 percent of Americans no longer practice the faith of their fathers and mothers, opting for a different denomination or no religion at all.
It's not my purpose in this space to analyze the significance of these trends, though I'm confident the findings will give rise to lots of denominational head-scratching and newly commissioned studies.
While one may or may not be happy with the change in popularity of his or her preferred denomination, I am reminded that Americans are blessedly free to make faith decisions without interference or recriminations from the government.
That is something for which we can be 100 percent thankful.
[Image from the Pew Forum's "Religious Landscape" study homepage.]
9 comments:
I've downloaded the full report and have started reading it (and marking it up with notations). There is lots of data in the tables, some of it surprising, at least to me.
This is a 'pathbreaking' report which means there is not a equivalent report for a prior period. So comparing this data with other reports can lead to erroneous conclusions. Many 'religious demographic' reports are compiled from data from churches. This report is from data obtained from interviewing 35,556 individuals via telephone.
The interviews were conducted between May 8 and August 13, 2007, which makes the data more recent than most compilations.
While I find the online, interactive, method of finding specific information helpful, in order to really digest that much data I find I need to 'markup' printed pages.
SFox reports at Bl.com Nancy Ammerman herself was on PBS Newshour last night to discuss the findings on the Pew Forum.
The interview is easily googled up
Here is a link to the transcript.
There is also a Luis Lugo, Director of Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life available at the Interactive link on the main post.
I am wondering if the word 'protestant' may at present be so unfamiliar to younger people that they do not realize they are members of a protestant church. It's just an impression I have, not based on empirical data, but I'd bet that a survey of people at my Baptist church, using a question such as "Are you presently a Protestant?" would get a good number of "um, I don't know" or "No" responses.
I suppose some of that (not recognizing they were Protestant) may have been a factor. Unaffiliated had the largest percentage increase from 'Childhood Religion' to 'Current Religion.' But that implies some awareness of 'what' their Childhood Religion was. The question(s) were not left at the general category of Protestant ... respondents were then asked about specific denomination. There has been lots of movement amongst denominations with only 56% still associated with denomination of their childhood.
The amount of immigration has had a major impact.
I haven't looked at the data collecting methods, but my guess is that they ask about denominational affiliation and then extrapolate "Protestant" from those numbers. I doubt they leave it up to the participants to determine Protestant and non-Protestant.
There is the implication in the Survey Methodology section that persons were asked primarily about their denomination although I don't see it addressed directly. There is a section that lists the 'kind of Protestant church - which of the three' by specific associated denominations which also implies the respondents may not have been asked a direct question about 'being Protestant.'
One might also wonder if the percentage of atheists and agnostics is skewed by the fact that those terms are generally considered "dirty words" in our society. As numerous studies have shown that many people who have feminist beliefs (believe in equality for the sexes) will not associate themselves with the word feminist, it is possible that some portion of the 6.3% secular unaffiliated population is in fact atheist/agnostic. The ambiguity in that category keeps us from knowing how many more people may technically be atheist/agnostic despite the labels.
Among the 'Unaffiliated there are three categories:
Atheist
Agnostic
No particular religion
Among the No particular religion there are two categories:
Secular unaffiliated
Religious unaffiliated
It would be plausible that some who didn't like the labels Atheist or Agnostic might have ended up in the Secular unaffiliated of the No particular religion category.
There are more folks in the latter category (6.3%) than folks in the Atheist and Agnostic categories combined (4%).
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