Sunday, June 08, 2008
Faith of our country
From the RoundTable blog
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Robert Benne
Benne, of Salem, is director of the Roanoke College Center for Religion and Society.
In February, the Pew Research Center released an important report entitled the "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," a massive study built on 35,000 in-depth interviews.
It contains some great surprises about American religion as well as some confirmations of what we already knew. Many surprises pertain to the status of Catholicism. No American religion has lost more members than Catholicism -- 32 percent of those raised Catholic have left the church. Half of those have become Protestants, usually evangelicals, but the other half have disappeared from any church membership. Twenty percent of Latinos have left Catholicism, mostly for evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
Given this huge out-migration, one would think that Catholicism would have lost its market share in American religious life and be dwindling in absolute numbers. Surprisingly, neither is true. In-migration of Latinos has maintained the church's market share -- at about 25 percent -- and kept the church growing. Latinos now make up one-third of all Catholics and nearly half of all Catholics between the ages of 18 and 29. The Latino share of the overall American population is now at 14 percent and is projected to grow to 29 percent by 2050, so the Catholic church will continue to benefit from immigration.
Continuing the list of surprises about Catholicism, 10 percent of all Protestants are former Catholics, but 8 percent of Catholics are former Protestants. That 8 percent represents a considerable number, perhaps around 5 million. Certainly in recent years Catholics have gained a good deal of intellectual vigor from the many Protestant intellectuals who have become Catholics. Few Catholic intellectuals have become Protestants.
The final surprise about Catholicism is the increasingly benign and hospitable attitude that other Christians in America have about recent popes. Increasingly, Christians of all stripes view the pope as the de facto leader of worldwide Christianity.
Another much-publicized surprise in the study is that 44 percent of adults have changed their religious commitments. This tremendous mobility shows how difficult it is for religious bodies to hold onto their members in the face of strong competition in the religious marketplace and of complete freedom of religious choice.
Another surprise revealed in the study is the growth of the "unaffiliated" portion of the American population, now at 16 percent and even higher in the American West. Young people, ages 18 to 29, are much more likely at 25 percent to be unaffiliated than the older population. This category will likely grow in all sections of our land.
Yet, a puzzling surprise is that one-third of the unaffiliated say that religion is "important" to them. They are adopting the European pattern of "believing without belonging." And, even with the emergence of a mini-movement of militant atheism among best-selling authors, the atheist and agnostic portion of the population stands at a mere 4 percent.
People are evidently "reading but not believing."
A final surprise is the fact that Protestants are now only 51 percent of the population, soon to become a minority in a land that was shaped decisively by the Protestant ethos. America will have more diversity, but not necessarily the kind that most people assume. The diversity will be provided by Catholics, a wide variety of Protestants and the unaffiliated. Other world religions represented in the United States have few adherents -- under 2 percent combined.
The survey also confirms what we already knew. The mainline Protestant churches -- Presbyterian, Methodist, United Church, Episcopalian and ELCA Lutheran -- now garner only 18.1 percent of American adults. Their low birth rates, a preponderance of older people and ongoing conflict over the authority of the Bible will continue to erode their numbers and influence.
The study also confirms what we know about evangelicals. They now constitute the largest religious group in America at 26.3 percent. Unlike mainliners, they are young and growing. Nearly half of them are in nondenominational charismatic and Pentecostal churches. They are also divided, mainly between moderate evangelicals and fundamentalists.
Perhaps the most interesting confirmation is that America, among all developed nations, continues to be the most religious. Only 4 percent are atheists and agnostics. Christians represent 78.4 percent of the population. Other religions, including Judaism, add another 4.7 percent, and the "unaffiliated religious" add another 5.8 percent, bringing the "religious" to 89 percent of the population.
But there were a lot of religious people in Rome at the beginning of the Christian era, too. So the fact that 89 percent are religious cuts little ice. Disciplined, informed faith would likely show up as a far smaller percentage. And it is that serious faith that makes the real difference.
