About half of all Americans have switched religions at least once, according to the most in-depth survey on the topic, released Monday. And that may still be "a conservative estimate," says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
by Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA Today
Excerpted from USA Today
Pew's new survey is based on re-contacting 2,800 people from its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 people, released last year. Pew estimated at the time that about 44% of Americans have changed religions. It now says between 47% and 59% have, if you count the millions who once switched but have returned to their childhood faith.
Key findings:
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The reasons people give for changing their religion — or leaving religion altogether — differ widely: 71% of Catholics and nearly 60% of Protestants who switched didn't think their spiritual needs were being met, liked another faith more or changed their religious or moral beliefs.
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Most switched early, committing to one faith by age 36. Americans switch religions "often, early and for many different reasons," says John Green, a Pew senior fellow.
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Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in the process of religious change: The 10% of U.S. adults who have quit the church vastly outnumber the 2.6% who are incoming Catholics. Two in three who became unaffiliated — and half of those who became Protestant — say they left the Catholic Church because they "stopped believing its teachings." The sexual abuse scandal was a factor for fewer than three in 10 former Catholics.
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Life circumstances, not religious doctrinal differences, prompt most Protestants who switch denominations (Baptist to Methodist, for example). Moving to a new town or marrying someone of a different tradition are the most often-cited reasons, but 36% attributed changes to "likes and dislikes about religious institutions, practices and people."
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Many people who left a religion and now are "unaffiliated" say they did so in part because they see religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, because religious organizations focus too much on rules, or because religious leaders focus too much on power and money.
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Among the 16% of Americans who say they're now not affiliated with any religion, most are former Protestants and Catholics who say they didn't quit in a huff or get lured away by science or by atheist philosophy: About 70% say "they just gradually drifted away" from their childhood religion.
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About 9% return to their childhood religion, saying they tried another religion or two but then went back.
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