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THE QUESTION
Switching Faiths
According to a new Pew Forum survey, more than 4 in 10 Americans have switched their religious affiliation since childhood or dropped out of any formal religious group. Is this a mark of the health or sickness of American religion?
Posted by
Sally Quinn and Jon Meacham on February 27, 2008 5:01 AM
FROM THE PANEL
People Think Before They Switch -- and That's Good
I think this is healthy. It suggests that many people have moved beyond their socialization within a particular form of Christianity to a thoughtful (and sometimes agonizing) re-assessment of what it means to be Christian.
Posted by Marcus Borg, on March 4, 2008 8:55 AM
Young Adults Already Know
Catholic youth, especially, are alienated from a faith tradition and hierarchy that they see as “out of touch” and frankly, rather disinterested in what they deal with in reality on an everyday basis—especially when it comes to sex, romance, and dating.
Posted by Donna Freitas, on March 4, 2008 7:36 AM
In America, It's Religion and Spirituality
Americans have rejected their own faith traditions when they have become stagnant, dogmatic, and fail to powerfully speak the divine truths to them.
Posted by Daisy Khan, on March 4, 2008 7:27 AM
The Movement of Faith
Religion is still of interest to people. They continue to think about religion, even if that means they are deciding that they have lost their faith, or that they are abandoning it altogether.
Posted by Adin Steinsaltz, on March 4, 2008 7:23 AM
Choice: A Healthy Trend Indeed!
Changing dominations shows that people are thinking about their beliefs. People are paying attention to what nourishes them spiritually and what leaves them dry, empty and uninspired.
Posted by Lauren Artress, on March 4, 2008 6:06 AM
Missing Catholics
Catholic clergy had been spoiled with monopolistic influence over a captive audience. Today, it is a whole new ball game. People no longer come to church or stick with their religion out of a fear of damnation.
Posted by Thomas J. Reese, S.J., on March 3, 2008 9:02 AM
Losing My Religion, American Style
So much switching also reveals a restlessness and un-rootedness that is more weakness than vibrant freedom of choice.
Posted by Thomas G. Bohlin, on March 3, 2008 8:32 AM
What’s Missing from the Unsurprising Pew Study
In the PARAL Study we found that the religion of the mother is more likely to dominate in a family where only one faith is chosen for the children.
Posted by Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, on March 3, 2008 7:35 AM
Church Must Change or Die
When knowledge collides with traditional faith change is inevitable. I welcome it and if the church cannot engage this intellectually driven change, then it probably should die.
Posted by John Shelby Spong, on March 3, 2008 6:06 AM
A Sign That People Are Choosing Healthy Religions
The only really true faith is the faith one voluntarily chooses for one’s own, not an inherited or imposed faith. If a person feels that he or she is trapped in “tradition,” he or she needs to seek a faith that fulfills their spiritual needs.
Posted by Richard Land, on March 1, 2008 9:18 AM
Your Religion is Like Your Mother
Instead of providing the believer with "mental peace and salvation" modern religion seems to fill people with "fear."
Posted by Arun Gandhi, on March 1, 2008 7:06 AM
Acts More Important than Numbers
We need to remember the size of a church or a denomination does not determine its success or its ability to live well into the Gospel.
Posted by John Bryson Chane, on March 1, 2008 6:01 AM
The American Spiritual Bazaar: Something For Everyone
I wish that the large number of Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular religion would think seriously about secularism and atheism.
Posted by Susan Jacoby, on February 29, 2008 10:37 AM
The Glory of Individual Empowerment
When people ask me, how can you be American and Muslim, I can truthfully answer that my Muslim identity profoundly affirms the values that I grew up with as an American.
Posted by Pamela K. Taylor, on February 29, 2008 9:38 AM
Life is Long, and Changes Inevitable
These days, we would count Lincoln (never baptized), as a member of Pew's "unaffiliated, but religious" sub-set.
Posted by Gustav Niebuhr, on February 29, 2008 8:51 AM
The Names Behind the Numbers
Pew results reflect the natural fallout of years of cultural change, along with constant debate over what the word “Christian” really means or stands for.
Posted by Mark Hall, on February 29, 2008 6:07 AM
The American Quest
Switching from faith to faith or describing oneself as “unchurched” is not the same as dropping out of religion or spirituality altogether. These “nones” are not non-believers. They may be profoundly moral. They just don’t identify with a particular church.
Posted by Michael Otterson, on February 28, 2008 9:22 AM
Another Reason Evangelicals are Growing
Evangelicals preach and teach with an assurance often lacking in churches and denominations that seek to make peace with the world more than they do peace with God.
Posted by Cal Thomas, on February 28, 2008 7:58 AM
Religious Mobiliity and the Reverse Madrassa
An ironic side-benefit of this increased religious mobility in America is its effect on an old argument that no religion can be the true one or even the most true one: since almost everybody dies in their birth-religion, the true or truest religion can be available only to a few.
Posted by Willis E. Elliott, on February 28, 2008 7:18 AM
Now We Choose to Belong
What the Pew survey shows is that new immigrants coming to the United States bring with them a strong sense of belonging to family and to faith, whether Catholic, Muslim or Hindu. But in a generation or two, that passes.
Posted by Christopher Dickey, on February 28, 2008 6:08 AM
In Sickness and In Health
For all their gross flaws, "formal religious groups" tend to be productive of acts of mercy and justice; they are more likely to support voluntary charitable activity than are loners.
Posted by Martin Marty, on February 27, 2008 8:03 AM
The U.S. is Post-Denominational
This is more dynamic and faithful than just sitting in the pew in the Methodist (Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic—you fill in the blank) church that your parents sat in and their parents sat in etc. without ever asking yourself “why?”
Posted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, on February 27, 2008 7:15 AM
Individuals More Interconnected Than Ever
Which God you worship and how you do it matters less from the perspective of where you grew up and depends at this stage more on how you feel and what you think on a continuum of expression and experience over the course of your lifetime.
Posted by Andy Bachman, on February 27, 2008 6:59 AM
We are Seekers and Shoppers
We are a mobile society not only in where we live, work, and travel our travel; we are also religiously mobile.
Posted by Chester Gillis, on February 27, 2008 6:26 AM
FEATURED COMMENTS
Terry Bond: First off, defining the results of the survey as a “health or sickness” begs the question of whether religion itself is a sign of health or ...
Art M.:
You raise the question about whether changing religions it is a mark of health or sickness in America. My reaction is, it may not be eith...
Terra Gazelle:
Born into a Christian family by the time I had the chance to read the bible and ask questions I knew it was not for me.
To me God is part...
