Is the fact that so many have switched their affiliation a mark of health or sickness. Let's look at the natural causes: there are millions and millions of "interfaith" marriages, and in many cases the switching occurred out of love on the part of one spouse for the other, and religion comes along as part of the package deal. Or interfaith marriage may have created tension and worked destructive effects on the marriage and the religious commitments of both. So when either or both "switches," the marriage may prosper, as might the religious faith of both.

There are, of course, many other reasons for switching. It can be a sign of sickness if religion is nothing more than a lightly-purchased commodity, one not backed by faith-commitment so much as by convenience, fad, or fashion and an unwillingness to deal with the demands of a faith.. It can be a sign of dilettantism, of attraction to fads, and that cannot be a good sign of health.

On the other hand, many of the "switches" have been based not on convenience but on conviction, born of searches, exploration, experiment, testing, and delving deep. The consequence for the "switcher" is likely to be a satisfaction that helps produce more vital faith than is that which survives among the casual, the indifferent, the merely habitual believers.

I for one cannot view the "dropping out of any formal religious group" so sanguinely or at least ambiguously. With all due respect to millions of imaginative, adventurous, creative, searching "loners" in the spiritual life, I'd have to say that if we look at America and American religion as a whole, dropping out is less promising. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, for instance, by definition are communal: people are called and gathered, saved and "sent" into mission in community. 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. In the crises of life the formal religious groups, if they are any good at all, are there to offer consolation and help--something one cannot count on when isolated. Such groups can keep alive scriptures and norm-setting documents which can judge people in community who can justify their ways and let themselves off the hook when they are on their own.

I am not their judge, "some of my best friends are drop-outs;" but as someone who cares about so many aspects of spiritual life that are unattainable in isolation, I can express the wish that they'd drop back in, "switching or not," so they can bring their gifts to causes that need help and receive the yield of promises that will never be fully kept.