How are we to interpret the Pew survey that more than a quarter of adult Americans have left the faith of their childhood (44% if one counts shifts among Protestant denominations)? It may be one of the more important findings about religion in America to be published in recent years. Is this affiliation switching a good thing? It certainly shows the reality of religious freedom in America. People feel freer now to switch from parish to parish and from denomination to denomination. We have many options, many channels to choose from. It's hard not to argue that having 100 channels to choose from is better than having only two or three, or just one as happens in so many places.
But so much switching also reveals a restlessness and un-rootedness that is more weakness than vibrant freedom of choice. After all, the big winner is not any one religion, but the "unaffiliated" (16% of American adults). "Unaffiliated" is usually synonymous with "unchurched," though not necessarily, or so we are told, with "unreligious." I remember a gentleman at a dinner party who remarked to his hostess that he was not keen on "organized religion". "Oh," she replied; "you like yours disorganized." Or, in other words, not at all. The Pew research, or perhaps it was the Times commentary, observed that unaffiliated did not mean they were less religious, only that their religion was "nothing in particular." It's hard to see that as not meaning less religious.
The only other winners are the evangelical Protestant churches, often "mega-churches." Americans shop for churches the way they do for houses or schools. Religion is not a claim God has on me; it's something I choose (the "church of your choice"). It's not something given; it's largely what I fashion. Less what is true, than what works for me: the church with the dynamic minister or the attractive youth programs or the one that is more personal.
The big losers are mainline Protestantism (nothing new there) and, above all, the Catholic Church which has lost many millions of its own people since the 1970's. The Pew research suggests the situation for Catholicism is more serious than might be thought given that Catholics continue to be 25% of the population. What keeps them at 25% are the many immigrants who are Catholic. This Catholic decline is not the consequence of Catholic incompatibilities with modern life and the American experience; nor is it that Catholicism offers a less personal religion. It is probably the result of decades of confused leadership at the local level; a failure of the grass roots Church to communicate what it believes.
On Ash Wednesday more than 50,000 people lined up to receive ashes at St.
Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Something similar took place at every Catholic church in the country. Many of these people, maybe a third of them, won't darken church doors until next Ash Wednesday, but on this day they chose to say "this is where I belong." How can Catholic leaders make them want to stick around? They can be thankful to the Pew survey for making the challenge so clear.
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