Pew: “The Religious Landscape of the US”

New Pew study of religion in the US.

More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

Some interesting points:

• Islam has the highest percentage of young adults under 30; mainline Protestantism, the lowest.
• Historically Black Protestant churches and Jehovah’s Witnesses have the highest percentage of women (60%), then Mormons (56%), then Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and Orthodox (54%), and Evangelicals (53%). Who has the men? Hindus (61%), unaffiliated (59%), Muslims (54%), Buddhists (53%), Jews (52%).
• The “whitest” groups are Jews (95%) and Mainline Protestants (91%).
• Among Christian groups, Catholics have the highest rate of cohabitation (7%); Mormons and Orthodox (3%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (1%) have the lowest. Muslims and Hindus don’t even register.
• Mormons (9%) and Muslims (6%) are most likely to have four or more children, compared with 4% of Catholics and 1% of Mainline Protestants.
• 29% of Catholics are Hispanic (next–JWs at 24%).

Chapter two has detailed reports about changes in denominations.

Catholics lead the category of who has lost the most members.

Groups that have experienced a net loss from changes in affiliation include Baptists (net loss of 3.7 percentage points) and Methodists (2.1 percentage points). However, the group that has experienced the greatest net loss by far is the Catholic Church. Overall, 31.4% of U.S. adults say that they were raised Catholic. Today, however, only 23.9% of adults identify with the Catholic Church, a net loss of 7.5 percentage points.

How can this decline in the percentage of Catholics be reconciled with the findings from the General Social Surveys discussed in Chapter 1 that show that roughly the same proportion of the population is Catholic today as was Catholic in the early 1970s? Part of the answer is that the Catholic Church has also attracted a good number of converts. But the main answer is immigration. The many people who have left the Catholic Church over the years have been replaced, to a great extent, by the large number of Catholic immigrants coming to the U.S.

The “unaffiliated” group has experienced the largest changes.

Overall, 3.9% of the adult population reports being raised without any particular religious affiliation but later affiliating with a religious group. However, more than three times as many people (12.7% of the adult population overall) were raised in a particular faith but have since become unaffiliated with any religious group.

A similar dynamic is at work within Catholicism, but with very different results. Overall, 2.6% of the U.S. adult population has switched their affiliation to Catholic after being raised in another faith or in no faith at all. But nearly four times as many people (10.1% of the adult population overall) were raised in the Catholic Church but have since left for another faith or for no faith at all.
…

Hindus, Catholics and Jews are the groups with the lowest proportion of members who have switched affiliation to these respective faiths. Overall, nine-in-ten Hindus were raised Hindu, 89% of Catholics were raised Catholic and 85% of Jews were raised Jewish.

Who is able to hold onto their children the best?

Hinduism exhibits the highest overall retention rate, with more than eight-in-ten (84%) adults who were raised as Hindu still identifying themselves as Hindu. The Mormon, Orthodox and Jewish traditions all have retention rates of at least 70%, while the retention rate for Catholics is 68%.

As mentioned previously, the group that has exhibited the strongest growth as a result of changes in affiliation is the unaffiliated population. Nevertheless, the overall retention rate of the unaffiliated population is relatively low (46%) compared with other groups. This means that more than half (54%) of those who were not affiliated with any particular religion as a child now identify themselves as members of one religion or another.

Two of the religious groups with the lowest retention rates are Jehovah’s Witnesses and Buddhists. Only slightly more than a third (37%) of adults who were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses still identify themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Half of all of those who were raised as Buddhists (50%) are still Buddhists….

Of all of the Protestant families, Baptists, Adventists and Lutherans have the highest retention rates, at roughly 60% each. The Holiness, Anabaptist and Congregationalist families, by contrast, have much lower retention rates, below 40% each.

Among those raised Adventist, 23% changed to another Protestant denomination (10 became Evangelical, 6 became Mainline, 6 joined historically black Protestant churches), 7% joined a non-Protestant religion, and 10% stopped practicing.

Robert Sungenis and the Jews

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that soon after I started this blog in 2002 a matter arose to which I gave much attention. Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis had begun to write disturbing things about Jews; I saw that he quoted an “Adolf Schmalix” on FDR’s ancestry. This had an unpleasant odor about it, so I did some investigation. I was quite surprised to discover that Sungenis, in his haste to prepare an angry denunciation of a recent document from a US Catholic bishops’ committee, had cut and pasted whatever he could find on the internet against Jews. He didn’t attribute his sources–one of which I discovered to be a Nazi propaganda tract. You can read all the details here.

Sungenis lost a lot of credibility as a result of his anti-Jewish writings and his advocacy of geocentrism, among both his readers and his staff. At one point he said he would no longer write about Jewish issues.   He said he would submit to his local bishop.

But things have been unraveling. Not only has he continued to write about Jewish issues, but he has now taken to denouncing his bishop.

Michael Forrest, one of his former staff members, has continued to follow this, and now publishes a letter he got from the bishop of Harrisburg about Sungenis.

Via Mark Shea.

“Teaching Valentinianism”

April DeConick on how she teaches about Gnosticism at Rice. She references a post by “Tony” on the subject, but doesn’t link to him. I found his post.

“Labete Phagete”

If someone asks you to take something, what do you do? Do you reach out, or do you wait for them to put it in your hand, or even on your tongue?

Jesus said, “Take, eat” (Labete phagete in Matthew’s Greek).

Some hope that fewer Catholics will do that, and will instead opt to open their mouths and receive Communion on the tongue as in older times (a practice a senior Vatican official is suggesting should once again be the universal practice). Fr. John Z. reports and comments; see also the discussion at Commonweal.

Those Catholics who advocate for Communion being received by the laity only on the tongue and kneeling (clerics would still get to receive in the hand) stress the reality of the Eucharist as the body and blood of Christ.

Let’s not argue with the latter point for the moment.

What was Jesus’ attitude towards his physical body? “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side.” Go ahead. Touch me. I’m not a ghost.

Why should he now be untouchable?

Do some Catholics really think this is what happened at the Last Supper?

No End to Boston Catholic Sex Scandal

Rod Dreher has the latest fallout from Boston, linking to the Union-Leader and other sources. Fr. Thomas Coover is suing the diocese of Manchester and Bishop John McCormack (formerly an auxiliary bishop to Bernard Law of Boston); the diocese, on its part, “asked the court to dismiss the suit in August, claiming First Amendment infringements and that both federal and state constitutional grounds bar the court from inquiring into ‘ecclesiastical affairs.’”

Details of lawsuit at Renew America. It starts with Coover finding a porn stash at his parish, then, he says, info connecting McCormack with Paul Shanley; after he reported this, he alleges the diocese took punitive action against him, including accusing him of misuse of funds and inappropriate sexual conduct, and had him forcibly committed to a state mental hospital against his will.

Chelsea Clinton Goes to Church

Chelsea Clinton was out for Catholic voters in Houston yesterday, with visits to two Catholic churches, Immaculate Heart of Mary (Hispanic) and Christ the Incarnate Word (Vietnamese).

“First They Came for the Homeschoolers”

From Rod Dreher:

Homeschooling German families are fleeing their fatherland because a Nazi-era law still on the books gives the state ownership of children whose parents wish to educate them at home.

Link to article in the Guardian:

Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since it was outlawed in 1938. Hitler wanted the Nazi state to have complete control of young minds. Today there are rare exemptions, such as for children suffering serious illnesses or psychological problems. Legal attempts through the courts - including the European Court of Human Rights - have so far failed to overturn the ban. …

About 800 families are believed to educate their children at home illegally. Stephanie Edel, who runs the Schulbildung in Familieninitiative, a German organisation that aims to support those who educate at home, said that last year some 78 home-schooled children fled Germany with their parents. ‘It is very dangerous to home-educate here,’ she said. ‘Home-educators have to learn to expect anything and have to be ready to leave overnight.’