But here’s a reality check: A good number of the folks worshipping in Presbyterian churches didn’t grow up Presbyterian at all – they started off somewhere else. And many of those who were raised in Presbyterian churches will drift away by their early 20s, slipping off to another faith tradition or away from organized religion altogether.
A new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, called “Faith in Flux,” finds that American adults make a lot of religious changes, sometimes readjusting their religious affiliation repeatedly over the course of a lifetime.
About half of American adults have changed their religious affiliation at least once, with most people who change their religion leaving the faith of their childhood (about 44 percent did that) before they’re 24. Another 9 percent left the faith of their childhood at some point and later came back.
Some more findings from the report:
• Many of those who left just drifted away over time; there wasn’t one precipitating factor that pushed them away. “Very few have Damascus road-type experiences that cause them to change,” said Luis Lugo, the forum’s director. For many “religion had just stopped being important. They sort of gradually move away.” Most who left their childhood faith did so before age 24, and most joined their current religion before age 36.
• The fastest-growing group in recent years is the unaffiliated — now 16 percent of American adults. Nearly eight in 10 of the unaffiliated were raised in a religion as a child. Two-thirds of former Catholics and half of former Protestants who are no longer affiliated say they no longer believe in the teachings of the religion in which they were raised. About 40 percent of those who left a religion to become unaffiliated say they no longer believe in God or most religious teachings. Many who have left churches to become unaffiliated have negative views of religiously-inclined people; they see religious people as hypocritical or judgmental, and religious institutions and leaders as too focused on rules and power and money.
• But the unaffiliated are not necessarily unreligious. About 7 percent of American adults were raised with no religious affiliation, and half of those do become affiliated sometime in their lives. Even among those who drift away from religion, a high percentage say “they’re still open, they’re still searching for a religious home,” Lugo said.
This survey is a follow-up to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, in which the Pew Center conducted telephone interviews with more than 35,000 American adults between May and August 2007, releasing the results in 2008. The new “Faith in Flux” survey involved additional interviews with hundreds who have shifted their religious affiliation along with others who have stayed.
Roman Catholics. Overall, the Catholic church has seen the greatest net loss from people leaving — one in 10 American adults is a former Catholic. The majority left because they stopped believing in the church’s teachings on issues such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and birth control. Fewer than three in 10 said the clergy sexual abuse scandal was a factor.
Those who left Catholicism to become evangelical Protestants were more likely to say they left “because they didn’t like its teachings about the Bible,” and thought the Catholic church “did not take the Bible literally enough,” said Greg Smith, a research fellow with the Pew Forum. Those who left the Catholic church for mainline Protestant churches were more likely to say they married a non-Catholic (44 percent) or were unhappy with the priests at their parish (nearly 4 in 10).
Protestants. Over the years — and this comes as no surprise — mainline Protestants have seen some of the greatest erosion in membership. But some of the overall vitality of American Protestantism comes from its diversity. While mainline churches are declining, evangelical and nondenominational churches have been growing. People feel free to shift around until they find somewhere they like.
The biggest group in the U.S. adult population that has changed religious affiliation is Protestants moving from one Protestant denomination to another. Overall, 15 percent of American adults have done this.
Protestants who leave the religious tradition of their childhood and switch to another Protestant denomination typically don’t give changes in religious belief as a reason. They are more likely to say they found a place, practice or people they like better. Three-in-10 gave life-cycle or family changes — getting married or moving to a new community, for example — as a reason for switching to another tradition. But they also gave other reasons; 58 percent said they’d found a religion that was preferable to the one of their childhood, and just over half said they were spiritually unfulfilled in their former faith.
Teenagers. Those who left the faith of their childhood to become unaffiliated were much less likely to have attended worship regularly as teenagers or to have had strong faith as a child or teenager. More than 7 in 10 who left the faith in which they were raised to become unaffiliated said they just drifted away, with relatively few saying their faith was strong in the year or two before they left.
