“Americans change religious affiliation early and often.” That is the upshot of a new report on religious switching from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, released Monday, April 27, 2009.

The report, titled “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.,” follows up and expands on findings of the landmark U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Forum in 2007 and released in 2008, and offers unique statistical grounding for phenomena that journalists encounter every day in writing about religion. The numbers provide fodder for numerous stories, and this edition of ReligionLink supplies further resources for reporting those pieces.

The new analysis shows great fluidity in religious affiliation in the U.S., with about half of American adults saying that they have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives.

According to the survey, the numbers break down this way: 28 percent of American adults have changed religious affiliation from the one in which they were raised, and the figure rises to 44 percent when change within religious traditions is included (e.g., from one Protestant denominational family to another). Moreover, among the 56 percent of adults who currently belong to the same religion as the one in which they were raised, one in six say they had at one point been a member of another tradition. That means about half of American adults have switched at least once during their lives, some several times.

In addition, the survey found that most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24.

The Pew analysis also provides new insights into the reasons behind these changes in religious identity. Among the findings:

• Catholics and Protestants leave their churches for different reasons. Two-thirds of Catholics who have become unaffiliated say they did so “because they stopped believing in its [the church's] teachings, as do half of former Catholics who are now Protestant.” The sexual abuse scandal played a lesser role, as fewer than three in 10 former Catholics say “the clergy sexual abuse scandal factored into their decision to leave Catholicism.”
• Protestants are more likely to switch denominations because they moved to a different community (nearly 40 percent), and nearly that many said they switched “because they married someone from a different religious background.” This finding raises questions about rates of intermarriage and how the increasing religious diversity and demographic mobility of the United States is affecting religious loyalties.
• Most switching occurs by the age of 24, and a large majority say they joined their current religion before age 36. The level of religious observance as a child also appears to have an effect on the propensity for religious switching later in life. This has implications for religious education, from Sunday school to youth groups to campus ministry, and for the role of parental involvement in raising children in a religious tradition.
• Religious switching has meant a net gain for the “unaffiliated” category, as one-quarter of those who switch wind up opting out of organized religion altogether (even as many still hold to certain beliefs). Some 16 percent of the overall population falls under the unaffiliated category. Disenchantment with religious institutions and religious people and “rules” are the main reasons for leaving, the unaffiliated say. Scientific arguments against religion are not typically a determinant, the survey says.
• On the flip side, the unaffiliated also have “one of the lowest retention rates of any of the major religious groups,” as the survey’s authors write, “with most people who were raised unaffiliated now belonging to one religion or another.” Reasons for choosing a religion include the attraction of religious services and styles of worship (74 percent), having been spiritually unfulfilled while unaffiliated (51 percent) or feeling called by God (55 percent).

National sources

Pew experts

• John Green is a senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. He is also professor of political science and director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio. Green is a leading expert on trends in religion and politics and was one of those presenting the findings on religious affiliation. Contact in Akron at 330-972-5182, green@uakron.edu; or at jgreen@pewforum.org and through Robert Mills, communications associate for the Pew Forum, at 202-419-4564, rmills@pewforum.org.
• Gregory A. Smith is a research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Smith was one of those presenting the findings on religious affiliation. Contact gsmith@pewforum.org or through Robert Mills, communications associate for the Pew Forum, at 202-419-4564, rmills@pewforum.org.

Other experts on religious switching

• Patrick N. Allitt is Goodrich C. White Professor of History at Emory University in Atlanta, and he specializes in American religious and intellectual history. He has written widely on American converts to Catholicism. Contact 404-727-4471, pallitt@emory.edu.
• Nancy Ammerman is a professor of the sociology of religion at Boston University. She is a nationally recognized expert on shifts and transformations in American congregational life. Contact 617-358-0634, nta@bu.edu.
• Mark Chaves is a professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C. He is director of the National Congregations Study and the author of Congregations in America. He can compare this study’s findings to previous studies. Contact 919-660-5783, mac58@soc.duke.edu.
• Kevin D. Dougherty is an assistant professor of religion and a research fellow in the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. With Byron R. Johnson, director of the institute, and Edward C. Polson, a graduate student in sociology, Dougherty co-authored an article titled “Recovering the Lost: Remeasuring U.S. Religious Affiliation” in the December 2007 issue of The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The article proposes new criteria for measuring those who say they have no religious affiliation. Contact 254-710-6232, Kevin_Dougherty@baylor.edu.
• Diana L. Eck is a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and director of Harvard’s Pluralism Project, which explores the religious diversity of the U.S. Contact 617-495-5781, dianaeck@fas.harvard.edu.
• Roger Finke is a professor of sociology and religious studies at Penn State University, where he is also director of the Association of Religion Data Archives, a compilation of religious data, including affiliation. Contact 814-865-6257, rfinke@psu.edu.
• Byron R. Johnson is director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Contact 254-710-7555, BRJ@baylor.edu.
• Barry Kosmin is director of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He is one of the principal investigators of the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey. Contact 860-297-2353, Barry.Kosmin@trincoll.edu.
• Mark Regnerus is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and has written extensively on adolescents and young adults and religious affiliation. Contact 512-232-6307, regnerus@prc.utexas.edu.
• Wade Clark Roof is a professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a leading expert on the American penchant for “spiritual seeking.” He is the author of Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion. Contact 805-893-2562, wcroof@religion.ucsb.edu.
• Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is the author of The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith. Contact 617-552-1862, wolfe@bc.edu.
• Robert J. Wuthnow is a sociology professor at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., and director of the university’s Center for the Study of Religion. Wuthnow is the author of many books about the religious dynamics of Americans and how they are changing. Contact 609-258-2044, wuthnow@princeton.edu.

Resources for further research

• See a ReligionLink edition from February 2008, when the Religious Landscape Survey was released. That edition, and a follow-up in June 2008, has ideas and resources for exploring various story angles suggested by the survey results.
• See a March 2009 Religion Link edition on the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, which offers several points of comparison with the Pew report.
• See a May 2007 ReligionLink edition on the spiritual formation of children that focuses on how parents are raising their children in a faith tradition.
• See a ReligionLink edition on the unaffiliated, or “nones,” plus a May 2007 edition on the rise of atheism and unbelief.