"Unaffiliated" is the fastest growing religious choice

[nancylebov]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/26/MN18V8DHG.DTL

Twenty-eight percent of American adults have left the faith in which they were raised, switching to another religion or no religion at all, according to a national survey of religious affiliation.

In addition, adults who claim no ties to any religious institution have grown into the fourth-largest category of religious identification, a trend led by California and other states in the West, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Researchers said the large number of immigrants who have come to California from Central America and Asia have had an effect on the question of religious affiliation in the state as well as the makeup of particular denominations, especially Catholics. While 10 percent of U.S. adults have left the Catholic Church, an influx of Catholic immigrants has kept the church's population stable.

Partly because the numbers of the unaffiliated have grown, Protestants, who have historically been the majority in the United States, are on the verge of losing that status. Only 51 percent of American adults describe themselves as Protestant.

I've talked with a few people who got disgusted with religion in general what with 9/11 and the religious right, but I don't know if that's an important part of the trend.

Comments

[firecat]

I wonder how many people have changed religious affiliations multiple times. (*raises hand*)

[twistedchick]

Here's the choices the Pew survey offered:

Evangelical Protestant
Mainline Protestant
Catholic
Jehovah's Witness
Historically Black Churches
Mormon
Orthodox
Jewish
Muslim
Other Christian
Buddhist
Hindu
Other faiths
Other world religions
Don't know/refused
Unaffiliated.

Do you see the holes in this? The Pew surveys tend to be conservative, and this is a great example of that skew. There is no separate category for pagan/Wiccan, or for Native American/traditional/indigenous beliefs. Quakerism could fit into several of these categories -- other Christian, other world religions, other faiths. The norm here is assumed to be Christianity, with five specific categories, but there are no breakout categories for Orthodox/Conservative/Reform Judaism, or for Sunni/Shia Islam. Historically Black denominations are broken out, but historically Hispanic churches are not. I think this survey was not well thought out when it was written.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Also, "unaffiliated" might imply some kind of belief in a deity or higher power or other spirituality. Where oh where is the explicit atheist option?!

[avram]

Why should they have one, if they're measuring affiliations?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

"Unaffiliated" includes atheist, agnostic, and those who believe in a higher power but aren't connected to a religion.

[gildedacorn.livejournal.com]

I'll say. Should someone tell them that "historically black churches" aren't a separate religion, but should be listed under "Main Line Protestant" or "Evangelical Protestant" or "Catholic" or "Jehovah's Witness," as the case may be?

[(Anonymous)]

The Pew group -- including the survey creators and the Pew Charitable Trust and a few other things -- are pretty exclusively conservative Republican. And as Republicans they have a vested interest in making the country look the way they *want* it to look. I suspect that they've been told about historically black (and, for that matter, historically ethnic churches such as the Polish National Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church) and they just don't care about being precise.

From what I've read, the fastest-growing non-Christian religion is paganism (not Islam), but it's not offered as a choice, probably because they don't want to acknowledge its existence.

I noted above the difficulty in where Quakerism should go -- some Quakers are Christians but there are also atheist Quakers and universalist Quakers.

This is not a neutral study; it is slanted and politically motivated.

I was surveyed by the Pew group a month or two ago -- it may have been for this survey, because they did ask a lot about religion but also about politics and other things -- and the questions were not worded as one would word them for a neutral study (I have designed studies.) They were worded to force responses into specific pre-determined categories that were pretty explicitly biased. The woman who was interviewing me on the phone for the survey noticed it, and we got into a conversation about how she didn't think the questions reflected reality either. I mentioned some of these things to her, and she agreed that they should have been included, or organized differently.

[twistedchick]

Sorry, didn't realize I wasn't signed in.

The Pew group -- including the survey creators and the Pew Charitable Trust and a few other things -- are pretty exclusively conservative Republican. And as Republicans they have a vested interest in making the country look the way they *want* it to look. I suspect that they've been told about historically black (and, for that matter, historically ethnic churches such as the Polish National Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church) and they just don't care about being precise.

From what I've read, the fastest-growing non-Christian religion is paganism (not Islam), but it's not offered as a choice, probably because they don't want to acknowledge its existence.

I noted above the difficulty in where Quakerism should go -- some Quakers are Christians but there are also atheist Quakers and universalist Quakers.

This is not a neutral study; it is slanted and politically motivated.

I was surveyed by the Pew group a month or two ago -- it may have been for this survey, because they did ask a lot about religion but also about politics and other things -- and the questions were not worded as one would word them for a neutral study (I have designed studies.) They were worded to force responses into specific pre-determined categories that were pretty explicitly biased. The woman who was interviewing me on the phone for the survey noticed it, and we got into a conversation about how she didn't think the questions reflected reality either. I mentioned some of these things to her, and she agreed that they should have been included, or organized differently.