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Ärende: Devoted religious are getting fewer and fewer...
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Good.

Fewer People Claim Religious Affiliation Survey Of 35,000 Finds Religious
Landscape Changing

The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of
American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either
switch allegiances or abandon religious affiliation altogether, a new survey
finds.

The study released Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life is
unusual for it sheer scope, relying on interviews with more than 35,000 adults
to document a diverse and dynamic U.S. religious population.

While much of the study confirms earlier findings -- mainline Protestant
churches are in decline, non-denominational churches are gaining and the ranks
of the unaffiliated are growing -- it also provides a deeper look behind those
trends, and of smaller religious groups. 

"The American religious economy is like a marketplace - very dynamic, very
competitive," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "Everyone is losing,
everyone is gaining. There are net winners and losers, but no one can stand
still. Those groups that are losing significant numbers have to recoup them to
stay vibrant."

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey estimates the United States is 78 percent
Christian and about to lose its status as a majority Protestant nation, at 51
percent and slipping.

More than one-quarter of American adults have left the faith of their childhood
for another religion or no religion at all, the survey found.

Factoring in moves from one stream or denomination of Protestantism to another,
the number rises to 44 percent.

One in four adults ages 18 to 29 claim no affiliation with a religious
institution.

"In the past, certain religions had a real holding power, where people from one
generation to the next would stay," said Penn State University sociologist
Roger Finke, who consulted in the survey planning. "Right now, there is a
dropping confidence in organized religion, especially in the traditional
religious forms."

Lugo said the 44 percent figure is "a very conservative estimate," and more
research is planned to determine the causes.

"It does seem in keeping with the high tolerance among Americans for change,"
Lugo said. "People move a lot, people change jobs a lot. It's a very fluid
society."

The religious demographic benefiting the most from this religious churn is
those who claim no religious affiliation. People moving into that category
outnumber those moving out of it by a three-to-one margin.

The majority of the unaffiliated -- 12 percent of the overall population --
describe their religion as "nothing in particular," and about half of those say
faith is at least somewhat important to them.

Atheists or agnostics account for 4 percent of the total population.

The Roman Catholic Church has lost more members than any faith tradition
because of affiliation swapping, the survey found. While nearly one in three
Americans were raised Catholic, fewer than one in four say they're Catholic
today.

That means roughly 10 percent of all Americans are ex-Catholics.

The share of the population that identifies as Catholic, however, has remained
fairly stable in recent decades thanks to an influx of immigrant Catholics,
mostly from Latin America.

Nearly half of all Catholics under 30 are Hispanic, the survey found.

On the Protestant side, changes in affiliation are swelling the ranks of
nondenominational churches, while Baptist and Methodist traditions are showing
net losses.

Many Americans have vague denominational ties at best. People who call
themselves "just a Protestant," in fact, account for nearly 10 percent of all
Protestants.

Although evangelical churches strive to win new Christian believers from the
"unchurched," the survey found most converts to evangelical churches were
raised Protestant.

Hindus claimed the highest retention of childhood members, at 84 percent.

The group with the worst retention is one of the fastest growing -- Jehovah's
Witnesses.

Only 37 percent of those raised in the sect known for door-to-door
proselytizing said they remain members.

Among other findings involving smaller religious groups, more than half of
American Buddhists surveyed were white, and most Buddhists were converts.

More people in the survey pool identified themselves as Buddhist than Muslim,
although both populations were small -- less than 1 percent of the total
population. By contrast, Jews accounted for 1.7 percent of the overall
population.

The self-identified Buddhists -- 0.7 percent of those surveyed -- illustrate a
core challenge to estimating religious affiliation: What does affiliation mean?

It's unclear whether people who called themselves Buddhists did so because they
practice yoga or meditation, for instance, or claim affiliation with a Buddhist
institution.

The report does not project membership figures for religious groups, in part
because the survey is not as authoritative as a census and didn't count
children, Lugo said. The U.S. Census does not ask questions on religion. 

Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.

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