Changeable Creeds

It was only a matter of hours before the data in the new Pew study on American religion found its way into the political bloodstream, to be bandied about by Christian conservatives on the one hand and secular liberals on the other. Each side is already saying say that the data prove at long last the truths that have been self-evident for decades. Conservatives see in the data an appalling religious dilettantism combined with a rising devotion to nothing at all. Liberals see an idiosyncratic populace that prefers to exercise individual choice even in spiritual matters. Both, of course, are right.

In its most newsworthy finding, Pew found that 28 percent of American adults have changed their religious affiliation since childhood. That number includes only major changes—Protestant to Jewish, Catholic to Protestant, Jewish to no affiliation—and does not include changes from one Protestant denomination to another or within other, smaller denominations. The other major finding is the number of Americans who call themselves "unaffiliated": 16 percent, or double the number of those who said they grew up in unaffiliated homes. Only 6 percent of the unaffiliated call themselves "secular." About the same number call themselves religious but unaffiliated—terminology that probably means, in the language of other surveys, "spiritual but not religious."

Countless articles, books, lectures and news stories have talked about the "seeker" generation; this is the biggest study to date to quantify the extent of the restlessness in American religious observance. Almost all Christian denominations are losing members faster than they're gaining new ones. Roman Catholics have been particularly hard hit: 10 percent of Americans call themselves former Catholics. The groups that are gaining new members faster than they're losing them are, in a sense, the usual suspects: nondenominational Christians, Pentecostals, Buddhists and New Age religions—groups that emphasize a transcendent "feeling" of God over doctrine, theology and hierarchy.

In conservative circles the buzzword of the day is "orthodoxy." Proponents of orthodoxy want to talk about religion as true, real, and not subject to the vagaries of time, place, and personal preference. The conservatives are onto something, the Pew data show. Orthodox religions—those that emphasize strict doctrine and strict practice within a close-knit community—are losing members less rapidly than other groups. Jews, Mormons, Orthodox Christians, Hindus and evangelical Christians are among the most stable groups of religious believers in the country. At the other end of the spectrum, Jehovah's Witnesses have one of the highest attrition rates of all denominations. Only 33 percent of those identifying themselves as Witnesses today were raised as Witnesses.

We knew all this already. On the American religious scene the seekers face off against the orthodox; the orthodox face off against the unaffiliated. Marriage complicates everything. Strict rules keep people together—until they don't anymore. What's useful about the Pew study, finally, is not the insights it provides but the depth of its data. It's good to know where to go when you're wondering how many Jews are intermarried (30 percent), for example, and which faith boasts the biggest families (Muslims and Mormons). Part two of the study, coming this spring, promises to be juicier. It will lay bare not just what we call ourselves—Christian, Jew, Muslim—but what we believe about God, prayer and the afterlife. Stay tuned.

(For further discussion of the Pew study, go to: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/ )

© 2008