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Survey sees a drift away from religion in America - The Christian Science Monitor

March 15, 2009

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the March 10, 2009 edition

Christianity's hold on many Americans is slipping, losing out not to other faiths but to "no faith."
Today, 76 percent of the US population call themselves Christians, compared with 86 percent in 1990, according to the third American Religious Self-Identification Survey (ARIS), released Monday by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. Among Christians, the survey confirms that many are shedding denominational loyalties for a more generic Christian allegiance.

One in every 5 US adults chose not to identify a religious identity: 15 percent chose "no religion" and the other 5 percent declined to name one.

In the traditional Roman Catholic stronghold of New England, for instance, the number of Catholic adherents fell by 1 million between 1990 and 2008, with most of those moving to "no religion." Catholics dropped from 50 percent to 36 percent of the region's population. New York state lost 800,000 Catholics.

"The decline of Catholicism in the Northeast is nothing short of stunning," says Barry Kosmin, a principal investigator for the ARIS surveys of 1990, 2001, and 2008. "There is a correlation between the decline of Catholic identity and the rise of 'the nones,' " as the survey dubs the "no religion" group.

In a major surprise, the Northeast now surpasses the Pacific Northwest as the least religious part of the country. The "nones" represent 34 percent of the population of Vermont, 29 percent in New Hampshire, and 22 percent in Maine and Massachusetts.

Nevertheless, Catholics maintained their one-quarter share of the population, thanks mostly to immigration in the South and West, particularly in California and Texas.

The "no religion" group has gained 20 million adults since 1990 and is the only group to have grown in every state, though at a much slower pace in recent years than in the 1990s. Only 10 percent of that group explicitly identifies as atheist or agnostic.

Denominational drop

During this same 18-year period, the number of Christians rose by 22 million, but their proportion declined. The survey found that most of that growth occurred among those who call themselves either nondenominational Christian, born again or evangelical Christian, or simply "Christian," declining to add a more specific affiliation.

Nondenominational Christians, generally associated with the rise of megachurches, increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million today. Those opting for generic "Christian" account for 14 percent of the population. "Denominationalism, or Christian brands, have eroded since 1990 – even Protestant doesn't mean anything anymore," says Dr. Kosmin.

The evangelical or born-again label has spread to some Catholics and mainline Christians. "There's a kind of fashion for the term," Kosmin says. No definition was given for the label, but 34 percent of people identify as born again.

Mainline denominations (i.e., Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal) showed the greatest losses, declining sharply in numbers and dropping from 18.7 percent of the 1990 population to 12.9 percent today.

"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism – mainline versus evangelical – is collapsing," says Mark Silk, director of Trinity's Public Values Program.

As the US population rose by 30 percent between 1990 and 2008, Pentecostals (3.5 percent) and Mormons (1.4 percent) held on to their shares, while some smaller Protestant denominations grew slightly.

Non-Christian faiths recorded the fastest overall rate of growth (50 percent) after the "nones," but represent only 4 percent of Americans. The number of religious Jews (1.2 percent of the population) actually declined by 15 percent, with most of the loss involving young ethnic Jews choosing "no religion."

Buddhism rose to 0.5 percent of the population. The Muslim community doubled in the 1990s, but growth has slowed since; 1.35 million, or 0.6 percent of the population, now identify as Muslim.

New religious movements and groups such as Wiccans are also growing, and account for 1.2 percent of Americans.

Age and gender differences

For the first time, the ARIS 2008 survey included a question on beliefs about God, and the findings suggest some Americans may not share fully the theology of the groups with which they identify.

A little less than 70 percent believe "definitely in a personal God," with 12 percent believing "in a higher power but no personal God." Some 2.3 percent say there is no God, while 10 percent either don't know or don't think there is a way to know.

When asked about religious rituals, 30 percent of married respondents said they were not married in a religious ceremony, and 27 percent of all respondents said they do not expect to have a religious funeral when they die.

With regard to gender, the "no religion" group is the most heavily male (60 percent) among all the groups, while Pentecostals (58 percent) and Baptists (57 percent) have the highest female participation.

Age composition fluctuates considerably within religious groups. Baptists, Jews, and Pentecostals have the highest proportions of those 50 or over (more than half). Muslims and Eastern religions have the youngest, reflecting immigration. Today, 60 percent of Americans are under 50 years of age.

Americans' penchant for switching religions, revealed in a 2008 Religious Landscape Study by Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, makes it difficult to project trends into the future.

"When people grow up, will they really stay" in their group? Kosmin asks. And now that "a good fraction of the population is being raised outside the religious orbit," what does that mean for religious institutions?

ARIS interviewed 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish for the survey, which has a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent. It can be found at americanreligionsurvey-aris.org.

New England is traditionally Protestant. In larger cities there is now a large Catholic population because of the demographic changes in the later nineteenth century and the twentieth century - but the "real New Englanders" tend to regard these people (some of whom have lived in New England for five generations!) as interlopers.

To add to the religious/demographic confusion, some important Catholic monasteries are in New England.

Fr. Serge

There seems to be a schism occurring in American Christianity. Thos who still believe in Jesus Christ, and trust in Him, and love Him enough to follow Him are still practicing Christianity.

And those who don't, don't. A growing number of secularists (15-20% of adult Americans) is a sign of that. A growing number of American Catholics who don't attend Mass /Liturgy every Sunday (69%) is a step towards that.

It's tempting to blame those troubles, in the Latin Rite part of the Catholic Church, on the novus ordo form of the Mass. But I don't think that is accurate. The Orthodox and the Eastern Catholics have traditional liturgies, and many of them struggle with declining attendance. Also, some of the more vibrant forms of Christianity (Protestant and Catholic) make use of very contemporary forms of worship; while other vibrant churches use very traditional forms of worship.

The only thing in common that I can see, among Christians who regularly practice their faith, is faith, hope and love for Jesus Christ.

But it has to be the whole Jesus who is presented: incarnated, crucified, risen from the dead.

And it has to be the whole Gospel too: morality and prayer, virtues and fasting, love of God and neighbor through almsgiving.

Churches that present all of Christ and His Gospel seem to be thriving or holding their own. Anything else seems to be in decline.

-- John

Also, I would like to add that practicing any religion requires commitment, and commitment requires discipline and effort...but alas, we are a lazy people dominated by the new modern aged pagan gods that stroke and encourage our slothful natures: entertainment, consumerism, relaxation, sex, alchohol, drugs, etc...

Balance can be a very hard thing for modern man, especially those modern men and women who don't feel the void, the whisper, the calling and the need for God, amidst all the distractions afforded them, and the relative comfort and good life enjoyed in a way by the average man that is unprecedented in humankind's history.

Believing in God is easy and most Americans still do. *Following* God, through religion, however, can be difficult....

For those of us Christians who do try to follow God, if we are honest, we will see that even we often have great difficulty in balancing the temptations modern life with religious life, though atleast we do try.

Religious life with its fasts and feasts used to be the very core of existence and entertainment in the past. Even in old world traditional countries this no longer exists to the same extent or conviction. In small communities in all Christian countries, including the United States, Sunday Church service was once the very core of life-- for worship, for spiritual relief, and for socializing and seeing your neighbors. In some faiths in the U.S. religion also served as a continuum for people's original cultures and to ensure marriages which would be within that culture..the culture could have had a religious identity and emphasis (as in Roman Catholic culture), or their national identity (the various ethnic Orthodox churches, or Jewish temples, for instance.)

Simply put, one would have been strange to have NOT been religious in the past--because there were no alternatives, there was no alternate life that beckoned and tempted as we know it today.

Besides that, human suffering was always great without modern medicine and services, and one NEEDED God. Many people today do not feel that they need God in their lives. Modern advances have offered us an unprecedented quality of life that even Kings and Emperors would have envied!

Finally, if we really think about it, there is a great spiritual warfare going on in our times: the religion of God is competing with the religion of the devil and his gods--only the religion of the devil and his gods is a secret religion without temples, and one which its adherents don't even realize most times that they are members of! The goal of this new religion is not theosis and the difficult ethical and moral guidelines to live by which God's religions require, but its emphasis is on our bodily comfort and the good, self indulgent, enjoyable, and materialistic life of the world, and its representatives assault us with his religion's message at every turn of the eye!

Alice

These are excellent points, Alice !

Especially that last paragraph, which is very frightening . . .

Much food for thought in your post ! Thank you for sharing it !

-- John

Thanks John...

I hope that, although I stand by my thoughts, my style was not too dramatic! LOL!

Regards,
Alice

Sometimes, drama is appropriate! (I've still got a bit of the Baptist in me and my memory of Baptist preaching).

Joe

People drift away when they find it doesn't provide the answers or help for the challenges in their life.

Yes, but does the secular world provide those answers?

Even the holiest staretz cannot provide answers for us if we do not have faith that God is in charge and knows what is best for us...Often, in our spiritual lives, at the onset, we see, we feel, we hear and we understand God in our lives, but as we grow in faith, challenges can become more complex and more difficult, and we may not easily see, hear and understand God in our lives as we once did. He is still there ofcourse, but now He is, like a good father, allowing us to take our own steps with only our deep faith and the help of our religion (Orthodoxy or Catholicism) and all that it provides us, to guide us.

Our faith becomes one with God, and we can no longer seperate it or analyze it...

We finally understand that we cannot put our faith in man, (which is the disappointment some may have with organized religion) even if the man is holy and wears a cassock...but we can seek that man's guidance, his words of encouragement, his knowledge, his administering of the sacraments, his example, and his inspiration...but our *faith* must ultimately be in God Himself...

When we can accept that, the man in the cassock, whether he is a parish priest, a monk, an enlightened startetz, a bishop or patriarch, will have *successfully* done his job, because his job is to bring us closer to Christ *through* the Church.

We need to understand that our salvation is the most important challenge our Lord Jesus Christ really cares about in our lives, because He loves us. The Church and the comfort of our Christian religion, provides the means and the earthly anchor for our salvation. We can listen to that or forsake that.

In the meantime, while we are here, through religion/the Church, God has given us many good friends in Heaven--the saints-- who have walked our path at one time, and who we can turn to for those secular challenges and trials, and they can and will help us if we beseech them to, according to His will.

We who belong to the Christian religion, do struggle at times with it, because we men are all sinners and the Church is also made up of sinners, but in the final analysis, we are very, very fortunate to have it.

Just some thoughts for what they are worth.
Alice

Well said, Alice.

-- John

Christ is in our midst!! He is and always will be!!

I'd like to challenge this statement. Sometimes one's faith gift does not provide the answers. Sometimes it seems inadequate for the challenges of life. That's when faith becomes faith--when it requires that one step up and accept that there is no answer to a real problem, that one accept that there may be no answer in this uncertain, unfair life that we lead, and that we must put our faith in a God Who seems to be silent to our prayers for deliverance. But as St. Paul says--to this effect--that we are wounded but never crushed. Faith requires that we look at Christ, understand what being baptised into Him really means, and accept it fully and completely. Faith requires that we understand with the Holy Anthony, one of the Desert Fathers, that some things we will never understand here because they are the judgments and decisions of God and because He does not choose to let us in on the reasons for many of them. He asks us to take a leap of faith, to be stripped of everything here--including the world's ideas of fairness--and to follow even when it means dragging ourselves toward the goal because we've been knocked down so many times we can't get up. But with our vision set wholly on Christ and His promises, we slog on.

Abba Anthony asked in prayer, "Why do good people come up short and bad people prosper? And why are some poor and other have so much? And why do some good people die young and the evil ones live long lives?" And his answer was that these are God's decisions and are not for us to know or understand. And that takes a big measure of faith to swallow, accept, and live with.

That's why Jesus gave us the Parable of the Sower. Some come to faith but have no root and when adversity comes along, they wither and fall away. The question for us during Great Lent is what are we made of and what is our commitment.

Following Christ AIN'T for sissies.

BOB

Dear Bob,

This was a very good post. Thank you....

Pondering upon all that you said, imagine if besides not being able to have the answers we want from God, if we were also not also able to atleast seek those answers through the Christian religion?

Imagine being brought up in an atheist state. Imagine the despair in that situation when times get rough because you don't know that there is a God to turn to. Imagine not having the cozy comfort of a church sanctuary. 'Imagine no religion'--the Beatle John Lennon sang--'it isn't hard if you try'... Rather than the utopian state he envisioned, I envision a state of despair, of hatred, of self destruction through debauchery, of extreme emptiness, and of extreme bitterness.

Before the old timers in Soviet States die, I wish that someone would interview them and ask them what they did and what they felt and what they thought when times got rough, and life seemed unfair, without any religion to turn to? (I am actually surprised that there are no such books or articles)

That experiment already failed in Eastern Europe...I pray that we don't get there again here. Drifting away from defined organized religions is not the answer...it is simply setting the stage for the deception that will create the one religion of the anti-Christ.

In Christ,
Alice

ALICE:

What of the high rates of alcoholism? Abortion rates--despair over one's preent state leads to one despairing taht there could be anything better for one's children? The "dog eat dog" attitude of spying and informing on each other? The lack of sympathy for the suffering of others?

All the breakdown of whatever Christian virtue was woven into the fabric of Russian culture over the centuries and its substitution with a radical selfishness that mirrors our own slide into godless secularism.

How about our own drug culture? Pervasive lust glorified in all forms of culture. These are all forms of coping, albeit denial, with the profound pain of having no faith to act as a compass.

BOB

Alice,

The book, "Father Arseny" has chapters which are about that. It's either despair or distraction and trying not to think about the existential void.
http://www.amazon.com/Father-Arseny-1893-1973-Narratives-Concerning/dp/0881411809

-- John

Well said. It's like St. Peter walking on the water. To do so, he could only look at Christ.

Sometimes religion is assumed to be a substitue for Christ. No. It only points to Christ (and that only on a good day!). That is because religion is us, and we --I-- are sinners. But Christ does not fail. And in Christ, even the disappointments over religion become manageable and even useful.

my two cents.

-- John