Study Delves Into Why Americans Change Religions

Americans are fickle consumers of religion, with about half changing religious affiliations at least once in their lives as they drift away from childhood traditions or stop believing in the teachings of their faiths, according to a national survey released Monday.

Such religious switching has swollen the ranks of the unaffiliated, according to researchers from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Still, religion remains a strong force in American life, even among those raised in nonreligious homes.

“Many times, changing religions is a gradual process rather than a decision or event that takes place at a particular moment,” Greg Smith, a forum research fellow, said Monday.

The survey, “Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S.,” is a follow-up to a major study released last year by the Pew Forum. The 2008 analysis found that 44% of U.S. adults have switched religious affiliations or abandoned ties to a specific religion.

Monday’s survey, based on follow-up interviews with 2,800 people, delved more deeply into the reasons behind the religious churn among Roman Catholics, Protestants and the unaffiliated. Jews, Muslims and other groups were not included because their numbers were not large enough to produce reliable results, the researchers said.

The survey found that most people who leave their childhood faith do so by the age of 24, and many change religions or denominations more than once.

The researchers found 16% of the adult population to be unaffiliated. Most said they had moved away from religious observance because they no longer believe in God or religious teachings. Many without religious belief also said they found religious people to be hypocritical, judgmental or insincere.

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UK – Women Leaving Church For Witchcraft – Wicca

The report claims more than 50,000 women a year have deserted their congregations over the past two decades because they feel the church is not relevant to their lives.

It says that instead young women are becoming attracted to the pagan religion Wicca, where females play a central role, which has grown in popularity after being featured positively in films, TV shows and books.

The study comes amid ongoing controversy over the role of women in all Christian denominations. Last month its governing body voted to allow women to become bishops for the first time, having admitted them to the priesthood in 1994, but traditionalist bishops have warned that hundreds of clergy and parishes will leave if the move goes ahead as planned.

The report’s author, Dr Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Derby, said: “In short, women are abandoning the church.

“Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.

“Women’s ordination, as priests and now bishops, has dominated debate and headlines – but while looking at women in the pulpit we have taken our eyes off the pews, where a shift with more consequences for the church’s survival is underway.”

Her research, published in a new book called Women and Religion in the West, cites an English Church Census which found more than a million women worshippers have left churches since 1989.

Over the past decade, it claims, women have been leaving churches at twice the rate of men.

In addition, the census is said to show that teenage boys now outnumber girls in the pews for the first time.

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