Saturday, May 2, 2009

Nominal Christians no more

Steven Waldman interprets the recent Pew survey differently than many of the recent press analyses:
The Pew study founded that 79% of the currently unaffiliated—also known as "nones" in the survey—started off life connected with a religion. But get this: only 30% of "nones" who used to be Catholic and only 18% of former Protestants said they'd had strong faith as a child. This is true even for those who attended church regularly.

In other words, perhaps it's not that the devout have lost their way, it's that the nominally religious have stopped pretending to be religious. Perhaps what we're seeing is not an increase in the number of "nones" but an increase in the numbers willing to admit it.

Another bit of evidence for this theory is that the rates of church attendance during this same period from 1990 to 2009 have remained stable. The pious are just as pious; it's the more tenuously connected that seem to be fleeing. [more]
The State of U.S. Piety - WSJ.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. I will gladly approve any comment that responds directly and politely to what has been posted.