starlightvoyager
Kim Kardashian Ass Krusher
Registered: 03/03/05
Posts: 16481
Loc: Ravaging Rihanna
Quote: A major new survey presents perhaps the most detailed picture we've yet had of which religious groups Americans belong to. And its big message is: blink and they'll change. For the first time, a large-scale study has quantified what many experts suspect: there is a constant membership turnover among most American faiths. America's religious culture, which is best known for its high participation rates, may now be equally famous (or infamous) for what the new report dubs "churn."
The report, released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is the first selection of data from a 35,000- person poll called the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Says Pew Forum director Luis Lugo, Americans "not only change jobs, change where they live, and change spouses, but they change religions too. We totally knew it was happening, but this survey enabled us to document it clearly."
According to Pew, 28% of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another one. And that does not even include those who switched from one Protestant denomination to another; if it did, the number would jump to 44%. Says Greg Smith, one of the main researchers for the "Landscape" data, churn applies across the board. "There's no group that is simply winning or simply losing," he says. "Nothing is static. Every group is simultaneously winning and losing."
For some groups, their relatively steady number of adherents over the years hides a remarkable amount of coming and going. Simply counting Catholics since 1972,for example, you would get the impression that its population had remained fairly static - at about 25% of adult Americans (the current number is 23.9%). But the Pew report shows that of all those raised Catholic, a third have left the church. (That means that roughly one out of every 10 people in America is a former Catholic, and that ex-Catholics are almost as numerous as the America's second biggest religious group, Southern Baptists.) But Catholicism has made up for the losses by adding converts (2.6% of the population) and, more significantly, enjoying an influx of new immigratns, mostly Hispanic.
An even more extreme example of what might be called "masked churn" is the relatively tiny Jehovah's Witnesses, with a turnover rate of about two-thirds. That means that two-thirds of the people who told Pew they were raised Jehovah's Witnesses no longer are - yet the group attracts roughly the same number of converts. Notes Lugo, "No wonder they have to keep on knocking on doors."
The single biggest "winner," in terms of number gained versus number lost, was not a religious group at all, but the "unaffiliated" category. About 16% of those polled defined their religious affiliation that way (including people who regarded themselves as religious, along with atheists and agnostics); only 7% had been brought up that way. That's an impressive gain, but Lugo points out that churn is everywhere: even the unaffiliated group lost 50% of its original membership to one church or another.
The report does not speculate on the implications of its data. But Lugo suggests, "What it says is that this marketplace is highly competitive and that no one can sit on their laurels, because another group out there will make [its tenets] available" for potential converts to try out. While this dynamic "may be partly responsible for the religious vitality of the American people," he says, "it also suggests that there is an institutional loosening of ties," with less individual commitment to a given faith or denomination.
Lugo would not speculate on whether such a buyer's market might cause some groups to dilute their particular beliefs in order to compete. There are signs of that in such surveys as one done by the Willow Creek megachurch outside Chicago, which has been extremely successful in attracting tens of thousands of religious "seekers." An internal survey recently indicated much of its membership was "stalled" in their spiritual growth, Lugo allowed that "it does raise the question of, once you attract these folks, how do you root them within your own particular tradition when people are changing so quickly."
The Pew report has other interesting findings; the highest rates for marrying within one's own faith, for example, are among Hindus (90%) and Mormons (83%)). The full report is accessible at the Pew Forum site. View this article on Time.com
Registered: 12/28/04
Posts: 9662
Loc: In a country with no army =)
What I find most interesting of this article is how it calls faith "the marketplace". That's very accurate in most cases.
Many people are just looking for the best deal. They're looking for the religion that makes them feel at peace with their lifestyle and troubles them the least.
What this article also shows is that there's a great deal of people out there hungry for answers and they can't find them, so they keep going from one place to the next over the years.
As the article talks of Jehovah's Witnesses, almost making fun of us, I'll just add that a person only becomes one of Jehovah's Witnesses after studying the Bible for months or even years.
We are not Jehovah's Witnesses at birth like, say Catholics, who are baptized upon birth. Even if a child is raised in a Witness family, that individual can only be baptized as a Witness once he or she has acquired the capability to make decisions on his own, repent from sins and dedicate his/her life to God. Babies can't do any of that.
Thus, not all children raised by Jehovah's Witness parents choose to follow that direction. And our young people are free to choose that path.
Finally, the reason we keep knocking door to door, however annoying it may be to the mayority of people, is because it's a command from Jesus himself.
"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1: 8
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Cutlass
The Man Who Wasn't There
Registered: 02/04/04
Posts: 77558
Loc: U.S. of A.
This is actually a good thing. All religious doctrine is made by man, not god. No matter what some people might tell you. When religious groups don't have competition, they will inevitably serve the interests of their leaders at the expense of god.
Quote: This is actually a good thing. All religious doctrine is made by man, not god. No matter what some people might tell you. When religious groups don't have competition, they will inevitably serve the interests of their leaders at the expense of god.
Actually I believe that most religious doctrine have an element of truth in them. However over the centuries the basic truths and principles have been been lost or corrupted by those who dislike whatever original truths that were intended in the first place.
Take the Bible for example, its earliest surviving works were likely written centuries after the last Apostle who walked and talked with Jesus himself were killed, with a few exceptions like Paul who was not an original Apostle, whom had kept the original teachings of Christ until his death. With the passing of the Apostles, the known christian world soon fell into what I believe was The Great Apostasy, where plain and precious truths were taken away until the world was ready to recieve the word of Christ in its fullness once more. Within the book of Mormon, lds members like myself believe the fullness of the Gospel had been restored with the original teachings of Christ as the Apostles had intended in the first place.
I am not going to use this thread to proselyt my beliefs to others, everyone's is free to thier own beliefs, but to suggest that that all religious doctrine are made by man and should be treated as fables is not accurate.
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To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible". ~Thomas Aquinas
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