Pew Research: Trends in religious conversions

Christianity has experienced some of the largest losses from religious switching of any faith group around the world, according to our 2024 surveys. Religious switching refers to when people identify with a different religion in adulthood than they were raised in as a child.

Within Christianity, however, religious switching has affected the two largest subgroups – Catholicism and Protestantism – differently:

*Catholicism has lost more people than it’s gained in nearly all countries that we surveyed.

*Protestantism has seen a net gain from switching in nearly as many places as it has seen a net loss.

Here we take a closer look at religious switching into, out of, and between Catholicism and Protestantism, based on Pew Research Center surveys in 24 countries...

Read the rest here.

One in five Americans reports no religious affiliation, study says

One-fifth of U.S. adults say they are not part of a traditional religious denomination, new data from the Pew Research Center show, evidence of an unprecedented reshuffling of Americans’ spiritual identities that is shaking up fields from charity to politics.

But despite their nickname, the “nones” are far from godless. Many pray, believe in God and have regular spiritual routines.

Their numbers have increased dramatically over the past two decades, according to the study released Tuesday. About 19.6 percent of Americans say they are “nothing in particular,” agnostic or atheist, up from about 8 percent in 1990. One-third of adults under 30 say the same. Pew offered people a list of more than a dozen possible affiliations, including “Protestant,” “Catholic,” “something else” and “nothing in particular.”

Read the rest here.

Fr. Z: Why A Religious Model for the State Is Not Good

Ask everybody and they’ll all agree it’s a good thing priests don’t run the world.

I agree with this view.

I also believe it’s even better that members of religious orders don’t run the world, whether they are Sisters of Mercy or, lemme think, Jesuits … or some other kind of religious.

Why?

Religious don’t live in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe firmly that many religious do alot of good for the world, but they don’t live in it.

Sure there are exceptions of savvy religious who know the score, especially those who may have had a career before entering religious life. But in general, religious formed in community don’t live in the real world.

For example, unlike diocesan priests, individual religious don’t pay income taxes. Religious don’t worry about unemployment, health care, food, housing and nursing care when they are aged, or the cost of their funerals. Their religious communities take care of all that. Religious contribute all of what little (or in some cases much) money they earn from their apostolates into a common fund that is administered by their superiors. That common fund takes care of the needs of all community members.

That’s why I get a little edgy hearing religious talking about social justice, universal health care and other federal mandates and entitlements.

The idea that religious have of the state is far too analogous to that of a religious community.

Read the rest here.

Fr. Z's blog doesn't usually do too much politics so this is a rather unusual post. I found it to be thoughtful, and as far as it goes I think I agree with most of his points.

Wow

A Republican candidate for president who publicly says he is not overly religious.  That kind of breathtaking honesty alone seems to demand a serious look at the  man.  I'm not saying being irreligious is a good thing.  But I'm about done with people running for high office trying to out Christian each other.  Time was when religion was understood to be an essentially private matter.  Dwight Eisenhower (one of my favorite modern presidents) didn't even bother getting baptized until after he was elected president.

Memo to the GOP.  We are electing a president, not a patriarch or church elder.

A few predictions for 2011

New year's predictions are often amusing. (Sometimes they can be even more amusing at the end of the year when you look back and see just how wrong you were.) In the past I have avoided making new year's prognostications. But it's a rainy day and I am bored, so why not give it a whirl.

Here goes...

Religion:

• The press, especially the Catholic press, will continue to report that a meeting is imminent between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow.
• No such meeting will occur in 2011 nor will one be announced.
• The slow motion train wreck that is the Anglican Communion will continue to unfold. There will be much huffing and puffing from the more conservative provinces but none will break communion with Canterbury.
• A significant block of the so called Anglo-Catholic wing will swim the Tiber. Those who don't will either migrate to the so called Continuum or accept their status as dhimmi within the ultra liberal CofE - TEO - ACC. Very few will even consider Orthodoxy.
• The SSPX will not reconcile with Rome.
• (This one is going out on a limb.) The Ecumenical Patriarch will announce the date for the long anticipated Great and Holy Pan-Orthodox Synod.
  

Politics:

• There will be a series of fierce battles over spending in Congress with some cuts being made. But they will not be enough to seriously impact the growing national debt.
• The Republicans will attempt and fail to repeal the health care reform bill.
  
• They will succeed in passing some modifications to it.
• No significant new taxes will be passed.
• Sarah Palin's super-star status has probably peaked. She will remain an important figure but her popularity will start to wane somewhat as Republicans gear up for the 2012 presidential election and consider who is best suited to run against Obama.
• No significant social reform legislation will pass in 2011.
  
• In Great Britain the coalition government will hit some bumps but it will hold together through 2011.

Foreign Affairs:

• Most US military forces will finally leave Iraq.
• Most US military forces will not leave Afghanistan.
• North Korea will launch another armed provocation against South Korea. This time S. Korea will respond with force and there will be a nasty but short fight that will not lead to a full scale war.
• Israel and the Palestinians will still be dancing around the peace table at years end.
• China will continue to flex its economic muscles in the Western Pacific as it attempts to assert geopolitical hegemony.
  

Economics:

• Unemployment will remain high through 2011.
• The stock market will continue to rise, but more slowly than the last two years. Upward movement will be driven by money printing and will be more pronounced in foreign stocks as the dollar depreciates.
• The dollar will continue its death by a thousand cuts. The only major currency likely to do worse is the Euro.
  
• The 30 year party in the bond market is over. This is going to be a bad year for bonds, possibly a very bad year. Interest rates will rise across the curve with municipal bonds taking the biggest hit as the true extent of state and municipal debt starts to become clear.
• The sovereign debt crisis will get worse in 2011, possibly endangering the survival of the Euro.
• Greece will default on its debt.
• This one will be interesting to look back on at the end of the year. Predicting inflation is easy when the Federal Reserve is printing money like it's going out of style. Timing is a different matter. For what it's worth I think the effects of all the inflation being created by the FED, which have thus far been confined mainly to commodities and the financial markets, will begin to show up in the CPI. I expect official inflation (currently below 1%) to at least double by the year's end (still low by historical standards). However this is just the beginning of a multi year inflationary cycle born out of staggering sovereign debt and money printing. My gut says the real blow up will come in 2012.
• Gold and silver will both continue to do well. Gold will end the year somewhere between $1600-1700 oz.
• A double dip in the housing market is likely.

Sports:

• The Yankees (gag) will win the AL Pennant and the Giants will return to the World Series for the National League. It will be the Giants over the Yankees in six games.
  
• If the previous prediction comes off I will be offered a six figure contract by ESPN which I will decline because it would interfere with my blogging.
  

Culture:

• The King's Speech will win the Oscar for best picture.
• I will finally finish reading Tolstoy's War and Peace (yea right).
  

Supreme Court: Cross can stay

The Supreme Court gave its approval Wednesday to displaying a cross on public land to honor fallen soldiers, saying the Constitution "does not require the eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm."

Speaking for a divided court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the 1st Amendment called for a middle-ground "policy of accommodation" toward religious displays on public land, not a strict separation of church and state.

Kennedy disagreed with judges in California who said U.S. National Park Service officials must remove a small Latin cross from the Mojave National Preserve that had stood since 1934 to honor soldiers who died in World War I. The judges said the display of the cross on public land amounted to a government endorsement of religion.

"A Latin cross is not merely a reaffirmation of Christian beliefs," he wrote. "Here, a Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten."

Read the rest here.

Can We Talk About Religion, Please?

The Issue

Last week the Vatican invited Anglicans who are, as The New York Times put it, “uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops” to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church. If a secular institution, Wal-Mart or Microsoft, for example, made a similar offer — Tired of leadership positions being open to women and gay employees? Join us! — it would be slammed for appealing to bigotry. Some criticism was directed at the church, but it was faint. Are we right to speak softly when discussing a subject as sensitive as religion?

The Argument

Etiquette holds that religion, especially another person’s religion, should be treated with deference or, better still, silence by nonbelievers. Hence the familiar dinner-party injunction: don’t discuss religion or politics. Even at a table full of co-religionists, feelings can run high, and there is a reluctance to combine digestion with discord (particularly where knives are nearby). To the observant, a nonbeliever’s comments on church doctrine can feel less like a discussion of theology than a personal attack.

Yet despite the risk of provoking the ire of believers, we should discuss the actions of religious institutions as we would those of all others — courteously and vigorously. This is a mark of respect, an indication that we take such ideas seriously. To slip on the kid gloves is condescending, akin to the way you would treat children or the frail or cats.

The passionate intensity unleashed by religious matters is evinced in responses to The Ethicist, my other column for The Times Magazine. When I take up a secular question that provokes broad disagreement, I typically receive a few hundred responses by e-mail that begin: “Dear Sir, I am appalled…” When I write about religion, I cause a tidal wave. The week I rebuked an Orthodox Jewish real estate agent whose beliefs forbade his shaking the hand of a female client, I stopped counting after receiving 4,000 ferocious messages, lambasting not only my argument but my character, my appearance and my parentage: it was speculated that dogs played a part.

My political beliefs, my ideas about social justice, are as deeply held as my critics’ religious beliefs, but I don’t ask them to treat me with reverence, only civility. They should not expect me to walk on tiptoe. It is not as if religious institutions occupy a precarious perch in American life. It is not the proclaimed Christian but the nonbeliever who is unelectable to high office in this era when politicians of every party and denomination make a public display of their faith.

Some of my most indignant critics have declared religious practice a matter of free association: what people do voluntarily among themselves is nobody else’s business. But children raised in a particular faith did not choose it. And sometimes one spouse is pushed into a pew by the other. Even when membership is truly volitional, once a group reaches a certain size and acquires power and influence in the larger community, to treat it like four people getting together in someone’s rec room to play bridge is disingenuous. Its actions are still subject to moral scrutiny, whether the group is the Boy Scouts or Nascar or the Roman Catholic Church.

Read the rest here

An interesting and thoughtful piece from someone who desperately wants to break the social conventions against attacking other people's religious beliefs. My position on the subject is essentially libertarian. You are free to criticize to your heart's content. Just as I and others of religious belief are free to practice our religions and to respond to said criticism. The rights of all involved end at the tip of the other's nose. Which is to say your rights end when they materially interfere with someone else's.

That said, social conventions exist for a reason. And those who contemplate breaking them should do so with great caution. The same principal by which you claim the right to flaunt convention and offend people, gives the more polite element the right to snub you or exclude you from their society in various ways. To some it means little if they are thought of as rude or boorish. But most people would prefer to avoid that kind of label as it carries a certain stigma even in our rather sad modern world.

Erasing the "G" Word

God Bless America

Normally, I'm for keeping church and state out of each other's business as much as humanly possible, mostly to protect religion from government intrusion and idolatry, but also to protect us from zealots who think Jesus wears an American flag lapel pin.

Inserting "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance and adding "In God We Trust" to our money diminishes religious faith, which recognizes no national borders or economic systems. And it disrespects America's pluralistic promise.

But lately, I'm beginning to think that evangelical Christians who are complaining about the "War on God in America" have a point.

"There's a terrible movement to rewrite our history and obscure our faith," J. Randy Forbes, a Republican congressman from Virginia, told the National Review this week.

I don't know about a movement, but things are getting a bit suspicious.

Take the new $621 million capitol Visitor Center, which opened this week to mixed reviews. Among the critics were Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican who several weeks ago noticed that something was missing from a center's replica of the House Speaker's rostrum. The words "In God We Trust" -- engraved over the actual rostrum in 1962 -- were not included in the replica.

The center identified "E. Pluribus Unum" (rather than "In God We Trust") as the official national motto. Displays deleted these words from Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance; "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind..."; and the words "in the Year of Our Lord" from Article 7 of the Constitution.

Read the rest here.