Although the new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey concerns itself with empty and switched pews, be advised that the "pew" in Pew Forum is the name of the family that set up the trust to fund the forum and has nothing to do with seats in houses of prayer.
I've provided a link to the complete Pew report, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey on the side bar and here's a video interview with Forum director Louis Lugo. On that same page you'll find links to the major media reports on the release of the survey's findings.
Here are some excerpts from the Catholic News Service story on the Pew study:
Drop in number of U.S. Catholics offset by new immigrants, study saysHow do these survey results square with our experience in the Archdiocese of Boston? Coincident to the Pew report's release, it was just last week that the Archdiocese published its annual Directory which includes some comparative statistics. Consider these numbers comparing 1998 with 2007:
According to a new study on the religious affiliation of U.S. adults, 28 percent of Americans have either changed religious affiliations or claim no formal religion at all.
The study also shows the Catholic Church has been hardest hit by these shifts, but that the influx of Catholic immigrants has offset the loss. So, the percentage of the adult population that identifies itself as Catholic has held fairly steady at around 25 percent, it says.
The 148-page study, "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey," was conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and based on interviews with 35,000 adults last year.
Its findings, released Feb. 25, show that roughly 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics. Almost half of these former Catholics joined Protestant denominations, while about half do not have a religious affiliation and a small percentage chose other faiths.
"If everyone raised Catholic stayed (with their religious affiliation), Catholics would be one-third of the population," said John Green, a senior research fellow and a principal author of the study.
...
The Catholic Church was not the only religious affiliation to lose members. Study researchers said they found an overall fluidity of religious affiliation.
Baptists experienced a net loss of 3.7 percent and Methodists lost 2.1 percent. Figures relating to the Catholic Church show that 31.4 percent of adults in the United States said they were raised Catholic while only 23.9 percent of them identify with the Catholic Church today, giving the church a net loss of 7.5 percent.
"Everybody in this country is losing members; everybody is gaining members," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, during the teleconference.
"It is a very competitive marketplace and if you rest on your laurels, you're going to be history," he added.
The survey, conducted through phone interviews from May to August 2007, asked respondents more than 40 questions, including what faith they were raised in and what they currently practice. According to the responses, 78.4 percent of Americans are Christians, about 5 percent belong to other faith traditions and 16.1 percent are unaffiliated with any religion, which the survey described as the fastest-growing religious category in America.
The respondents who said they were not affiliated with any particular faith today are more than double the number who said they weren't affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-quarter say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.
...
According to the survey, Latinos already account for roughly one in three adult Catholics overall and may account for an even larger share of U.S. Catholics in the future. It said Latinos represent roughly one in eight U.S. Catholics age 70 and older and account for nearly half of all Catholics ages 18-29.
The study also shows that Muslims, roughly two-thirds of whom are immigrants, now account for roughly 0.6 percent of the U.S. adult population; and Hindus, more than eight in 10 of whom are foreign-born, now account for approximately 0.4 percent of the population.
- By Carol Zimmermann
General Population in the Archdiocese
1998: 3,764,400
2007: 4,070,686
Catholic Population
1998: 2,002,322
2007: 1,855,315
Mass Attendance (average weekend)
1998: 383, 811
2007: 258,019
Parishes
1998: 388
2007: 294
Child Baptisms
1998: 30,110
2007: 17,360
Confirmations
1998: 15,734
2007: 15,060
First Communions
1998: 23,721
2007: 19,437
Marriages
1998: 8,896
2007: 4,213
Deaths
1998: 18,847
2007: 19,437
Priests of the Archdiocese
(as corrected on 2/28)
1998: 971
2007: 785
I've checked the numbers above and there are no typos! In a day or two I'll offer some comment on my take on the shift these statistics represent.
I cannot claim to have read the entire Pew survey, but I checked enough of it to note that it is well-designe,d and I consider it trustworthy.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your second letter on the survey, Concord Pastor, I think the decline in Catholic religious practice began before 1998.
Humanae Vitae had several consequences: some Catholics adhered to its strictures; some did not and reconciled their consequences to their actions, believing the importance of limiting their families outweighed the dictates of Humanae Vitae; and some simply left the Church.
Meanwhile, the earlier invention of the Pill had already been the greatest influence on sexual mores in the twentieth century - and on times to come! Living together without marriage, the delay of marriage, leading to the likelihood of fewer children, the proliferation of more kinds of consumer goods, which created more material wants, the necessity of both parents working outside the home to fulfill material needs, and, I think, very importantly, the combination of the laity often not being given the responsiblities described to them by Vatican II and their discovery of how their value seemed to be more appreciated by other religious traditons - this long list covers only some of the possible reasons for "falling away", as we called it in the long ago.
As for other religious traditions -I do think materialism affects them as well!
I better stop now. I'm lucky if anyone has read all this as it is!
Maeve:I read your whole comment! And your points are well taken. I didn't mean to suggest that the decline began in 1998. I was only using the statistics made available through the archdiocesan directory. You are correct in tracing the trajectory much further back. Still, the drop off in the last decade + has been dramatic.
ReplyDeleteConcord Pastor,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your prompt response to my comment on the Pew survey and reasons for its conclusions. I have been trying to think of the reasons the dropoff became precipitate after 1998.
I wonder if the fact that the children born in the baby bust - all the 1970s, maybe part of the 1980s; I am not sure of its boundaries - grew up to a world different than that of their parents, who were born from somewhere in the late 40s into the 50s. Unlike people born in the Great Depression and early 40s, when there was more faith and trust in the governmental as well as the religious world, the later-born parents were involved in - or watched - the Viet Nam war and its protesters (who were right, although not always for the right reasons). I cannot forget the death of hope and optimism when Jack Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Everything played out onscreen; the 68 Chicago riots, Martin Luther King's and Robert Kennedy's assassinations,the
Watergate scandal, Nixon's
resignation, the growth of corporate greed and cheating; John 23d and Vatican II were flashes of hope, but the brightness did not last.
I do not believe in unquestioning acceptance of authority, but I wonder if it is not true that many people today refuse to have any kind of trust in authority at all! Perhaps the excesses of the religious right are an attempt (if mistaken)at counterbalance.