The presumption of a Protestant framework for understanding the American character is now a thing of the past. We are an increasingly pluralistic society, and we Protestants now have to think much about how we can contribute to the common good as simply just one more voice in the American choir.”
- Richard J. Mouw president of Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, Calif.
The quote from Mr. Mouw is in reaction to findings from an exhaustive study on shifts in U.s. religious identification by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. According to the Los Angeles Times:
Barely 51 percent of Americans are Protestants, and among 18- to 29-year-olds, just 43 percent identify with this branch of Christianity, according to the study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Protestants have always held a majority status in the United States.
At the same time, more than four in 10 adults — 44 percent — have switched religious affiliations or abandoned ties to a specific religion, according to the survey, which provides one of the most detailed looks at U.S. religious affiliation.
Slightly more than 16 percent of us are unaffiliated with any religion, and there are more than twice as many atheists/agnostics (4 percent) in the country than there are observant Jews (1.7 percent):
According to the study, 78.4 percent of Americans are Christians, about 5 percent belong to other faith traditions and 16.1 percent are unaffiliated with any religion.
Secular unaffiliated Americans account for 6.3 percent of the population; religious unaffiliated, 5.8 percent; atheists, 1.6 percent; and agnostics, 2.4 percent.
At 1.7 percent of the population, Jews make up the next-largest religious group. Buddhists are 0.7 percent of the population; Muslims 0.6 percent; and Hindus and New Age followers, both 0.4 percent.
The study noted that Protestantism is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation, encompassing hundreds of denominations loosely grouped around three “fairly distinct” religious traditions — evangelical Protestant churches (26.3 percent), mainline Protestants (18.1 percent) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9 percent).
Evangelicals make up the nation’s single-largest religious tradition, followed by Catholics, who comprise nearly one-fourth of Americans.
Pew also found that declines in the ranks of Catholics of European descent are being countered in the Southwest by the influx of Latin Americans.
I decided not to be happy about that poll because it sounds like they are saying most Americans have left traditional Protestant denominations like Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian. But they haven’t left nondenominational Protestant churches, aka, the huge megachurches on every corner not claimed by Walgreens or CVS, such as Lakewood, Potter’s House, New Life, etc. Attendance at those Protestant churches is off the charts and growing.