I think this explains a lot of it...
Posted on 04/27/2009 12:55:36 PM PDT by LibWhacker
The U.S. is a nation of religious drifters, with about half of adults restlessly switching faith affiliation at least once during their lives, a new survey has found.
And the reasons behind all the swapping depend greatly on whether one grows up kneeling at Roman Catholic Mass, praying in a Protestant pew or occupied with nonreligious pursuits, according to a report issued Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
While Catholics are more likely to leave the church because they stopped believing its teachings, many Protestants are driven to trade one Protestant denomination or affiliation for another because of changed life circumstances, the survey found.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
My wife says her Mom was a member of the Religion of the Month Club.
Wow, at least once during their lives...
Startling...
It’s interesting how curious about religion the liberal institutions are. I’m sure they’re just trying to instill renewed support for religion.
Doesn’t matter what team you play for, as long as you’re in the game.
...restlessly switching faith affiliation at least once during their lives...
“Americans may change doctrinal churches like most people change socks, but they don’t often leave the Christian FAITH. There is a difference and the un-churched writer failed to grasp the nuance!”
Exactly. They said people change because of “changed life circumstances.” That happened to us. We attended a Presbyterian church before we moved...now we go to a nearby Methodist church because it’s more convenient.
Point us, we’re still practicing Christianity....which is the whole point. Not which building you’re in.
Yep, half are “restlessly switching” — once every 70 years, lol!
Amen. And Jesus is only worried about his Universal Church of believers anyway...
Good point!
“The survey found that Catholicism has suffered the greatest net loss in all the religion switching. Nearly six in ten former Catholics who are now unaffiliated say they left Catholicism due to dissatisfaction with Catholic teachings on abortion and homosexuality. About half cited concerns about Catholic teachings on birth control and roughly four in ten named unhappiness with Catholicism’s treatment of women.”
I should note that the people who left the Church are LIBERALS. And I’m not sure what’s the deal with “treatment of women.” What, they’re not permitted to serve as priests? That’s mistreatment? Did these gals who departed wish to become priests?
I think this explains a lot of it...
To be technical, I guess you could even say Jesus changed religions. When I mentioned to my kids recently that Jesus was Jewish, my wife chimed in, “He wasn’t a Christian?”
That’s certainly too close to the truth for my comfort.
It shows a true level of ignorance to describe movement within orthodox Christian denominations as “changing faiths.” The essentials of the Christian faith revolve around the deity of Christ and His saving and redeeming us. The remainder of the trappings of the various Christian churches involve preferences of worship modes and doctrinal distinctions.
Changing faith would be movement from orthodox Christianity to the Mormonism, Judaism, Islam and Atheism.
While the different Christian denominations may look like war to outsiders in reality it is just sibling rivalries or some other family squabble.
>>Americans may change doctrinal churches like most people change socks, but they don’t often leave the Christian FAITH. There is a difference and the un-churched writer failed to grasp the nuance!<<
Yup. I hold no alegence to any particular “church organization”. I am Christian and feel relatively comfortable in any “christian” church.
My best friend wrote a book on the Church in the US called “And no religion, too”. Frankly I agree with a lot of what he said:
http://edwardgoblebooks.com/
A footnote on the book:
“
The organizational arrows of the Western Church all point in. We have become so accustomed to focusing our ministry efforts internally that we are no longer culturally relevant. We have left the shaping of the culture to an irreligious society that is happy to watch us spend God’s resources on sprawling campuses and programming while they quietly shape the culture and remove God’s name from public discourse.”
Agreed. It’s a poorly written headline, as usual. A statement like “people change denominations...” would be more accurate, because few of us ever leave our Christian faith.
In my experience, there is plenty of wandering back and forth between Presbyterian and Methodist but it doesn’t mean anything from a religious belief perspective.
Some mainline Protestant churches have radically transformed themselves over the last 100 years, so it isn’t always so much a Protestant shopping around for a new church to fit comfortably with his personal beliefs but his search for what may have disappeared entirely from his existing church to be replaced by happy-talk, social networking, and PC prayers. It is the tradition of Protestant denominations from their beginning for new denominations to spring up one after another, flourish and then fade, replaced by a yet new version. One Church alone endures, sometimes in spite of itself.
Even the title’s propaganda: Americans switch religions early and often? What, when they’re seven years old, and then again once every year thereafter? The survey actually says, half of them switch denominations at least once (I’ll bet very few switch two or three or more times). Half never switch. So where does the AP get “early and often?” Sheesh! Satan’s little liberal helpers are so transparent it’s pathetic.
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