Posted on 02/26/2008 10:44:25 AM PST by Between the Lines
Evangelical Christianity has become the largest religious tradition in this country, supplanting Roman Catholicism, which is slowly bleeding members, according to a survey released yesterday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Evangelical Protestants outnumber Catholics by 26.3 percent (59 million) to 24 percent (54 million) of the population, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, a massive 45-question poll conducted last summer of more than 35,000 American adults.
"There is no question that the demographic balance has shifted in past few decades toward evangelical churches," said Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum. "They are now the mainline of American Protestantism."
The traditional mainline Protestant churches, which in 1957 constituted about 66 percent of the populace, now count just 18 percent as adherents.
Although one in three Americans are raised Roman Catholic, only one in four adults describe themselves as such, despite the huge numbers of immigrants swelling American churches, researchers said.
"Immigration is what is keeping them afloat," said John Green, a Pew senior fellow. "If everyone who was raised Catholic stayed Catholic, it'd be a third of the country."
Those who leave Catholicism mostly either drop out of church entirely or join Pentecostal or evangelical Protestant churches, Pew Forum director Luis Lugo said. One out of every 10 evangelicals is a former Catholic, he said, with Hispanic Catholics leaving at higher rates; 20 percent of them end up in evangelical or Pentecostal churches.
"It's a desire for a closer experience of God," he said. "It's not so much disenchantment with the teachings of the Catholic Church but the pull of what they see in Pentecostalism."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
You cannot be afraid of the opinions of your family when making a true religious decision. It says that right in the Gospel, if Catholics would read it.
But what you gain in the spiritual progress of the individual qua individual, you necessarily lose in institutional power, since all the security-giving structures fall away. It's a trade-off. The Church needs to do this, though. Gradually, as their parishioners are able to accept it. If parisioners hear it from their own church, they will accept it.
“Statistically, less than half of Catholics believe in the ‘real presensce’...Good preaching (motivational speaking, to you) DOES bring you closer to God...”
What a shame. Don’t Christians read the Gospel of John, Chapter 6?
That's one reason why some people left. Many people remember and yearn for the traditional pre-Vatican II Mass. In response, more and more Catholic churches finally are offering Latin Mass these days.
That is probably true at first. But, once those same people start their own families, there's a tendency to want to return to the Church. But, with news of the scandals surrounding the Catholic Church, some cradle Catholics look elsewhere while others drop out of religious faith altogether. Meanwhile, many Catholic schools (here in our state) are closing (thanks mostly to the public school monopoly). So, there's nothing to keep Catholics in the Catholic Church... except faith. The scandals lead them to question their loyalty and faith. And so it goes...
I’ve seen the questions that comprise polls that provide results like these. The difficulty with these polls is that several of the options provided to those questioned sound similar theologically. In fact, they are similar theologically.
If someone read these theological definitions to me over the phone, I might have a bit of trouble picking out the uniquely Catholic definition. Yet, I’m not entirely theologically illiterate.
Nonetheless, I believe in the Real Presence and transubstantiation.
I think that these polls, although they reveal a significant amount of lack of theological understanding on the part of many in-the-pew Catholics, underestimate actual belief in the Real Presence.
I think that if you asked rather, “Do you believe that the Blessed Sacrament is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ under the appearance of bread and wine?” you’d get a much higher rate of affirmation.
sitetest
Very true. EWTN is on the cusp of the trasformation of the Catholic Church in the US, from the ethnocultural institution to the universal pastor it is supposed to be.
The Boston Archdiocese has been attempting to close and/or merge Parishes for years with little success. It is an ongoing battle which will take years to solve.
It appears that many Catholics are "married" to their home Parish, not the Catholic Church.
I'm betting that less than half of the people of Mexican origin now living in the USA are members of any Catholic parish. Most of them are unchurched. They may answer for polling purposes that they're "Catholic," but that's nostalgia, not practice.
Which is a vast tragedy.
Daughter Zion, Jerusalem, and Mary are all types of the Church. As in "Holy Mother Church."
In 20 years I'll probably be dead (or very, very old). You'll probably live long enough to see Non-Christians as the majority in the United States.
If you haven't seen the Pew Poll questioneer your understanding is nothing but pure conjecture.
“If you haven’t seen the Pew Poll questioneer your understanding is nothing but pure conjecture.”
I’m unaware of a Pew poll, but I actually reviewed the questions of a frequently-cited Gallup poll of a few years back. Thus, for the oft-cited GALLUP poll, no, I'm not conjecturing. I made that clear in my last post.
sitetest
On the other hand, I could assert that the rate of growth is misleading because it's such a small diocese: we went from just 36 to 44 parishes, and from 33,000 Catholics to 50,000, and still represent only 2% of the population of the 34 counties of East Tennessee which constitute our diocese.
All of which fits into a two larger generalization: (1) the Catholic population (of people and parishes) is stagnating or shrinking in the Snow Belt and Rust Belt states, and growing in the South and Southwest, and (2) if it's numbers you want, check out the Bristol Speedway.
Our diocese is building yet another Catholic high school. The new principal came to Mass last week, Campion - she’s one of your Nashville Dominicans. It was wonderful to see a young, joyful, habited sister. Private groups opened another Catholic-tradition high school a couple of years ago when the bishop was still undecided on where the diocesan one would be because their kids couldn’t wait for a Catholic education. I’m not sure how viable it will be once the diocesan one opens. The elementary school at our parish has set up so many temporary buildings that if I ever tried to cut through I’d need a ball of string.
Four seems to be the average in our parish, but we have got a couple of nine-kid curve-wreckers. The vans in our parking lot are not mini - they're commuter.
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