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Posted on 11/26/2012 5:09:36 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Evangelical Protestants have become more devoted to their religious beliefs over the last three decades, even as Catholics have become less attached to their faith, new research finds.
The denominational differences come even as religious affiliations have decreased overall in America, with the number of people who claim no religious affiliation at all doubling from 7 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2000, said study researcher Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Nevertheless, Schwadel said, these unaffiliated individuals seem to be dropping out of religious institutions that they were previously ambivalent about. People who feel strongly about their faith are as numerous as ever.
"The proportion of Americans who say they have a very strong religious affiliation over time is very stable," Schwadel told LiveScience.
Strength of faith
Schwadel based his findings on a major questionnaire called the General Social Survey, which has been administered to a cross-section of Americans yearly or every other year since 1974. Among the questions on this survey are several about religion, including one that asks how strongly affiliated people feel about their denomination. [8 Ways Religion Impacts Your Life]
By analyzing about 40,000 responses over the decades, Schwadel was able to track changes in how strongly tied people felt to their religion. He found that the total number of strongly affiliated people stayed basically steady around 37 percent, with a small, short-lived bump to 43 percent in 1984 and 1985.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Ping
Sadly, I can’t say I’m surprised.
Nevertheless, Schwadel said, these unaffiliated individuals seem to be dropping out of religious institutions that they were previously ambivalent about. People who feel strongly about their faith are as numerous as ever. "The proportion of Americans who say they have a very strong religious affiliation over time is very stable," Schwadel told LiveScience.
Ping for later
Are the mosques growing?
Nevertheless, Schwadel said, these unaffiliated individuals seem to be dropping out of religious institutions that they were previously ambivalent about. People who feel strongly about their faith are as numerous as ever. “The proportion of Americans who say they have a very strong religious affiliation over time is very stable,” Schwadel told LiveScience.
As humanists celebrate the reality that Christians are falling away from church affiliation, they also assumed they were falling away from their faith. That’s a lie.
The wheat separating from the chaff...It was foretold.
Thats why the Catholic bishops need to stop pandering to liberal minority groups and the government and just take a stand. They're afraid it will cause a loss in membership, but the truth is, if these people don't represent or live Catholic values, why retain them anyway and let them taint the title?
They need to just accept that its going to happen, no matter what they do, because it was foretold in the Bible.
The wheat are separating from the chaff. The goats from the sheep. The lukewarm from the fervent. Just pray and roll with it.
South and central Americans immigrants identify themselves as Catholics culturally, but they also come from a tradition of marxist hatred of their church given Catholic history. American-American catholics don’t have a history of church abuse of power like the foreigners do because of the constitution.
I am not surprised that a larger percentage of Catholics are faithless and rebellous in surveys. That will increase as people from Central and South American roots increases. They came to America from oppressive foreign lands in which the Catholic church played a dark part.
With some segments of the church, you almost have to forget about converting people (at least into that segment of the church)...lest the newbies coming onboard there become like the rest and become worldly like them!
Jesus said the last days before His return would be similar to the days of Noah. Noah and his family were the only believers left on a very populated planet in his time. As we approach the last day, it would stand to reason there will be less and less TRUE BELIEVERS. Many will one day say to Him, “Lord, Lord,” and He will say to them in response, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”
Check out the heavily Roman Catholic area on Northwest Illinois and tri-State area. The same demographic as the heavily populated Roman Catholic Northeast.
To rain on your parade a little, we were talking about an INCREASE in unfaithful Catholics given a survey on the last election. Did your German relatives just move in and increase the number of humanist voters we were discussing from the survey?
I think they were in the base from past years’ data and not part of the increase we were discussing in this thread concerning this survey data. As far as I know, German Catholic socialists are not flocking here in numbers sufficiently to increase the number of humanist voters in the American Catholic population under discussion here. However, humanist catholics from Central and South America are.
That’s okay. Your knee jerk race baiting is understandable. It is hard to keep track of discussions invloving math when you are nursing skin color fears and shame.
One thing about it, there are upward of 30,000 choices for Christian non-Catholics to drop in on, when things don’t go their way. Catholics are split in two, between liberals who demand that the Church swing with the times, and the other half who know the Church and her tenets are timeless, based on natural law and principles of the Creator and Christ Jesus.
Catholics are unhappy with the other half of Catholics, but both halves intend to stay and fight for their vision of the Church, or else they’re gone by now. Both halves know the Church is just that— the Church. The Catholic Church, from which all other formations scattered, left, departed, hence divided and divided infinitum exponentially, on and on, always finding a home somewhere for their own opinion or their own interpretation of the faith.
By and large Catholics won’t do that, they may leave the Church but its not so much to become something else.
There was an increase in humanist Catholic voters in this survey based on this survey under discussion.
There was not an increase in white humanist Catholic base (the number of white catholics taking the survey) - whites are a constant or diminishing base in this Nation.
Given white humanist catholics are not breeding at a large rate or flooding over the borders, the increase was logically from immigration from Central and South America where the Catholic base population increased.
That would probably be those Catholics from South and Central America. They have a long history of faith mixed with power stuggles with the Church so I am not surprised to see them do the opposite of what the church tells them to do when it comes to power.
I’m an Evangelical, and we have a strong growing church.
We also have a Catholic church in town. I have to say, it is relatively robust as well, and also growing.
We are please that many of their women attend our regular Bible Studies. When we asked how they know about us, one lady told us their priest has been sending them over for years. He tells the ladies we have great Bible studies, and they should take advantage of them.
I don’t disagree with you on your points. The border crossing Catholics do come from socialistic and Marxist states. From childhood they may have seen the Church used to advance those philosophies, or at least to stay relevant or at least survive, the Church may have been mixed with the governance of the state. I am hearing in a few places here and there, valid or not, however, that these Catholics from south of the border defy the usual assumptions, and are now as much protestant or nothing at all as they are Catholic.
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