The report was released just Monday. The results are in...
Americans are fickle about their religion!
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released the results of their 35,000 person poll concluding, "Americans not only change jobs, change where they live, and change spouses... they change religions too."
Yahoo News reports:
According to Pew, 28% of American adults have left the faith of their childhood for another one. And that does not even include those who switched from one Protestant denomination to another; if it did, the number would jump to 44%.
Some other interesting facts from the report:
- one third of Americans raised Catholic have left the church
- two thirds of Jehovah's Witnesses have left that church
- the single biggest "winner" of a group that has changed their minds was the group called "unaffiliated" (including athiests and agnotics) who lost 50% of their original group to one church or another.
- the highest rates for marrying within one's own faith were Hindus (90%) and Mormons (83%)
The summary of the report has a nice chart that summarizes it pretty well. The actual report web page is pretty interesting, even at a glance. You can look at an AFFILIATIONS page that breaks down the percentage of people from each religion in the US, or look at a MAP that shows you the percentage of US adults affiliated with certain groups per state, or even look at the PORTRAITS of a particular religious group, detailing the demographic characteristics such as age, ethnicity, educational level, and income level.