Pew and the U.S. Religious Landscape

Like most religious bloggers, I read numerous articles on the recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by The Pew Forum. I also dug into some of the underlying data and examined all the pertinent charts, graphs, and maps. While the press release is accurate and makes some "astonishing" claims, particularly in regards to the Catholic faith, I've noted some peculiarities as well.

1) "Evangelicals are the largest single group of American Christians (26.3 percent)." Not surprising as Appendix 2 states that Evangelicals consist of people from not less than 112 different Protestant sects. Also, this one big family of Evangelicals contains Seventh Day Adventists (Saturday sabbath), Southern baptists (Sunday sabbath), Oneness Pentacostals (non-Trinitarian, no sacraments) and Orthodox Anglican Church (Trinity, sacraments). Clearly a very distinct, homogenous group of Christians, don't you think?

2) "Catholics are the second largest group of Christians, representing roughly 24 percent of the population." As noted earlier, it takes 112 Protestant sects to equal Catholics. While the Pew survey broke down the various Protestant sects into specific sects of Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc., the Pew folks did not provide a similar breakdown for Catholics. Yes, Roman Catholics comprise the majority of U.S. Catholics, but it would have been nice to get some numbers on Byzantine Catholics, like Melkite Catholics and Chaldean Catholics. For example, the Iraq war has unsettled large numbers of Chaldean Catholics. It would be interesting to see if there has been any measureable influx of Chaldean Catholic refugees into the U.S. The Melkite Catholic Church has been growing in recent years; it would have been nice to know by how much.

3) "The Catholic Church has lost more members than any other religious group" Well, yeah. If more Americans are Catholic than any other Christian group, one would expect the Catholic Church to lose more members. What most news accounts seem to omit is the Catholic Church in the U.S. has a higher retention rate (68%) than Baptists (60%), Methodists and Pentacostals (47%) or any other major Protestant sect. Only Mormons and Jews retain a higher proportion of members than Catholics. Catholics are losing members? So what! Protestants are losing them faster and proportions matter.

4) "...this means roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics." So, if the Catholic Church can reclaim that 10%, then the U.S. population jumps to 35% Catholic? Interesting. More interesting was the bottom of page 4 in chapter 2 which stated "8.3% of the U.S. adult population was raised Baptist but is no longer Baptist, and 4.4% of the adult population was raised Methodist but has since moved away." 24 million is a lot of ex-Baptists. If the SBC could reclaim most of those ex-Baptists, the SBC could double in size. Ditto for the Methodists.

5) "These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not for the offsetting impact of immigration." Good to know that my family is offsetting Catholic losses. Both of my children are foreign-born immigrants, as are a brother and a sister. Everyone is a U.S. citizen by birth, but they are Catholic immigrants nonetheless. Just like great-grandfather who immigrated from Germany about 1870 and helped take the U.S. from 5% Catholic to 12% Catholic a few decades later.

6) "Although Latinos represent just one-in-eight U.S. Catholics age 70 and older (12%), they account for nearly half of all Catholics ages 18-29 (45%)." While I'm perfectly willing to accept that at least 57% of Latinos are Catholic, a Pew survey of Latinos in 2006 had 68% of Latinos as Catholic. While 10% of Latinos could have left the Catholic Church in the last year or two, its not very probable. To be fair, Pew conducted a follow-up survey for comparison in January 2008. This new poll confirmed that the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” had indeed underestimated Latino Catholic affiliation. So while the “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” is one of the best sources of information on religion in the U.S., the Pew Forum does acknowledge that the survey undercounts Catholics.

Part of what makes blogs interesting to read is the opinions and insights of the blogger. What's my take? The Pew survey seems to confirm my hypothesis that Jesus is reunifying His Church. Mainline Protestant sects are rapidly declining. The Reformation seems to have lost it steam. The gravitas of the Catholic Church is attracting more and more people. The Pew survey states 2.6% of Americans are converts to the Catholic faith. Something big is occuring in the Catholic Church and the 21st century is poised to become the Catholic Century in American history.

Source: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey