Churches experience greatest population shift

Apr 19, 2015 Editorial

A new survey on religion in America finds that more than one-quarter of American adults (28 percent) have left the faith in which they were raised in favour of another religion. Or, as in my case, for no religion at all – a rising trend in our increasingly secularized society.
It is such a national trend that the largest religious group in 23 states, and counting, is labeled as “unaffiliated,” according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. This “dramatic transformation,” as the study notes, reflects our ever-evolving religious and spiritual landscape.
Religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid,” the study concludes, noting that it is fundamentally reshaping American politics and culture.
Beyond the 23 states with the largest religiously unaffiliated populations, there are 15 states where the second-largest religious group is religiously unaffiliated. Indiana fits this latter description, where white evangelical Protestants still comprise our largest religious group (29 percent), followed by unaffiliated (21 percent). In Illinois, unaffiliated ranks Number one at 22 percent, followed by white Catholics at 19 percent.
“Unaffiliated is much easier to say than, ‘I made a choice to not be a part of organized religion,” said Melinda Spangenberg, of Valparaiso. “Simpler to say, but this was not a simple decision. It was an evolutionary process for me.”
She wrote to me a detailed and insightful 1,800-word essay on her process from organized faith to unaffiliated status. Other readers also offered their evolutionary path from organized religion to their personal ethos. If space allowed, I would love to share them with you in their entirety. Each one echoed what Spangenberg told me.
“The one thing I had going for me was my unshakable belief in God,” she wrote. Like many of the disillusioned and disappointed believers who contacted me, Joellen Zegarac, of Hobart, was born into the Roman Catholic faith. Not anymore.
I attended private Catholic schools for both grade and high school,” she said. “I married in the church and baptized my children in the Catholic Church. I sent my children to Catholic schools. My generation was taught to believe and never question.”
And then all hell broke loose within the Catholic Church, with pedophile priests, cover-ups and financial payoffs to protect the church, she said.
“All the money spent by the church to defend the offenders, and payments made to victims is in itself criminal,” she said. “I am unaffiliated with the church because it betrayed my trust. I have not lost my faith in the Lord, but have lost my faith in the church.”
Other once-affiliated believers now grapple alone with other spiritual dilemmas.
“Constant movement best characterizes the American religious marketplace, as every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents,” it states. “Those that are growing as a result of religious change are simply gaining new members at a faster rate than they are losing members. Conversely, those that are declining in number because of religious change simply are not attracting enough new members to offset the number of adherents who are leaving those particular faiths.”
Men are significantly more likely than women to claim no religious affiliation. Jehovah’s Witnesses have the lowest retention rate of any religious tradition. Only 37 percent of all those who say they were raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses still identify themselves as such, a study says.
In Guyana, there is a similar movement among the religions. The traditional churches have observed a decline in population while the Pentecostal churches have seen dramatic increases. It may be the order of service, or it may be the youthful congregation because most of the churchgoers are very young people with pep in their forms of worship.
These churches are the places where many seek solace and healing because as one medical doctor and church elder proclaimed, the church has the greatest number of AIDS patients.
They all believe in faith healing and desperately need to be healed.

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