Pew Report on Religion in America - Relevant in an Election Year

It is an understatement to say that religion can become an issue in an election year in America. Candidates hire special consultants on religion, appear at churches and make sure that their affiliation and devotion is widely known. McCain is a Baptist who criticized some of the most conservative religious leaders in 2000 during his first run, but went on to court them for his 2008 run. Obama has been a member of the same church in Chicago for 20 years but fights stereotyping that he is Muslim (he is not.) Hillary Clinton makes sure to talk religion frequently, and is Protestant, as was Edwards. Huckabee is Baptist, and Romney was the lone Mormon. Giuiliani is Catholic.

Candidates find themselves endorsed by theologians that they disagree/ only partially agree with (Obama, then McCain.) In America, all of this matters.

The 148-page Pew Forum study is the first report of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, which studied more than 35,000 adults selected to represent the US population. America is an overwhelmingly Christian country (80%), but fluid, as 44% of Americans have changed or dropped faiths in their lifetimes, sometimes spiritual though unaffiliated with an organized religion. We have become more pluralistic over time.

Evangelicals make up the largest tradition (26.3%), followed by Catholics (25%), with 10% of Americans being lapsed Catholics (one in three raised in the church had left.) They have been steadily replaced by new Latino immigrants, so much so that one in three Catholics is Latino. Protestants were formerly in the majority, but no longer (now at 51% overall, 43% among those 18-29). Protestants included main denominations such as Presbyterian and Methodist (18.1%), and Evangelicals such as Southern Baptists, Pentecostals (26.3%) and historic black churches (6.9%).

8.4% of Americans are Christians, 5% belong to other faith traditions and 16.1% are unaffiliated. Secular unaffiliated account for 6.3%; religious unaffiliated, 5.8%; atheists, 1.4%, agnostics, 2.4%. We are 1.7% Jewish, 0.7% Buddhist, 0.6% Muslim, 0.4% Hindhu, 0.4% New Age.

America was founded on religious freedom, therefore the principle of separation of church and state was adopted. Individuals may have professed to be of a religion, but we were founded as a nation of individuals doing so, not as a Christian or Protestant nation per se. This understanding is shared by many theologians, but not all.

As the Pew Study was presented in various newspaper articles, radio and television news shows and the like, the emphasis seemed to be on the rather surprisingly high number of Americans who chose to change their religious emphasis from the one they had grown up with. I wonder if the same might be true of political beliefs? We have all met people who have changed their political views over time, and certainly in many cases away from those of their family of origin. We are a young country. Our economy is failing, many of us are searching for something beyond our materialistic desires. Our young have grown up with change, especially in technology.

Maybe Americans really are not afraid of "change" and we have started to come through our desperate clinging to the past - now that's a provocative thought!