Faith in Flux?

A recent CCN article by Richard Greene argues that rather than Americans losing their faith - which has been inferred by several leading studies - they are simply switching between various faiths and denominations over the course of their lifetime.

The article uses Ingrid Case, an Episcopalian turned Quaker, as a case study to highlight the rather startling fact that over half of American adults have changed religion at least once in their lives. Gregory Smith, a researcher at the Pew Forum puts this down to the religious "free market" that exists in America, by which various denominations can cater - both theologically and otherwise - towards their niche target audience. The study indicates that more than 4 in 10 American adults are no longer members of the religion that they were brought up in as children.

But what is most interesting about the study is that it argues that "some factors that might be expected to drive people away from religion -- such as sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, or a belief that science 'disproves' religion -- actually play a very small role". The study seems to show that the moving between denominations and faiths is a more gradual change, rather than "carefully considered, conscious decision-making".

First of all, I find it astounding that a person's decision to change their faith is not based on careful consideration and conscious decision making. I realize that for many religious believers their faith is based on personal experience and emotion rather than simply the raw intellectual arguments for the truth claims of a specific religion, but surely there must be intellectual backing for those considering changing their faith?

Secondly, while the number of people who were raised Catholic and then became Protestant is 5%, the number of people raised protestant who have switched to a different protestant denomination is a staggering 15%.

There seem to be 2 options for this. First, evangelical Christians are realizing that science does indeed disprove the literal biblical story of 6 day creation and a young earth model, and are therefore moving towards mainline protestantism. Second, many mainline protestants are becoming unhappy with the more liberal tendencies of their church and are moving towards the more traditional, conservative branches of evangelical protestantism.

Certainly the data from the Trinity College survey would indicate that the second is the most likely. Perhaps this does indeed prove that "not all of this is the product of carefully considered, conscious decision-making" after all.