Crossroads Podcast: Why Current Religion Trends Are So Confusing

It’s a question that I hear several times a year: If a nondenominational Christian joins an Eastern Orthodox parish, did they “convert” to Orthodoxy? To state the matter another way, did this person “change religions”?

That question is at the heart of a new Pew Research poll that we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, along with yet another recent Pew poll that led to this headline in The New York Times: “Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Appears to Have Halted, Major Study Shows.”

While we were recording this week, I told Lutheran Public Radio listeners that I was well aware that much of the information I was sharing was rather complex, if not downright confusing. That was kind of the point. When it comes to statistical trends in religion, we live in a very confusing age.

Let’s go back to the “conversion” issue. In the online version of the latest blast of numbers from Pew — “Around the World, Many People Are Leaving Their Childhood Religions” — the researchers explained: 

We use the term religious switching instead of “conversion” because the changes can take place in many directions — including from having been raised in a religion to being unaffiliated.

We count changes between large religious categories (such as from Buddhist to Christian or from Hindu to unaffiliated), but not switching within a world religion (such as from one Christian denomination to another).

In other words, this is merely one level of change in America and around the world. Under the surface, things are even more complex. How? OK, consider these questions: 

* If Catholics in Latin America join Pentecostal Protestant churches, are they changing religions? Is that a news story? Well, in recent decades this has been one of the most important news stories on the religion beat. Ask leaders of America’s Democratic Party if it matters when waves of Latinos become evangelicals or charismatics.

* If Southern Baptists join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are they “converting” to a new church, a new faith? What if they become Unitarians?

* If people leave the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and align with the more conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, did they — in many ways, in terms of doctrine — change faiths? What about the other way around?

There are many other variations on this theme in the podcast.

Obviously, this new Pew poll is interesting and newsworthy ( read the Crux report here). What I am arguing is that the changes inside the numbers are even more complex. 

For example, here is the top of The New York Times piece that I mentioned earlier, focusing on the other Pew Research report: 

For decades, social scientists, demographers and Christians themselves have told a familiar story about the state of Christianity in the United States: The country was rapidly secularizing. The Christian population was shrinking, on its way to becoming a minority religion. America may have been some years behind Europe in the process, but its pews were emptying steadily and inexorably.

Now, that narrative may be changing.

After years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has been stable for several years, a shift fueled in part by young adults, according to a major new survey from the Pew Research Center. And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, which had grown steadily for years, has also leveled off.

However, inside that relative, and surprising, stability there are other important and newsworthy trends.

The most stunning numbers? Here is the top of a Crisis Magazine report about that Pew study:

Perhaps the most stunning finding in the survey is that for every 100 people who join the Catholic Church, 840 leave. So when you rejoice seeing folks become Catholic at Easter (which you should), remember that more than eight people have left by the back door for each one who’s come in the front.

No other religion has nearly as bad of a join/leave ratio. For every 100 people that become Protestant, 180 leave. That’s bad, but it’s not Catholic bad. Conversely, for every 100 people who leave the religious “nones” (i.e., they join a religion), a full 590 become part of that irreligious cohort.

Where are the former Catholics going? Of all the former Catholics, 56% become religious “nones” and 32% become Protestant.

The news hooks in that information? I have already mentioned the trends among Latino Catholics. But note the Crisis reference to the people — many are young men — who are converting to Catholicism (walking a path similar to those who are becoming Orthodox).

This raises a newsworthy question, once again: Why are some Catholic churches growing, with new members, large families, growing schools and young men who are entering the priesthood? Why are other Catholic churches, in other zip codes or even in the same area, in rapid decline? Is it true that all Latin Mass parishes are growing or just some of them?

I’ll end with one other layer of complexity, inside all of these numbers. What about trends (Ryan Burge threads here) inside the flocks of truly secular “nones” and the radically independent “none of the above” believers? 

Several years ago, I wrote an “On Religion” column about trends in the Czech Republic, one of the world’s most “secular” nations. But things were much more complex under the surface. Here is the overture: 

PRAGUE — The Czech Republic's capital has long been called the "city of 100 spires" and there are many church steeples among all those soaring medieval landmarks.

But along the winding, cobblestone streets, something else is happening at eye level in the bookstores, artsy shops, coffee hangouts and sidewalk posters. This is where yoga mixes with sacred rocks, folk religion bumps into numerology and dark themes in fantasy comics blend into pop versions of Hinduism and Buddhism.

In today's Czech Republic, people are “still asking questions about what is good and what is bad, and questions about life and death,” said Daniel Raus, a journalist and poet known for his years with Czech Radio, covering politics, culture and religion.

“What is different is that (Czechs) are saying, ‘I will decide what is good and I will decide what is bad. No one can tell me what to believe about any of this.’”

Apparently, many Czechs are “secular,” but they are also highly superstitious — believers in what some experts have called “invisible” forms of religion. As “religion” fades, “magic” rises.

Confused? That’s understandable.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.