{"id":160,"date":"2008-02-25T21:26:51","date_gmt":"2008-02-25T21:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html"},"modified":"2008-02-25T21:26:51","modified_gmt":"2008-02-25T21:26:51","slug":"interfaith-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html","title":{"rendered":"Interfaith America"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A landmark <a href=\"http:\/\/religions.pewforum.org\/\">Pew study <\/a>on religion was released today and is being discussed far and<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/crunchycon\/2008\/02\/religion-in-america-2008.html?WT.mc_id=HOMEBLOGS\"> wide<\/a>.  A couple things leap out of it to me that may have been downplayed elsewhere.<br \/>\n1.  Religion is a very competitive marketplace.  One in three Americans have changed faiths.  And if you count switching denominations within Christianity, nearly HALF OF AMERICANS have changed religions.  Forty-four percent, and the number grows if you get into the guts of the survey.  This confirms something I&#8217;ve been soapboxing about for a while now:  Denomination is dying in America.  Religion is no longer something that&#8217;s passed down from our parents, like genes.  Religions must compete, the same as political parties, television networks, hospitals, and laundry detergent.  Americans are making their own faith, as they make up their minds about everything else.  This is good news for citizens and bad news for ossified religious institutions, but make no mistake:  It will change the nature of religion, making it more user-friendly, and perhaps more watered-down, but ultimately more flexibile and practical.  It&#8217;s die or adapt.<br \/>\nConsider just a few facts from the survey:  Half of Protestants have changed denominations or left their faith entirely.  Half.  Twelve percent of adults describe themselves as religious but having no affiliation whatsoever.<br \/>\n2.  Protestants make up only half of the United State population now.  That&#8217;s down from nearly 100% of Americans in 1776 and around 80% of Americans just a century ago.  And they&#8217;re dying out at faster rates.  In the next decade, the United States will become a minority Protestant country.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, Catholics have a different challenge.  One-third of Catholics have left the Church in recent years.  The Catholic population has dipped from 25% to 24%.  Why such a small dip?  The browning of the Catholic church.  Hispanic immigrants have filled the pews.  Thirty million Americans are now Catholics.  The largest bloc of religious people in California, for example, is Catholic.  Seems odd on the surface, but makes sense when you think about it &#8212; fewer Italian and Irish as the East Coast and Midwest.  If you&#8217;re a Catholic priest today, hope you like the sun.<br \/>\n3.  Finally, and this is the least-reported stat in the survey, from my early scanning.  Twenty-seven percent of Americans are married to someone of a different faith.  If you count different denominations of Christianity, the number rises to 37%.  Nearly forty percent of American adults are in an interfaith marriage.  That means in more than a third of U.S. households, the dinner table converation involves balancing interfaith tensions and opportunities.  Considering the number of people in their 20&#8217;s who are unafffiliated &#8212; more than a third &#8212; and that that process begins in the teenage years, the number of interfaith conversations at dinner easily exceeds half the tables.  This is a major development, and to me a very positive one.  These American dinner table conversations, while tense, are preparing Americans to deal with an interfaith world and allowing us to be pioneers in the next great religious evolution:  the acceptance of different faiths into the religious landscape.<br \/>\nWe are now officially in the age of Interfaith America.<br \/>\n<em>PS:  I&#8217;ll be in CNN American Morning on Tuesday, April 26th to discuss the survey.  I hope to post a YouTube.  <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A landmark Pew study on religion was released today and is being discussed far and wide. A couple things leap out of it to me that may have been downplayed elsewhere. 1. Religion is a very competitive marketplace. One in three Americans have changed faiths. And if you count switching denominations within Christianity, nearly HALF&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Interfaith America - Feiler Faster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interfaith America - Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A landmark Pew study on religion was released today and is being discussed far and wide. A couple things leap out of it to me that may have been downplayed elsewhere. 1. Religion is a very competitive marketplace. One in three Americans have changed faiths. And if you count switching denominations within Christianity, nearly HALF&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-25T21:26:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"bfeiler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Interfaith America - Feiler Faster","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Interfaith America - Feiler Faster","og_description":"A landmark Pew study on religion was released today and is being discussed far and wide. 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And if you count switching denominations within Christianity, nearly HALF&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html","og_site_name":"Feiler Faster","article_published_time":"2008-02-25T21:26:51+00:00","author":"bfeiler","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html","name":"Interfaith America - Feiler Faster","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-25T21:26:51+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-25T21:26:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2008\/02\/interfaith-america.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Interfaith America"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/","name":"Feiler Faster","description":"The Blog of Bestselling Author and Commentator Bruce Feiler","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8","name":"bfeiler","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","caption":"bfeiler"},"description":"Bruce Feiler is one of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most popular voices on faith, family, and finding meaning in everyday life. He is the best-selling author of nine books, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and America's Prophet, and one of only a handful of writers to have four consecutive New York Times nonfiction bestsellers in the last decade. He is also the writer\/presenter of the PBS miniseries WALKING THE BIBLE. His latest book, The Council of Dads, tells the uplifting story of how friendship and community can help one survive life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s greatest challenge. For more information, please visit brucefeiler.com or councilofdads.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/author\/bfeiler"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}