April 27, 2009
Study explores reasons people change faiths
by Meredith Heagney
The Columbus Dispatch
A new report released today explores how and why Americans move from one faith to another, from religion to no religion, and sometimes, back again.
Most people raised without a religious affiliation now belong to a religion, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
Eighty percent of people who grew up Protestant stayed Protestant, but more than a quarter of them switched denominations.
In Catholicism, 68 percent of people raised in the faith have stayed put. Most former Catholics say they gradually drifted away from the faith. A majority of Catholics who became unaffiliated with any religion were unhappy with church teachings on abortion and homosexuality.
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