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...premature. Over the past few years, neo-atheists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens have taken up the cry again, encouraged by studies showing that the percentage of Americans who report no religious affiliation has more than doubled since 1990. But as a new report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows, it is a mistake to conclude that more Americans are rejecting religion. Leaving church, it turns out, doesn't mean losing faith...
...When Pew researchers set out last year to map the U.S.'s religious landscape with a groundbreaking survey of more than 35,000 people, they expected fairly straightforward answers to questions about individual religious affiliations. (The survey included more detailed questions about religious beliefs and practices than have been asked in past censuses; the 2010 census will not ask about religion at all.) What the Pew researchers didn't anticipate is that fully 44% of Americans have changed faiths at least once. Some converted from one religion or denomination to another; others grew up with no tradition only to adopt...
...phenomenon," says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "We needed to make greater sense of it." So the researchers followed up with more than 2,800 of the original respondents who had reported changing religious traditions and asked why they had decided to leave and/or join a faith...
...Despite the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S., the Pew study discovered some commonalities among those who switch. Former Catholics who either switched to another tradition or became unaffiliated cited unhappiness with church teachings on abortion and homosexuality and disagreements over the role of women in the church. Protestants were more likely to switch because they married someone from another tradition. And if they eventually left religion altogether, they were most likely of all formerly religious adherents to have tried several different traditions before giving up - 38% of unaffiliated former Protestants had switched traditions twice, and 32% had switched...
Communities like St. Helens often have more invested in the newcomers' success than they might imagine. A Pew Hispanic Center survey in November found that the median income for noncitizen Hispanics fell at a rate almost six times as high as that of other workers in 2008. In January 2009, a new report said more than half that group reported being worried that their home will end up in foreclosure. Many illegal immigrants are homeowners, and driving them from their houses would be a Pyrrhic victory for any community fighting blight. Salvador's father-in-law Alejandro, an undocumented immigrant...