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According to Wade Clark Roof, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who has studied boomers' attitudes toward God, about a third have never strayed from church. Another one-fourth of boomers are defectors who have returned to religious practice -- at least for now. The returnees are usually less tied to tradition and less dependable as church members than the loyalists. They are also more liberal, which deepens rifts over issues like abortion and homosexuality...
...returnees are still vastly outnumbered by the 42% of baby boomers who remain dropouts from formal religion. Roof's polling, however, found that most said they felt their children should receive religious training -- creating an opportunity that churches are rushing to meet. Two potent events that might draw dropouts back to the fold are having children and facing at mid-life a personal or career crisis that reminds boomers of the need for moorings. "You have to start thinking about God in the face of how to raise children in a society that has lost all connection to God," says...
When West Europeans drop out of church, as large majorities do, they typically lose interest in belief too, but America remains unpromising ground for atheism and agnosticism. One of the most intriguing discoveries in Roof's research for A Generation of Seekers (Harper San Francisco) is the growth of what he calls "believers but not belongers." Americans who leave religious institutions do not necessarily abandon religious faith. Even most dropouts say they believe in God; though one-third also believe in reincarnation, ghosts and astrology. The God of their understanding is not necessarily the personal, all-powerful and all-knowing...
...pain. For Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, nearly half the children born into the church end up leaving for good. Six major denominations report a combined net membership loss of 6.2 million, to a current 22.2 million, since the mid-1960s. Despite its many problems, Catholicism has held its own. By Roof's survey, 70% of those raised as Jews have dropped out, a disastrous loss that coincides with low birthrates, a steep increase of intermarriage with non-Jews, and the slim odds that children from such marriages will end up practicing the faith...
...managed competition seems to be designed for yet another patient, the private insurers. The insurance industry has been languishing because demand for its product keeps shrinking as prices shoot through the roof, and whimpering because a majority of Americans -- the ones who favor a single, public-sector insurer -- would just as soon see it in hospice care...