A sweeping new study of religious affiliation in the United States finds a country in which Protestants are becoming a minority, Catholicism is becoming heavily Hispanic, and the number of people who say they are not affiliated with any religion is growing.
The study, which is the most comprehensive such examination in at least a half century, finds the United States to be in a period of unprecedented religious fluidity, in which 44 percent of American adults have left the denomination of their childhood for another denomination, another faith, or no faith at all.
The Boston Globe had this brief report. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life conducted the study.
In his snarky book “Why Catholics Can’t Sing: The Culture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste”, Thomas Day talks about how influential the Irish were, a group that was used to silence in church, and therefore didn’t promulgate a culture of congregational singing. Now that Hispanic culture is ascendant, it will be interesting to see how that changes.