New Survey Shows Religion is NOT an Inmutable Charateristic

In opposing gay rights and non-discrimination laws based on sexual orientation in particular, the mouth pieces of the Christian Right steadfastly contend in legal briefs and elsewhere that one’s sexual orientation is not an immutable trait or characteristic but rather is a matter of choice. Therefore, they argue, sexual orientation should have no legal protection. For the sake of argument, I say fine. However, let’s apply the same standard to religion. I suspect the Christianists would quickly want to sing a different song. Reports on the results of a new survey show that religion is like wise not immutable if that is the standard for legal protections (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/25/AR2008022501182.html?hpid=moreheadlines). The fact is that more than forty percent of the respondents have changed their religious affiliation. Hear that Peter LaBarbera and Robert Knight?? Your argument is falling apart!! Among other interesting findings is that the Roman Catholic Church has been especially hard hit by defections, with a nearly 1/3 rate of attrition. Perhaps Benedict XVI’s attempt to return to the 1400’s will accelerate the trend. Here are some story highlights:

America has always been a competitive religious marketplace, but a major survey released yesterday shows a country increasingly exploring different faith identities and ways of worship. More than 40 percent of respondents told pollsters that they had changed their religious affiliation since childhood.

Conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the survey confirms on a grand scale trends that demographers have noted for years: the slipping percentage of Protestants, now down to 51, and the rise of people who call themselves unaffiliated, now at 16 percent, up from similar surveys. The survey also lays out, just weeks before Pope Benedict XVI's first papal visit to the United States, the Catholic Church's challenge here: no American faith group has lost more adherents. Sixty-eight percent of people raised Catholic still identify with their childhood denomination, compared with 80 percent of Protestants and 76 percent of Jews.

More than anything else in the poll, Pew highlighted the fluidity of identity, noting that every group is constantly gaining and losing members. Twenty-eight percent of Americans have left the group they were raised in, switching, for example, from Protestantism to Judaism or from the Orthodox faith to Catholicism. When people who have switched from one Protestant denomination to another are included, the number jumps to 44 percent.

The group that has grown the most is made up of those who are unaffiliated, including people who call themselves atheist and agnostic. Also included in this group are those who said they are "nothing in particular" -- some of whom went on to say religion is "very important" to them. Seven percent of survey respondents said they were raised as unaffiliated, less than half the percentage who call themselves unaffiliated today.

No doubt hate merchants, Pat Robertson and James Dobson will somehow blame the decline in religious belief and affiliation on the “homosexual agenda.”