A recent survey result concludes that Catholics and Protestants are more inclined to reject their Christian Faith than to change their church affiliation.
The three-wave Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES)—which surveyed the same individuals in 2010, 2012, and 2014, and started with 9,500 respondents—reported how few Catholics and Protestants have changed affiliations and how many have moved from one denomination (or nondenomination) to another.
During this period, Catholics remained pretty attached to their tradition; they were about half as likely as Americans on average to change their affiliation: 8.8 percent vs. 18.9 percent. When Catholics do switch, they largely shift toward having no faith, with 6.4 percent switching to agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular.”
For Catholics, transitioning to another religious tradition is extremely rare. Of the 2,112 Catholics in the CCES sample, fewer than 50 left: 39 became Protestants, 6 became Orthodox Christians, and 3 became Buddhists.
The Catholic sample declined by 1 percent between 2010 and 2014, though this does not suggest a decline in Catholicism as a whole. (This data only includes individuals who switch into or out of Catholicism as adults, and excludes birth or death rates, which also have a tremendous impact on the total number of adherents.)
Protestants—the largest religious tradition in the US, making up 42 percent of Americans in the 2010 CCES panel—show similar patterns to their Catholic counterparts.
Protestants largely stay Protestant, defecting at similar rates as Catholics during the four-year period: 8.8 percent vs. 9.1 percent. The vast majority of those who leave Protestantism also become nones. Of those who identified as Protestants in 2010, 7.4 percent became nones by 2014, with 5.7 percent identifying as nothing in particular.
The number of Protestants who switched into another religious tradition is minuscule. Out of the sample of more than 4,000 Protestants, just 32 became Catholics, 7 became Buddhists, and less than 5 became Mormons, Jews, Muslims, or Hindus.
The lesson for Christian leaders should be clear. When the pews in church are empty, it’s not because members of the congregation have left to join other Christian denominations, it’s because they have abandoned the Christian Faith itself.
I have maintained that most of the controversy within the Catholic Church these days has gone largely unnoticed and ignored by the vast majority of the faithful. Few are aware of the tensions which exist within the College of Bishops over many of the reforms which Pope Francis has initiated during his five-year Pontificate.
I further suggest that most American Catholics have long since ceased to pay attention to what the Bishops have to say about this or that moral issue and largely decide for themselves what is morally acceptable in a way that allows them to still remain members of the Catholic community.
Should the Catholic faithful begin to become as divided as the Bishops, I believe there will be very little to be evidenced in the manner of a public schism.
I have and continue to hold to the belief that there will simply be a quiet exodus from the Church among those who will not accept a return to a more conservative and, in some ways, demanding enunciation of Catholicism.
The good news for the moment is that Catholics (and Protestants) have not yet given in to the secularism that has decimated the Christian Faith on the European Continent.
The bad news is that the secularist trend is advancing in America and the abandonment of the Faith in a quiet revolt of sorts is on the horizon.
The Pontificate of Pope Francis has provided a shelter, a harbor within which disaffected Catholics have found a place to anchor their faith for the time being.
It will fall to Pope Francis’ successor to determine whether the Church will continue to welcome and comfort those on the edges of Catholicism or whether the Church will insist upon an orthodox adherence to traditional teaching and ritual which will result in a silent defection of many whose Catholicism is tenuous at best.
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