TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Amie Jo Schaenzer
The Reporter ajschaenzer@fdlreporter.com

People, apparently, are pretty wishy-washy when it comes to religion.

A recent study conducted by the Pew Forum -- one of the largest and most extensive of its kind -- shows Americans are switching religions and choosing to be "unaffiliated" more than ever before, said Brian H. Smith, chairman for the department of religion at Ripon College.

Organized religion throughout the nation, as well as locally, is on the decline, with nearly 16 percent of all men and women today not belonging to any particular affiliation.

The extensive survey released in February shows more than one-quarter of American adults, 28 percent, have either left the church they were raised in or have chosen no religion at all, according to the PewUnited States Religious Landscape Survey.

Smith said the sharp increase locally in contemporary, non-denominational Christian churches shows residents are opting for the more "upbeat services" over the traditional types of worship offered by mainstay Catholic and Protestant churches.

Ken Nabi heads one of the largest evangelical churches in Fond du Lac, Community Church, and says his congregation has seen steady growth over the past 28 years, with a current weekend attendance of 850 to 900 members.

He said many choose Community Church, N6717 Streblow Drive, because the message offered is more in-tune as to what people today want to hear.

Why?

Today, more than in years past, people are looking inward to find peace and longstanding types of worship do not offer the type of spiritual escape they want, Smith said.

"Today, people want an emphasis on the goodness of a person and not so much that they've sinned and they're bad," Smith said. "Traditional services do not nourish their spirit."

Likewise, the Pew research shows the makeup of some of the more traditional types of religion is changing: While 51.3 percent of Americans today claim to be Protestants, the group is fading, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church experienced one of the greatest net losses because of affiliation changes, according to the survey, with one in three Americans being raised Catholic and only 1 in four sticking with Catholicism today.

Despite the changes, the vast majority is still affiliated to a Christian religion. According to Pew research, 78.4 percent of Americans are Christians, while 4.7 percent belong to other religions, including 1.7 percent who are Jewish and 0.7 percent who are Muslim.

In Fond du Lac, changes in religious affiliation have proven gradual, said Michael Ketterhagen, associate professor of theology at Marian University.

Traditions among young people

One in four Americans ages 18 to 29 say they are not affiliated with a religion, according to the survey. Many in this age group —whom Smith teaches at Ripon College — he refers to as "nightstand Buddhists." They keep a Buddhist statue on their nightstand, he said, read Buddhist text because they like the message, but do not practice the religion.

This translates into cherry-picking highly individualized ways to be spiritual and seek faith, Ketterhagen said.

"They pray at night and they get involved in organized religion less," he said. "They still have a strong commitment to connect with God or their own personal spirituality that they call all different types of names. It's more personal and they will pray at night, meditate or go out in the woods to be closer to nature."

In the past, young people have left the church during their high school and college years only to return when they got married and settled down. The Pew survey suggests that is less likely to happen with today's youth.

Smith thinks this demographic niche will continue to mix and match religions to fit their needs, instead of returning to their childhood church. He envisions a type of spiritual smorgasbord — drawing upon Buddhism, for meditation; Judaism, for ethics; and the Lutheran religion for its Christmas and Easter services.

Labels: affiliation, Amie Jo Schaenzer, church, religion, spirituality, youth

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Monday, March 24, 2008

Marketing The God Business

by Laurence D. Cohen

Few enterprises know the marketing challenge of attraction and retention more profoundly than the God business, the churches, religious denominations and faiths and cults and Obama worshipers.

It was sort of easy in the old days. Your parents were some sort of Presbyterians or something, you burst from the womb — and a new Presbyterian was born.

The latest national survey on religion from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggests a marketplace more akin to fast food and cars. The general market leader, Protestants, is losing market share faster than Ford and General Motors. Protestants will soon be less than 50 percent of the American market.

Even among Catholics, where brand loyalty was pretty high, Hispanics are gravitating to the evangelical products — and remaining Catholic customers are calling the 1-800 number and demanding to speak to a manager.

Disgruntled Prayer People

The Catholics did a major brand overhaul a while back, modernizing and updating the product line and sales pitch. As you might expect, many of the existing customers were furious. They don’t want no suburban, guitar-strumming, banner-waving Mass with a cool, new post-Vatican II liturgy and a with-it priest.

There are few barriers to entry in the American religion market; the Hindus and Buddists can open up a church on the corner with much the same ease as more mainline American faiths — and even among the mainline Protestants, there is a casualness among the faithful as to where they attend and to what degree they claim allegiance to one denomination or another. Crest and Colgate receive more loyalty than that.

The Pew survey suggests that about half the adult American population has changed religious affiliation.

The need for sharper marketing among the mainline Protestants has been apparent for years. A poll in 1996 indicated that the only thing most Americans knew about the Lutheran faith, for example, was that it was some sort of religion.

Some of this loss of marketing focus and denominational identity was intentional, of course. One suspects that many students at Wesleyan University in Middletown don’t know why the school is, or was, called Wesleyan — and at Trinity, students might be somewhat fuzzy about why the Book of Common Prayer was the volume of choice in the Trinity College chapel. Yale recently dropped the chapel’s formal United Church of Christ affiliation, without prompting a religious war or even a whimper.

The turmoil in the religious marketplace may or may not be a “crisis.” Many of the Founding Fathers encouraged such competitive energy, to avoid the tyranny of a dominant faith. James Madison praised America’s multiplicity of faiths, “for where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.”

There’s a hint of anti-trust law in that. Praise the Lord.

Labels: affiliation, Catholic, Laurence D. Cohen, marketing, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religion

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Journeys of faith can take different paths

March 8, 2008

By Rosa Salter Rodriguez

...many Fort Wayne-area residents who responded to a request from The Journal Gazette last week to discuss changing faiths say they’ve gone on journeys that led them away from their religious roots. Residents were asked for their stories in light of the findings of the Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one of the largest studies of its kind.

Several said they pursued their decision to switch although it was upsetting to family members or friends.

Some of those who switched faiths said they were prompted by unpleasant experiences in their former churches.

Others say they switched because they no longer believed what their previous church taught.

Experts say economic, social and geographic mobility, marriage among members of different religions, the rise of minority religions in America such as Buddhism and Islam, and individualized faith styles are key reasons for the religious turnover. About 16 percent of Pew respondents said they were unaffiliated with any tradition, although many of those said personal spirituality was part of their life.

Regardless of where local faith changers have landed, most say they respect and learned a great deal from their former faiths.

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Labels: affiliation, belief, church, faith, Fort wayne, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, Rosa Salter Rodriguez