"Changing" Our Religion

Today, my newspaper carried a story (Kuruvila, Matthai, “Why 53% of Americans have changed their faiths.” San Francisco CHRONICLE, 28 April, 2009, page A1) about how we Americans say we choose (or inherit) a religious affiliation, and how many of us change that choice.

• 28% of Americans have left their childhood religion through conversion or abandonment of institutional religion altogether.
• 25% may change religions, e.g., Protestant denominations, as they move, marry, and make other life changes. About 9% return to their original faith tradition.
• 16% of adult Americans – 1 in 6 – don’t affiliate with organized religion. About half of those – 1 in 12 -- who are former Christians, become unaffiliated because “they believe religious people are hypocritical, judgmental, or insincere.”
• More than 3/4 of those who change their religion do so by about age 24; and few change after age 50.

According to Kuruvila’s story, “Carlo Busby, co-owner of Sagrada Sacred Arts, an Oakland [CA] store that caters to spiritual exploration, ...[says]... people become more rooted in their own faith if they explore another tradition and realize that other traditions have developed similar responses and yearnings.”

I’m one of those who left my “childhood” religion (Protestant denomination) like many youngsters. And when I returned to religious institutions as an adult, I found another denomination. And later, still another. Meantime, I had seriously explored Catholicism and Judaism. Catholicism has the ritual trappings I found very attractive when I was younger. And Judaism has that feeling of permanence that comes with being both a faith tradition, and a way of living in a community which I had not found in Christianity.

Have you done something like this? Have you changed your affiliation because you’ve married into another, or because you’ve relocated, or because you’ve been “called” to another way?

Perhaps it’s only an artifact of my personal circle of friends, but I know only one person who converted into Judaism from Christianity, and that as a result of marriage. I have met one or two who have converted to Islam. I personally know no one who has left Islam or Judaism for Christianity. Yet, it’s easy at some level to understand how such conversions, or re-affiliations might happen.

Still, even those who leave organized religion altogether probably don’t really change their orientation, but only their outward “label.” They could be the ones seeking a “spiritual but not religious” experience. Of the many of us who stay but change our affiliation, we probably don’t change our basic faith. After all, the three Abrahamic faiths do share fundamental beliefs: God is all powerful. God is responsible for all circumstances. God will judge our actions during our lives, sending some souls to hell and others to heaven/paradise. We worship God when we care for one another. These basic things don’t change.