Trends & Research Studies

Reports

2010 U.S. Religion Census: 
Religious Congregations & Membership Study 
Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies 
The most complete data available on U.S. religious affiliation was released on May 1, 2012, at a press conference during the annual meeting of the Associated Church Press in Chicago. The 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study, a county-by-county enumeration of religious bodies in the United States, is the latest in a series of every-10-year studies conducted at the same time as the U.S. census. The 2010 U.S. Religion Census: Religious Congregations & Membership Study reports that 150 million Americans (48.8 percent of the population) were associated with the 236 reporting religious bodies.
For more information: 
  • Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies: www.rcms2010.org
  • Glenmary Research Center: www.glenmary.org/rcms2010

The 2012 American Values Survey
Public Religion (www.publicreligion.org)The American religious landscape is marked by significant diversity and fluidity. While Catholics and white mainline Protestants remain two of the largest religious groups in the United States, they have each experienced significant declines in membership. The religiously unaffiliated represent the fastest growing group in the American religious landscape, and are more complex than previously understood.

A Decade of Change 
in American Congregations 
2000-2010
David Roozen
Despite bursts of innovation and pockets of vitality, the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed a slow, overall erosion of the strength of America’s congregations, according to the Faith Community Today series of national surveys of American congregations. Conducted in 2000, 2005, 2008 and 2010, the FACT series shows that the decade brought: 1) a continued increase in innovative, adaptive worship, 2)a surprisingly rapid adoption of electronic, technologies, 3) a dramatic increase in racial/ethnic congregations, many for immigrant groups, and 4) a general increase in the breadth of both member-oriented and mission-oriented programs. It also gave witness to: an increase in connection across faith traditions, and a twist in the historical pattern of religious involvement in support of the electoral process 
But the decade also saw: a steep drop in financial health, continuing high levels of conflict, and aging memberships. The net, overall result: fewer persons in the pews and decreasing spiritual vitality.

American Congregations at the Beginning of the 21st Century 
Mark Chaves, Shawna Anderson, and Jason Byassee
The National Congregations Study (NCS) is based on two nationally representative surveys of congregations from across the religious spectrum, the first in 1998 and the second in 2006-07. Because the NCS has been fielded twice, we can begin to track how congregations have changed in the last decade. The NCS examines what people do together in congregations. What communities of faith do together tells us something important about the state of American religion, whatever the specific beliefs and practices of individuals in those communities.

Changing American Congregations: Findings from the Third Wave of the National Congregations Study
Mark Chaves 
The third wave of the National Congregations Study (NCS-III) was conducted in 2012. Five trends were identified: more ethnic diversity, greater acceptance of gays and lesbians, increasingly informal worship styles, declining size (but not from the perspective of the average attendee), and declining denominational affiliation.

The Changing Face of U.S. Catholic Parishes 
Mark M. Gray, Mary L. Gautier, and Melissa A. Cidade
Parish life in the United States has been undergoing significant changes in the last decade. This report details the changing profile of U.S. Catholic parishes. 

Five Trends among the Unchurched
Barna Research
Since 1990, the percentage of unchurched adults in America has risen from 30% to 43% of the population. Even as this segment has grown, has their profile changed? With the aid of more than two decades of tracking research—a sort of cultural time-lapse photography—Barna Group has discovered real and significant shifts in unchurched attitudes, assumptions, allegiances and behaviors. We’ve identified five trends in our research that are contributing to this increase in the churchless of America.
  • Barna Website

Nones on the Rise: One in Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation
Pew Research Center
The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling. In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. This large and growing group of Americans is less religious than the public at large on many conventional measures, including frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of importance they attach to religion in their lives. However, many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor. With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics. 

Books 

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American Catholics in Transition
William V. D'Antonio; Michele Dillon and Mary L. Gautier (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013)

American Catholics in Transition reports on five surveys carried out at six year intervals over a period of 25 years, from 1987 to 2011. The surveys are national probability samples of American Catholics, age 18 and older, now including four generations of Catholics. Over these twenty five years, the authors have found significant changes in Catholics’ attitudes and behavior as well as many enduring trends in the explanation of Catholic identity. Generational change helps explain many of the differences. Many millennial Catholics continue to remain committed to and active in the Church, but there are some interesting patterns of difference within this generation. Hispanic Catholics are more likely than their non-Hispanic peers to emphasize social justice issues such as immigration reform and concern for the poor; and while Hispanic millennial women are the most committed to the Church, non-Hispanic millennial women are the least committed to Catholicism. In this fifth book in the series, the authors expand on the topics that were introduced in the first four editions. The authors are able to point to dramatic changes in and across generations and gender, especially regarding Catholic identity, commitment, parish life, and church authority. The authors, also, provides the first full portrayal of how the growing numbers of Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. are changing the Church.
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American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
Robert Putnam and David Campbell (Simon & Schuster, 2010, 2012)

American Grace by Robert Putnam and David Campbell is destined to be one of the most important books of 2011. It is a fascinating look at religion in today’s America. Unique among nations, America is deeply religious, religiously diverse, and remarkably tolerant. But in recent decades, the nation’s religious landscape has been reshaped. America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s religious observance plummeted. Then, in the 1970s and 1980s a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young people, turned off by that linkage between faith and conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion entirely. The result: growing polarization. The ranks of religious conservatives and secular liberals have swelled, leaving a dwindling group of religious moderates in between. At the same time, personal interfaith ties are strengthening. Interfaith marriage has increased, while religious identities are increasingly fluid. Putnam and Campbell show how this denser web of personal ties brings surprising interfaith tolerance, notwithstanding the so-called “culture wars.” American Grace is based on two of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted on religion and public life in America. It includes a dozen in-depth profiles of diverse congregations across the country, which illuminate the trends described by Putnam and Campbell in the lives of real Americans.
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American Religion: Contemporary Trends
Mark Chavez (Princeton University Press, 2011)

Most Americans say they believe in God, and more than a third say they attend religious services every week. Yet studies show that people do not really go to church as often as they claim, and it is not always clear what they mean when they tell pollsters they believe in God or pray. American Religion presents the best and most up-to-date information about religious trends in the United States, in a succinct and accessible manner. This sourcebook provides essential information about key developments in American religion since 1972, and is the first major resource of its kind to appear in more than two decades. Mark Chaves looks at trends in diversity, belief, involvement, congregational life, leadership, liberal Protestant decline, and polarization. He draws on two important surveys: the General Social Survey, an ongoing survey of Americans' changing attitudes and behaviors, begun in 1972; and the National Congregations Study, a survey of American religious congregations across the religious spectrum. Chaves finds that American religious life has seen much continuity in recent decades, but also much change. He challenges the popular notion that religion is witnessing a resurgence in the United States--in fact, traditional belief and practice is either stable or declining. Chaves examines why the decline in liberal Protestant denominations has been accompanied by the spread of liberal Protestant attitudes about religious and social tolerance, how confidence in religious institutions has declined more than confidence in secular institutions, and a host of other crucial trends.
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Belief without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual but not Religious
Linda A. Mercadante (Oxford, 2014)

The last twenty years have seen a dramatic increase in "nones": people who do not claim any religious affiliation. These "nones" now outnumber even the largest Protestant denominations in America. They are not to be confused with secularists, however, for many of them identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR). The response to this dramatic change in American religion has been amazingly mixed. While social scientists have been busy counting and categorizing them, the public has swung between derision and adulation. Some complain "nones" are simply shallow dilettantes, narcissistically concerned with their own inner world. Others hail them as spiritual giants, and ground-breaking pioneers. Rarely, however, have these "nones" been asked to explain their own views, beliefs, and experiences. In Belief without Borders, theologian and one-time SBNR Linda Mercadante finally gives these individuals a chance to speak for themselves. This volume is the result of extensive observation and nearly 100 in-depth interviews with SBNRs across the United States. Mercadante presents SBNRs' stories, shows how they analyze their spiritual journeys, and explains why they reject the claims of organized religion. Surprisingly, however, Mercadante finds these SBNRs within as well as outside the church. She reveals the unexpected, emerging latent theology within this group, including the interviewees' creative concepts of divine transcendence, life after death, human nature, and community. The conclusions she draws are startling: despite the fact that SBNRs routinely discount the creeds and doctrines of organized religion, many have devised a structured set of beliefs, often purposefully in opposition to doctrines associated with Christianity.
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Building Strong Church Communities: A Sociological Overview
Patricia Wittberg, SC (Paulist Press, 2012)

How close connected do Catholics feel to their parish communities today? How close do they want to feel? How has the role of the parish in the Christian community changed throughout history? What impact has the Internet had on church community connections? Building Strong Church Communities summarizes survey results from over 700 Catholic parishes around the U.S., together with studies on religious orders and the new ecclesial movements and previous historical research. It guides different kinds of church communities toward discerning and improving their own spiritual health and thereby in building a stronger church for the 21st century.  
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Christianity After Religion: The End of the Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening
Diana Butler Bass (HarperOne, 2012)

Diana Butler Bass exposes how the failings of the church today are giving rise to a new “spiritual but not religious” movement. Using evidence from the latest national polls and from her own cutting-edge research, Bass examines the connections—and the divisions—between theology, practice, and community that Christians experience today. The data is clear: religious affiliation is plummeting across the breadth of Christian denominations. And yet interest in "spirituality" is on the rise. So what is behind the sea change in American religion? Diana Butler Bass offers a fresh interpretation of the "spiritual but not religious" trend. Some contend that we're undergoing yet another evangelical revival; others suggest that Christian belief and practice is eroding entirely as traditional forms of faith are replaced by new ethical, and areligious, choices. But Bass argues compellingly that we are, instead, at a critical stage in a completely new spiritual awakening, a vast interreligious progression toward individual and cultural transformation, and a wholly new kind of postreligious faith. Christianity After Religion is a call to approach faith with a newfound freedom that is both life-giving and service driven. And it is a hope-filled plea to see and participate in creating a fresh, vital, contemporary way of faith that stays true to the real message of Jesus.
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The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity
Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel (Oxford University Press, 2014)

The Emerging Church Movement (ECM) is a creative, entrepreneurial religious movement that strives to achieve social legitimacy and spiritual vitality by actively disassociating from its roots in conservative, evangelical Christianity and "deconstructing" contemporary expressions of Christianity. Emerging Christians see themselves as overturning outdated interpretations of the Bible, transforming hierarchical religious institutions, and re-orienting Christianity to step outside the walls of church buildings toward working among and serving others in the "real world." Drawing on ethnographic observation of emerging congregations, pub churches, neo-monastic communities, conferences, online networks, in-depth interviews, and congregational surveys in the US, UK, and Ireland, Gerardo Marti and Gladys Ganiel provide a comprehensive social-scientific analysis of the development and significance of the ECM. Emerging Christians, they find, are shaping a distinct religious orientation that encourages individualism, deep relationships with others, new ideas about the nature of truth, doubt, and God, and innovations in preaching, worship, Eucharist, and leadership.
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The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown
Paul Taylor and the Pew Research Center (Public Affairs, 2014)

The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. America is in the throes of a demographic overhaul. Huge generation gaps have opened up in our political and social values, our economic well-being, our family structure, our racial and ethnic identity, our gender norms, our religious affiliation, and our technology use. Today’s Millennials—well-educated, tech savvy, underemployed twenty-somethings—are at risk of becoming the first generation in American history to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Meantime, more than 10,000 Baby Boomers are retiring every single day, most of them not as well prepared financially as they’d hoped. Every aspect of our demography is being fundamentally transformed. By mid-century, the population of the United States will be majority non-white and our median age will edge above 40—both unprecedented milestones. With our heavy immigration flows, the US is poised to remain relatively young. Drawing on Pew Research Center’s extensive archive of public opinion surveys and demographic data, The Next America is a rich portrait of where we are as a nation and where we’re headed—toward a future marked by the most striking social, racial, and economic shifts the country has seen in a century. 
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Passing on the Faith: Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims
Edited by James Heft, S.M. (Fordham University Press, 2006)

Passing on the Faith: Transforming Traditions for the Next Generation of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is an important new book that is the result of a 2004 international conference at USC, “Faith, Fear and Indifference: Constructing the Religious Identity of the Next Generation.” The book includes original essays by international scholars that explore the challenges of passing on faith today, summary reports on three recent national studies of youth and young adults, and direction for passing on faith to the next generations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The report on new research on young adults conducted at USC, “Congregations that Get It,” is especially helpful. The essays are grouped thematically. Opening the book, Melchor Sanchez de Toca and Nancy Ammerman explore fundamental issues that have an impact on religion—from the cultural effects of global consumerism and personal technology to pluralism and individualism. In Part Two, leading investigators present three leading studies of religiosity among young people and college students in the United States, illuminating the gap between personal values and organized religion—and the emergence of new, different forms of spirituality and faith. How religious institutions deal with these challenges forms the heart of the book—in portraits of “best practices” developed to revitalize traditional institutions, from a synagogue in New York City and a Muslim youth camp in California to the famed French Catholic community of the late Brother John of Taizé. Finally, Jack Miles and Diane Winston weave the findings into a broader perspective of the future of religious belief, practice, and feeling in a changing world. Filled with real-world wisdom, Passing the Faith will be an essential resource for anyone seeking to understand what religions must, and can, do to inspire a vigorous faith in the next generation.
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The Rise of the Nones: Understanding and Reaching the Religiously Unaffiliated
James Every White (Baker Books, 2014)

The single fastest-growing religious group of our time is those who check the box next to the word none on national surveys. In America, this is 20 percent of the population. And most churches are doing virtually nothing to reach them. The pastor of a megachurch that is currently experiencing 70 percent of its growth from the unchurched, White knows how to reach this growing demographic, and here he shares his ministry strategies with concerned pastors and church leaders, answering questions like: Exactly who are the unaffiliated? What caused this seismic shift in our culture? How can our churches reach these people?
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Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life
Nancy Tatom Ammerman (Oxford, 2014)

In this book, ordinary Americans tell the stories of their everyday lives - from dinner table to office to shopping mall to doctor’s office. They talk about the ordinary routines and the things that matter most to them, including the times and places and events they consider spiritual. Often they name that spiritual reality “God,” but it is also experienced in the more impersonal forces of nature and individual life meaning. Ammerman explores their stories to describe the common threads in those descriptions of spirituality and the significant way they are shaped by religious traditions, by organized religious communities, and by people’s conversations with the others they encounter as fellow members of a spiritual "tribe.” The voices in this book come from all the corners of the Christian and Jewish traditions. Some are devout; most are typically modest in their religious participation; many come from the growing population of people who are unaffiliated, and a few are truly secular. If religion has not entirely disappeared from the modern world, where do these people find modern religion and how is it sustained?