Religion in America - … To Nontraditional…

About 1 in 6 American adults say they've switched religious affiliation or have become non-religious. The chart shows groups gaining adherents on the left, those losing members⁵ on the right. Many newer religions (or those that are newer to America) gained membership by converting outsiders. Traditional religions lost members who have gone to worship elsewhere or have stopped worshipping. Non-denominational groups show the highest gains (27%). Protestant religions have lost the highest percentage of members due to conversion: 13% fewer people converted to Protestant religions than Protestants who switched to another religion or became non-religious.

The following table shows the numbers of members gained and lost as illustrated in the graph. In terms of numbers, those that consider themselves as having no religion saw the biggest increase: more than 5.5 million adults switched from being affiliated with a religion to having no religion. Catholicism, on the other hand, saw the largest number of members convert to another religion (or no religion at all): over 5.2 million fewer adults converted to Catholicism than Catholic adults who converted to another religion did.

Catholicism, being the largest single Christian grouping, also lost the most numbers in a time where non-belief appears to be on the increase.

Net Gain or Loss of Adult Members Due to Switching Religions, 2001

	Net gain or loss of members
No religion	5,504,413
Christian, no denomination specified	1,386,541
Non-denominational	678,135
Pentecostal	610,043
Evangelical/Born Again	306,290
Episcopalian/Anglican	154,532
Jehovah's Witnesses	136,557
Buddhist	119,488
Muslim/Islamic	84,526
Assemblies of God	76,884
Seventh Day Adventist	70,145
Church of God	45,563
Mormon	-4,683
Churches of Christ	-53,519
Congregational/UCC	-85,860
Lutheran	-102,231
Presbyterian	-116,050
Judaism	-119,943
Baptist	-218,066
Protestant	-771,822
Methodist	-1,144,374
Catholic	-5,211,003

With the number of people who consider themselves non-religious growing (from 14 million in 1999 to 29 million in 2001), does this mean that more and more people are rejecting religion? Not necessarily. According to Barna Research Group, in 1999 2% of atheists and agnostics attended Christian church services on Sunday (12% did so on Easter Sunday that year). 60% own a Bible, about 34% read it at least occasionally, and 19% pray to God during a typical week. Atheists may be just as ambivalent as the believers…

Conversion isn't the only way religious congregations grow in membership. Other factors include birth rates and immigration. In the next panel we look at the top 20 religions in the United States that showed the most growth overall from 1990 to 2001.

Sources: " Exhibit 7: Number of Adults by Current and Prior Religious Identification, 2001." American Religious Identification Survey. Online. Available: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/images/image019.gif. March 5, 2002. Barna Research data: "One in 15 Adults Atheist, Agnostic." Research Alert, 3 December 1999.