"Unaffiliated" on the rise among American religions

You really need to dig through the copious reportage on the massive study on American religion recently released by the Pew Trust on Religion and Public Life. This typical article from the Brisbane Times emphasizes how quickly Americans are changing their religion with this graf:

The report, published on Monday, found a constantly shifting landscape of religious loyalties, with the Roman Catholic Church losing more adherents than any other single US religious group.

Not too dissimilar is the closer-to-home Globe coverage, focused thusly:

The study, which is the most comprehensive such examination of the country in at least a half century, finds that the United States is in the midst of a period of unprecedented religious fluidity, in which 44 percent of American adults have left the denomination of their childhood for another denomination, another faith, or no faith at all.

Let's look at this so-called fluidity. Below is a handy chart of the major traditions in America looking at movements into and out the traditions:

11.0
10.1
0.5
0.5
3.9

Religious affiliation	% Americans who've joined	% who've left	net change
All Protestant	8.4	-2.6
Roman Catholic	2.6	-7.5
Mormon	0.4	-0.1
Jewish	0.3	-0.2
Non-affiliated	12.7	+8.8

Even more remarkable is a comparison of these net changes as a function of adults' movements from one tradition to the other:



-5.6
-10.5

Religious affiliation	% change within community due to movement in or out of the tradition
All Protestant	-4.8
Roman Catholic	-23.8
Mormon
Jewish
Non-affiliated	+82.3

This is not a story about "changing religion" or fluidity. This survey says two things:

• Americans are fleeing the Catholic Church in stunning numbers, and are leaving the Jewish tradition is surprising amounts as well.
  
• More significantly, Americans from all religious traditions are losing interest in religious affiliation...in enormous numbers.
  

Now, while non-affiliation doesn't necessarily mean atheism or even agnosticism, Americans are abandoning their religious orders in droves, and many of them are seeking solace in relating to each other, rather than a distant and uninterested God.

Not that the media would ever admit that.