A new study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion finds that Americans between the ages of 36 to 50 are more loyal to religion than Baby Boomers.In his study, Schwadel is mainly interested in people who disaffiliate from a religion. This means that they were raised with a religion, but now report no religious preference. Schwadel concludes:
Additionally, the probability of nonaffiliation grew from between .06 and .08 in the 1970s and 1980s to almost .16 in 2006. Estimated growth in nonaffiliation, however, is notably smaller when being raised with no religious affiliation is constrained to 3 percent of respondents. These results suggest that a substantial proportion of the growth in nonaffiliation is due to more Americans being raised with no religious preference rather than solely being due to an increase in disaffiliation among adults.In the Reuters article, Schwadel is quoted as saying the trend "is good news for those who worry about declining religious adherence." I would have to disagree. Even after controlling for being raised with no religious affiliation, Americans between the ages of 36 and 50 are still disaffiliating from religion, even if they are doing so at a slower rate than Baby Boomers. Even worse, the real world is not controlling for being raised with no religious affiliation. In fact, the probability of being raised without a religious affiliation is increasing.
It would be very interesting to see the rate of religious affiliation among those raised without a religious affiliation. To me, this represents the biggest opportunity for religions, as it is a growing demographic group.
* Note: I do not understand the statistics involved in the study. However, according to Wikipedia, the journal is peer-reviewed, with a 2008 impact factor of 0.907, which places it 37th of the 99 sociology journals ranked by Journal Citation Reports.
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