Posted on 11/26/2012 5:09:36 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Evangelical Protestants have become more devoted to their religious beliefs over the last three decades, even as Catholics have become less attached to their faith, new research finds.
The denominational differences come even as religious affiliations have decreased overall in America, with the number of people who claim no religious affiliation at all doubling from 7 percent in 1990 to 14 percent in 2000, said study researcher Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Nevertheless, Schwadel said, these unaffiliated individuals seem to be dropping out of religious institutions that they were previously ambivalent about. People who feel strongly about their faith are as numerous as ever.
"The proportion of Americans who say they have a very strong religious affiliation over time is very stable," Schwadel told LiveScience.
Strength of faith
Schwadel based his findings on a major questionnaire called the General Social Survey, which has been administered to a cross-section of Americans yearly or every other year since 1974. Among the questions on this survey are several about religion, including one that asks how strongly affiliated people feel about their denomination. [8 Ways Religion Impacts Your Life]
By analyzing about 40,000 responses over the decades, Schwadel was able to track changes in how strongly tied people felt to their religion. He found that the total number of strongly affiliated people stayed basically steady around 37 percent, with a small, short-lived bump to 43 percent in 1984 and 1985.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
The Moral Majority.
Also the Latinos have been coming illegally in the US for decades. Like I said, the shift is internal due to politics and culture sanctioning the malignant behavior(s).
I’m sooo tired. I’ll talk to you about it later. : )
I’m hitting the sack.
It is astounding to me that the Catholic Church has no “Sunday School” apparatus, or Bible Studies of their own. Study is left aside to the individual Catholic, and the parish otherwise is confined to a strictly 55 minute Holy Mass, per week. That’s not quite four hours a month!
Thanks be to God for EWTN TV & RADIO, which single handedly brought me into the Church and kept me zealous for her. I would be illiterate but for this programming, and it’s the protestant converts behind their best programs, offering spectacular adult catechesis and materials.
But yes Catholics are starving otherwise.
Get some rest. You know where to find us. Sleep tight.
Rita
My Catholic mother in law is shocked we read the Bible to my three year old, and have her do memory work.
I am a Missouri Synod Lutheran. I honestly don’t know when I started Sunday School as a kid, I was that young. My bride said she didn’t have any religious education outside the home till third or fourth grade.
Seems to me that is very odd in today’s culture. You will loose the kids by then.
Catholics would like to think so, anyway. There's a dirty little secret that Catholics choose to ignore about that 30,000 number - the very same source that Catholics cite to claim "30,000 choices" also says that there are nearly 3,000 divisions within Catholicism.
Which, quite frankly, explains a lot of things.
I am very proud of your family. You have probably heard this, as a Lutheran, but Catholics if they attend Holy Mass daily, will hear pretty much the entire Bible every three years. Coupled with the Readings for each day, of course, is the homily, wherein the Sacred Scripture Reading is expounded upon. IF, you have a priest gifted with faith who is good at delivering a teaching homily.
So, Catholics should know their scripture when they hear it, and even know of it in its complete and particular contextual form, inclusive of its total mentions and references throughout the Bible, but not usually in the way of chapter and verse, which is quite helpful.
Children are most capable and generally undertaught. You respect their capabilities and feed them. That is ever so wonderful.
I can agree with the number of divisions among Catholic opinion. Like noses, we each have one. But though division among Catholics are lamentable they generally will not leave behind the Sacrament of Holy Orders (the priesthood) who brings to them daily, Jesus in the Eucharistic, to join another Christian expression who lack both, or either. That was more my point, and I thought maybe the article could not measure Catholic dis-satisfactions the same way as protestants. In other words Catholics may leave the Church, due to some dis-satisfaction, but not the faith, nor very often to become Protestant.
For instance, Barrett's World Christian Encyclopedia lists every Catholic diocese as a separate denomination (the Catholic Church worldwide has 2,700+ dioceses) and likewise counts the sui iuris Churches as separate denominations (Melkite, Maronite, Chaldean, Coptic, etc.)
Catholics will find this wrong-headed, since all these dioceses, and all these sui iuris churches, have the same faith and morals, the same Apostolic Succession, the samew Liturgy (although different rites), the same Sacraments, and are in communion with the Pope, the successor of Peter: which is to say, they are "one" ("holy," "Catholic," and "apostolic") Church.
This is not just special pleading for the Catholics, as the same problem applies to non-Catholic Christians. All the many non-denoms and Bible Fellowships and so forth with the same faith & morals get listed as separate denominations, independent Baptists, Congregational churches in loose federations, etc.
And of course different church groups have different polities, different ecclesiasical forms of government, which makes it all very hard to compare and, especially, to compute.
Trouble with hearing the readings is that most people don’t really pay attention. Now, back in the day most people couldn’t read so it made sense to have the readings. But there needs to be a deeper formation.
My #1 job is to help get my family to heaven.
"Pretty much the entire Bible"? Not even close. Try 27.5% of the entire Bible.
Only arguably are you correct. You realize, don’t you, that of course we have seven more Books than other expressions of “church”, as they were dropped from Sacred Scripture, but three years of daily reading in Holy Mass yields, as I said, “pretty much the entire Bible”, unless nits are in need of being picked.
Sorry, I lost my ping to you. To #34.
Those must be some pretty sizable books to make up for the missing 75% :)
....three years of daily reading in Holy Mass yields, as I said, “pretty much the entire Bible”, unless nits are in need of being picked.
What color is the sky in a world where 75% is considered a "nit"?
by Sara “I am not surprised that a larger percentage of Catholics are faithless and rebellous in surveys. That will increase as people from Central and South American roots increases. They came to America from oppressive foreign lands in which the Catholic church played a dark part.”
You may want to clear up your understanding of Catholic history in Mexico and South and Central America in general. A good book would be “Blood Drenched Alters” by Kelly and read up on the Chritiada covered in a recent movie called “For the Greater Glory”
“It is astounding to me that the Catholic Church has no “Sunday School” apparatus, or Bible Studies of their own.”
My parish does.
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