Losing Wealth but not Finding God

"Contrary to recent media reports suggesting that the country's economic troubles have led to higher levels of church attendance, a Pew Forum analysis of polls by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds that while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shed over half its value since October 2007, there has been no increase in weekly worship service attendance during the same time period."


Pew Research, March 13, 2009

I just had to laugh at this graph, because I know all to well the joy some believers have that when finally the economy goes to hell, then perhaps the ungrateful will turn to the Lord. "No Atheists in an economic foxhole" and so on. But it's apparently not happening.
(In fact, if you look closely, the latter half of the church attendance graph is more below the 40 line than the first half.)

What’s Missing from the Unsurprising Pew Study

"There are a couple of explanations for the Catholic situation that produces a high percentage of the non-religious. For one, their disaffection for the religion of their youth does not lead them to Protestantism, but to “no-religion.” This is in contrast with Methodists or Presbyterians who often blend in with generic Protestantism. Secondly, since the pontificate of John Paul II, Catholicism has been trying to eliminate “cultural Catholicism.” In practical terms, this means that you can’t baptize your child as a Catholic without going to classes and attending services. There is a denial of communion to people remarried outside the church. Politicians who uphold the law that allows birth control or abortion have been punished. And so it goes. You reap what you sow: by arguing that persons whose attachment is only cultural are no longer Catholic, the Church has created a new category of Catholic believers who no longer profess to belong to any religion. They have been told they are no longer Catholic, but they can’t bring themselves to become Protestant."

Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo, OnFaith, 4. March 2008

Of course, branding everyone as a Catholic, whatever their convictions were, was never a good idea in the first place.

44% of Americans shop for religion

Thought you might want to know.

Pew survey: Americans freely change, or drop, their religions

"Nothing" matters: 12.1% say their religious identity is "nothing in particular," outranking every denomination and tradition except Catholics (23.9%) and all groups of Baptists (17.2%).[...] Nearly 20% of all men and 13% of all women say they are unaffiliated. So are 25% of adults under age 30.[...] All the major Christian denominations are losing numbers fast. Only non-denominational Christian churches showed growth outpacing losses. "Two in three people who say they grew up as Jehovah's Witnesses have left the faith. Any one of 10 people you meet is a former Catholic," Lugo says.[...] "It will become increasingly difficult to find people who share a love for a distinct doctrine. [...] Green says he can already foresee implications in the public square as "firm beliefs and firm organizations are increasingly a thing of the past. In political life, when candidates go out to mobilize voters, they face a much more complicated picture.[...] Lugo predicts that as world religions such as Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism continue to grow in the USA through immigration and conversion, workplaces, schools and eventually the courts will face increasing challenges over religious accommodation.

USAToday, 25. February

"To illustrate this point, one need only look at the biggest gainer in this religious competition - the unaffiliated group. People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin."

Pew Forum on religion

I was first a little dismayed to see that the numbers still were so low, but what's notable about this survey is how much things are changing, and that the losers in this game are traditional beliefs(catholic decline is only slowed down because of immigration), while the gainers are the unaffiliated.
It is also interesting that it will become much more difficult to use religion in politics, since you only end up gaining some and losing even more.