The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has released results from a recent survey that include some interesting numbers.  Among them:

• "More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in
  which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at
  all."
• "If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is
  included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation,
  moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated
  with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific
  religious tradition altogether."
• "The number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular
  faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were
  not affiliated with any particular religion as children."
• "Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion."
• Protestants are almost a minority in the country at just 51% of the population.
• Within the ranks of protestants, 23% are evangelical, 18.1% are mainline protestant and 6.9% are affiliated with historically black churches.
• There are now as many Mormons as Jews at 1.7% of the population each.
• "While nearly one-in-three Americans (31%) were raised in the Catholic
  faith, today fewer than one-in-four (24%) describe themselves as
  Catholic. These losses would have been even more pronounced were it not
  for the offsetting impact of immigration."

I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of people taking issue with this report.  For instance there will be lots of Christians who will take exception to Mormons being included in their ranks.  I know this from personal experience since I’ve had a bunch of evangelical and mainstream Christians tell me that I was lucky to escape the "cult" of Mormonism.  FYI, I was Mormon until around age 10, went to a Lutheran H.S., converted to Catholicism when I got married and now am a member of the Moravian church.  I think if they’d polled me I would have been responsible for the +/- skew you see in all surveys.

I’m also fairly certain that a bunch of Catholic bishops will say that the numbers are wrong and they really aren’t losing a bunch of their members.  They seem to excel at denying reality despite the ready evidence of parishes being closed and land sold off, and the ripple effect from their incredibly bad handling of the abusive priests controversy.

My final thought on this is that when you really think this through it’s amazing that during my parents’ adult life we had a presidential candidate who had to overcome the obstacle of being a Catholic to get elected.  He had to assure the people that he wouldn’t be answering to the Pope, and just short of 50 years later no one would think twice about a Catholic running for president.  On the other hand we just had a Mormon candidate drop out of the race and his religious affiliation was seen as a contributing factor to his failed candidacy, and just today I saw an item about Hillary Clinton’s campaign possibly being involved in leaking a picture of Barack Obama that would seem to imply that he’s Muslim (he’s Christian).  As much as things seem to change, they ultimately remain the same.  We always seem to find a way to separate ourselves by our differences rather than celebrating our commonalities while enjoying our diversity. 

All this and people still debate the value of secular government.