Religious Practice Drops in the US
By Marco Tosatti
Religious News Service, an independent interfaith news service raised the alarm bell. The country which has “In God we trust” stamped on its currency seems in fact to be trusting in God less and less every year since the motto first appeared on coins in 1864 and later became the national motto in 1956. The study carried out by the Religious New Service, shows that one in five Americans today say they have no religious identity. Religious practice has taken a dive among people of any denomination who call themselves Christian, starting with children’s baptism. In 1970 there were 426,000 marriages in U.S. Catholic churches — a full 20% of all U.S. marriages that year. By contrast, in 2011, there were 164,000 such weddings — only 8% of all marriages. But in both years, Catholics were 23% of the national population. Baptisms have followed the same trend. Back in 1970 there were approximately 1 million baptisms registered but by 2011 this had dropped to exactly 793,103. “There is a de-emphasis on practicing faith. People want God but they’re not happy with churches,” the Rev. Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee said. According to Page, sacraments such as baptism have fallen victim to an “anti-denominational, anti-institutional, even anti-church era.” Like the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) which rightly considers baptism a key part of the Christian faith, recorded 314,959 baptisms in 2012, a low which has not been seen since 1948. This is odd when one considers that the number of faithful joining the SBC has risen from 6 million back then to nearly 16 million now. An interesting point for religious scholars is that even Hispanic Americans who have always been considered “reservoirs of faith” compared to their more secular Anglo-Saxon brothers are showing a tendency to follow national trends. Hispanics account for 34% of US Catholics and of this, a significant 13% claim they do not have any religious identity. The same percentage of Hispanics seek their spiritual path in the Evangelical denominations. While there was great emphasis on the number of Hispanics – particularly young Hispanics – who switch from Catholicism to the Evangelical denominations, the same cannot be said for those Catholics who decide not to have any faith at all. 80% of those who claim not to have a religious identity are in favour of same-sex marriage, while only 21% of Evangelicals are in favour of such unions. All this is leading to the sacraments – including baptism – being practiced less and less. In 2006 1 in 4 families in the US was composed of people of different religious faiths; in 1988 this dropped to 15% according to Naomi Schaefer Riley’s “Til Death Do Us Part”. To prevent disagreements, many of these families decided not to baptise their children in any particular Church immediately. Divorce is three times more frequent in these types of marriages than in marriages where spouses belong to the same religious community. The problems that follow after these divorces have a negative effect on the children’s religious life. There has also been an increase in the number of marriages celebrated in a place of worship. This is another clear sign that the couple in question does not see faith or a faith’s sacraments as a key part of the life they share together.
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