PROTESTANTS LOSING MAJORITY, STUDY SUGGESTS
By Chris Herlinger *

A long-standing feature of U.S. religious life - a Protestant majority -may become a thing of the past, a new survey has concluded.
"Since colonial times the United States has been a Protestant nation.But perhaps as early as this year (2004), the country will for the firsttime no longer have a Protestant majority," the survey by the NationalOpinion Research Center, based at the University of Chicago, found.
The number of those identifying themselves as Protestant, alreadydeclining in recent years, is expected to drop below 50 percent if presenttrends continue. The survey results were announced on July 20. AProtestant majority may have already vanished in the two years since thesurvey was conducted.
Church groups covered by the term Protestant include Anglican,Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Quakerdenominations.
"The recent Protestant decline comes in large part from the loss ofyounger adherents and a related drop in the retention rate," the surveystated. It added that a number of factors "indicate that the Protestantshare of the population will continue to shrink and they will soon losetheir majority position in American society."
The survey of more than 2,650 respondents in 2002 found the number ofthose identifying themselves as Protestant dropped from 63 percent to 52percent between 1993 and 2002. At the same time, those saying they had noformal religious ties or identification increased from 9 percent to nearly14 percent.
Other factors cited in the study for the decline of Protestantidentification included increased numbers of immigrants from non-Protestantcountries and the fact that fewer people in the United States are beingraised as Protestants.
The so-called "retention rate" for Protestants has also been dropping.From 1973 up to 1993, nine out of 10 Protestants raised in a Protestanthome remained Protestant; however, now less than83 percent remain Protestant as adults.
Although Protestants have been a majority in the United States, RomanCatholics have constituted the nation's biggest single denominationalaffiliation.
The report can be found at http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/issues/PROTSGO8.pdf . *Ecumenical News International distributed this article.