Playing 'musical pews'

America is a country on the move in innumerable ways, and religion is no exception. Half of Americans have changed their religious denomination at least once in their lives — many several times — and 28 percent have switched faiths altogether (for example, from Christianity to Judaism). Amid this fluidity, the number of "unaffiliated" adults has grown to 16 percent of the population.

What is behind such extraordinary "churn" in U.S. religious life? As a follow-up to its pathbreaking 2007 survey of the American religious landscape, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a new survey Monday — "Faith in Flux" — that explores in depth the patterns and reasons for such remarkable change.

"We do not see a kind of principled, fundamental rejection of a religious world view," says Greg Smith, a Pew researcher.

At the same time, 55 percent say they became unaffiliated because they found religious people hypocritical and judgmental. Many view religion as too focused on rules and not enough on spirituality.

For Candace Talmadge, a writer from Texas who grew up in a mixed-faith family, an unhappy experience in Sunday school set her on a path away from regular church attendance.

"When a little girl has a Jewish grandparent and the teacher says Jews are going to hell, it's not conducive to a sense of belonging," Talmadge explains. She stopped going to church as soon as she could and eventually found her own spiritual path.

"I do believe in God, and our spirituality is inherent in who we are," she says. "Religion is man-made dogma … Spirituality is God-made. Spiritual practice for me is very individualized."

The survey also finds that some 7 percent of Americans were raised without a religious affiliation, but most of them have become religious: Forty percent are Protestant, 6 percent Catholic, and 9 percent in another faith. Among the reasons they give for joining are the enjoyment of worship services and their sense of being spiritually unfulfilled while unaffiliated. Half said they felt called by God to join a religious community.

When asked to explain in their own words the main reason for leaving the Catholic Church, about half cite a disagreement with the church's religious or moral beliefs. For those now unaffiliated, about half were unhappy about birth control, 56 percent about teachings on abortion and homosexuality, and 40 percent about the treatment of women.

Mandy Burrell Booth, who works for a nonprofit group in Chicago, grew up in Catholic schools but began questioning what she was taught during college.