Protestants have become the new American minority.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/21/MNGB37Q7L11.DTL

According to the latest number crunching at the National Opinion Research Center, the number of Americans who say they are Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Evangelical or other varieties of Protestantism dropped from 63 percent in 1993 to 52 percent in 2002.

Now, assuming that trend continued, the old Protestant establishment has already become the latest minority group in an increasingly diverse U.S. population.

Tom W. Smith, the principal author of the new study on "The Vanishing Protestant Majority," cites several reasons for this seemingly sudden shift in the American religious landscape, including rising numbers of immigrants from Catholic and non-Christian cultures.

But the main reason lies in the answers younger Americans offer when pollsters ask them their religious denomination, according to Smith.

People who used to be nominally Protestants and hardly ever go to church would still give answers like "Methodist" or "Protestant."

Today, their children or even they are more likely to say "no religion" or "huh?" when asked about their denominational loyalties.

Smith's study, which was released Tuesday, follows an earlier analysis of these same data that reported a doubling in the number of people who say they have "no religion."

They are the so-called "nones," people who may still believe in God or an afterlife but fall into the "none-of-the-above" category.

"What we weren't paying attention to before is the fact that these 'nones' had to come from somewhere,'' Smith said in an interview with The Chronicle on Tuesday. "They are coming from the Protestant churches.''

Protestants contacted Tuesday by The Chronicle reacted with neither surprise nor dismay.

"Plenty of us are alive and well,'' said the Rev. Jim Burklo, the pastor at Sausalito Presbyterian Church, which still finds from 70 to 80 people sitting in its pews on a typical Sunday.

Burklo said there was absolutely no question that "denominational identity is slipping" among younger Americans -- a trend that has been documented in many books over the last decade.

For nine years, Burklo served as a campus minister at Stanford University, where incoming first-year students from across the nation and around the world are asked to fill out little cards that say what kind of church, synagogue, temple or mosque they might wish to attend.

"Every year," he said, "it got more complicated trying to figure out where to send those cards.''

Meanwhile, officials at the Manhattan-based National Council of Churches, a longtime bastion of American Protestantism, appeared unflustered by the latest news of their decline.

"We don't worry about it," said Pat Pattillo, the director of communications for the Protestant and Orthodox Christian ecumenical agency that still counts nearly 50 million members in its member denominations.

"Mainline Protestants have always been very involved in American life," Pattillo said, "and are still very active."

Protestants have long been seen by many to embody the American majority establishment.

However, as Pattillo pointed out, there has long been disagreement as to who to include in that category.

"If you narrowly define 'Protestant,' we have never been a majority," said Pattillo, a Baptist.

Smith's study includes in the "Protestant'' camp all post-Reformation Christian groups -- including fast-growing movements like the Mormon church, Pentecostalism and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

"Those are the groups that have helped keep the Protestant numbers up,'' he said.

Nominal Catholics who rarely go to church or don't adhere to Catholic teaching, Smith said, are less likely to stop calling themselves "Catholic" because religion tends to be more of a part of their "core identity" as Italians, Irish, Poles, Filipinos, Latinos or people from other Catholic homelands.

Smith is the director of the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey, which unlike the U.S. Census, has been tracking the religious identification of Americans for more than three decades. Data collected from the center, located at the University of Chicago, are used by many social scientists in their study of American attitudes and behavior.

I would cheer except what are they being replaced with? Muslims and Catholics. And not just Catholicism, but the Catholic demographic is being bolstered by the Hispanic horde invading our nation. Protestantism wouldn't be on the decline if it weren't for mass immigration.

On the other hand, a sharp decline in Protestantism will do great wonders (hopefully) for our foreign policy. No longer will we have "rapture ready" christian zionists sticking their nose in revelation every time they go to make a F.P. decision.

I would cheer except what are they being replaced with? Muslims and Catholics. And not just Catholicism, but the Catholic demographic is being bolstered by the Hispanic horde invading our nation. Protestantism wouldn't be on the decline if it weren't for mass immigration.

Agreed on all points.

A case could probably be made that Protestantism is on the decline because many denominations have liberaled up and watered down to the point where they have made their own church irrelevent.

A case could probably be made that Protestantism is on the decline because many denominations have liberaled up and watered down to the point where they have made their own church irrelevent.

Amen, sister.

I want an old-fashioned religious war in the Anglican Communion. The two factions fight it out (we'll easily whip the candy-assed liberals), and the bishops from the losing side present themselves to the victors with ropes around their necks.

The episcopal church here is now advertising, with a large sign decorated in fiesta colors, that they are serving mass "en espanol."

I guess they want to draw the beaners away from the "en espanol" catholic church downtown.

I would actually prefer Spanish as the national idiom and Catholicism replacing protestantism as the national religion. However I am sentimentally torn by the fact that mestizos are supposedly making those changes*. Mestizos are a dangerous people... they have absolutely no identity and wish the same ethnocide that has created them to consume other cultures. They are a very destructive people; they consume and deplete without creating and recreating in turn. The only thing they recreate are their disgusting spawns which only further contribute to the destruction that they reap. This is not surprising when considering the fact that they were created by the hands of ethnocide. It leaves them with the constant desire to recreate what has created them, and that is what they are doing here in USA. They don't bring culture .... they don't bring Spanish, they don't bring Catholicism; they bring ethnocide and destruction, hungry mouths and incapable hands. They bring a dialect that is foreign to Spaniards and a religion that is foreign to the Romans. To justify their unjustifiable existence by attributing to them the language Spanish and the religion Catholicism is an abomination. They know neither, just as they bring neither.

*not changes at all, but a 'revolutionary' destruction of English and Protestantism, ie. of pure culture.

I would actually prefer Spanish as the national idiom and Catholicism replacing protestantism as the national religion.

A priesthood of degenerate boy buggering communist hypocrites appeals to you.

Agreed on mestizos.

A priesthood of degenerate boy buggering communist hypocrites appeals to you.

When I speak of Catholicism, I mean something separate from the current clergy of homosexuals and paedophiles. When I speak of Catholicism, I am most likely referring to the Catholicism of the Thomists or the Catholic foundations of the Summa Theologica in general. This is something to keep in mind, though I will reference it in the future. Interesting enough, I myself am not a Catholic and have never been touched by baptismal waters. Yet the cultural significance for a Mediterranean such as myself of Catholicism is immense (my entire family is Catholic). Naturally I prefer my own cultural heritage to that of the Anglo Saxons or Northernmen in general. Apparently Nietzsche did too*. And it is for the reasons that Nietzsche gives that the transformation is justified. Yet the transformation is not occuring... it is an illusion, a mask for the destruction that is actually occuring at the hands of mestizos and other cultural degenerates.

* Beyond Good and Evil in particular

I guess they want to draw the beaners away from the "en espanol" catholic church downtown.

Most of the religious hispanics around here are some kind of weird Pentecostalist, actually. Lots of them seem to be shedding Catholicism without so much as a second glance. Probably those who don't go to services regularly would self-identify as Catholic, but what I see are these store-front churches crammed with Puerto Ricans and Central Americans, and loads of empty pews at Spanish language masses. We shall see how it all plays out, but I'd say the Catholic Church is on the verge of losing most of Central America, and maybe all of South America.

I'm kind of wondering if these people get counted in surveys like the one cited in the article.

I don't see the connection of a declined influence of the Catholic church in Central and Southern America because there are some mestizos in the United States who are protestant or have converted to protestantism. Actually the mestizos will typically do what is most beneficial to them in the United States, and that is probably why they convert. They are a herd that flocks to the strongest shepherd.

Patrick,

Come to think of it, I have noticed that phenomenon too. In the Atlanta area, I'd venture to say there are at least as many Pentecostal Christian mestizos as there are Catholic. Like the hoi polloi everywhere, they are drawn to emotionalism, not spirituality.

BTW, there is also a "Slavic Evangelical Church" near my office.

:: They are a very destructive people; they consume and deplete without creating and recreating in turn.

The mestizos quite often express their hatred and contempt for the Spanish imperialists and instead identify with the Aztecs.

:: They are a very destructive people; they consume and deplete without creating and recreating in turn.

The mestizos quite often express their hatred and contempt for the Spanish imperialists and instead identify with the Aztecs.

In Atlanta, it is not uncommon to see mestizo cars with "Aztec" laminated across the top of their windshields.

I remember when Vicente Fox was elected and all the FReaks were swooning over him: Oh, he's a businessman! He works for Coca-Cola! The remnant said, bulls***, he's a Spaniard who can't wait to unload his little brown ones on us.

I believe the artistic movement of Diego Rivera is important in understanding the new 'Aztec' trend in Mexico. It is particularly comical because it demonstrates how the mestizos continue to run away from their own identity as mestizos. They never accept themselves as mestizos; there is always an artifical filler such as 'Latin', 'Hispanic', or recently 'Aztec' to compensate for their mixed origins. It is their search for purity, both culturally and as a community. Due to the reality of their nature they are only able to accomplish that purity in the metaphysical realm. Therefore 'Aztec' necessarily assumes a religious aesthetic character rather than one of solid identity, yet it is projected as if it were an identity because the mestizos reject what is really real about their identity and therefore embrace the new 'aesthetic' as a replacement.