Have you ever heard of “religious switching?” The Pew Research Center describes it as a growing “phenomenon” where individuals shift their religious identities from childhood to adulthood. This doesn’t refer to changes within the same faith, but rather to those who either adopt a new religion or disaffiliate religious practice altogether.
Pew’s latest report highlights a surge in this trend in recent years. Drawing from data on approximately 80,000 individuals across 36 countries, the study revealed that “a fifth or more of all adults have left the religious group in which they were raised,” with Christianity and Buddhism taking the hardest hits.
The countries seeing these “religious switching” trends most commonly are East Asia, Western Europe, North America, and South America. And perhaps the real surprise is that the spotlight really isn’t on religious “switching” so much as a complete abandonment of religion altogether.
“In other words,” Pew wrote, “most of the switching is disaffiliation — people leaving the religion of their childhood and no longer identifying with any religion.” It turns out that “many of these people were raised as Christians,” with “29% of adults in Sweden alone that say ...
