MORE than one fifth of all adults leave the religion that they were brought up in. Christianity and Buddhism lose the most adherents, a new study suggests.
In the UK, more than one third of the people surveyed said that they no longer followed their childhood religion.
The global study of changes to religious affiliation was carried out by the US-based Pew Research Center. Results from the study came from the Center’s Spring 2024 Global Attitudes Survey of nearly 80,000 people in 36 countries.
Most of those who reported no longer following their childhood religion were now unaffiliated, and would tick the atheist, agnostic, or “Nothing in particular” box, the researchers found.
Most of these were brought up as Christians. In the UK, 26 per cent of the former Christians said that they now had no faith. In most of the 36 countries surveyed, Christianity has experienced the largest net loss in followers. The trend is strongest in high-income countries.
Italy experienced the highest ratio of people leaving Christianity to those joining: 28 to one. In the UK, the ratio of leavers to new followers is nine to one.
There are some notable exceptions to the move to away from religion: South Korea has the highest number of people moving from no religion to following a faith — in this instance, Christianity. Six per cent of all adults in South Korea said that they had had no religious upbringing, but were now Christian. And, in Singapore, for every person leaving Christianity, three are discovering the faith.
In some countries, moving away from the faith that you were brought up in is still rare. In the Philippines, Hungary, and Nigeria, nearly all the adults in the survey who were raised Christian are still Christian today. “No religion” is the main category for those moving away from the faith that they were brought up in.
Buddhism has also experienced a move to religious disaffiliation. In Japan and South Korea, 23 per cent and 13 per cent of the adults respectively had left Buddhism to declare that they had no religion.
Judaism had few members joining or leaving the religion. About 80 per cent of Jews live in two countries: the United States and Israel. In the US, about one quarter of the adults who were raised Jewish no longer identified as Jewish, while in Israel fewer than one per cent of adults who were raised Jewish no longer identified as such.
Islam was also found to have very few people either leaving or joining. Thirteen countries of those surveyed had enough Muslims to provide a sample size for analysis by Pew. In those, three per cent or fewer had left or joined Islam. Most Muslims said that they were raised in the religion and had stayed with it.
The US had the lowest retention rate among Muslims in the countries surveyed, but about three-quarters of the Americans who were raised as Muslim still identified as Muslim. Those who left were likely to be religiously unaffiliated, although six per cent said that they were now Christian.
The US was also the country with the highest “accession” rate to Islam: 13 per cent of the former Christians now said that they were Muslim.
Viewpoint with Andrew Brown