Roll Over, Martin Luther

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

Benchmark statistical moments are almost always anticlimactic. When the U.S. population shifted from rural to urban areas in 1920, there was no annunciatory thunderclap. And in about 2060, the year by which census figures suggest that non-Hispanic whites will become less than 50% of the population, the switch will have long been old news. Still, such dates have historical cachet, and 2004 soon may too. The University of Chicago's respected National Opinion Research Center (NORC) has reported that the proportion of adult Americans calling themselves Protestants, a steady 63% for decades, fell suddenly to 52% from 1993 to 2002. Not only that, the study's authors projected that "perhaps as early as this year the country will for the first time no longer have a Protestant majority." The heads-up provoked some spirited discussion about how important the eclipse might be, to whom, and why. Here are the key questions:

--IS EVERYTHING SUDDENLY DIFFERENT? Hardly. As Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe notes, "Even if Protestants dip below 50%, they're still twice as large as any other group. They're always going to be the largest group, ever, of anybody." But looking at the past, he admits this is a "big deal. John Jay wrote in the Federalist papers that we were united by a common religion. But based on this survey, you can't say that these days."

--ARE WE LOSING PROTESTANTS OR SIMPLY FLOODED WITH NON-PROTESTANT IMMIGRANTS? The latter has been suggested, disapprovingly, by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington. But NORC STUDY CO-AUTHOR TOM W. SMITH SAYS, "immigration is a factor, but it's not the major thing." More important are a falling away of adult believers and a declining number of Protestant children who keep the faith. The Catholic proportion of the population has held steady at 23%. Neither Jews nor Muslims top 4%. The category that has really jumped (from 8% to 14%) in the past decade is people who say they don't subscribe to any religious identification. Most of this group aren't Atheists, say scholars like Claude Fischer at the University of California, Berkeley. They still believe in basics like God, heaven and the bible as an inspired text, but prefer to think of themselves as spiritual rather than anything more specific.

WHO IS MOST AFFECTED BY THE PROTESTANT SWOON? Primarily the more liberal mainline denominations like United Methodists, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Episcopal Church. "We are losing our own children," says Kenneth Carder, Bishop of the Methodists' Mississippi Conference. But even some evangelical growth is tapering: the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention has conceded a drop-off in Sunday school enrollment.

WHY IS MAINLINE PROTESTANTISM SHRINKING? Three explanations, proposed over decades, may each have some validity: Mainline churches did not require enough commitment, theologically or evangelistically, from congregants, whose enthusiasm waned accordingly; denominations that started out aggressively courting members turned to other tasks, such as social activism; and mainline birthrates lag behind the national average. Most mainline leaders claim their plight may hold hidden opportunities. The Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, a methodist minister and general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA (whose membership historically has had a strong Protestant presence), notes, "the [Hebrew] prophets never had a majority, and yet they had important things to say. Maybe this is a positive wake-up call for us to worry less about numbers and more about faithfulness and relevancy. It's moral authority, not a function of size."

Although plausible, why does this sound a bit like rationalization? Because for centuries Protestantism's huge numbers had significant consequences: it bred most of America's founders and elite, and served as a template for its civil institutions and cultural assumptions. Huntington, a cheerleader, has credited it with our "core culture" of "individualism, the work ethic, and moralism." Protestant tropes of human perfectibility and the city on the hill continue to echo through political rhetoric. Comments Christian Smith, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: "the mainline always thought, we are America. What's The Big Deal?"

IF THAT'S THE CASE, SHOULD EVEN NON-PROTESTANTS MOURN ITS DECLINE? Not necessarily. By now, Protestantism's main nontheological message of radical individualism (or, as Berkeley sociologist Robert Bellah skeptically lampoons it, "You can be anything you want to be ... and if you don't make it, you have no one to blame but yourself") is deeply encoded in our national self-understanding--and even upon other religions, once they have spent a few generations here. "Catholics for choice?" Snorts John Fonte, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. "That's Protestantism." Not quite, but it is proof that whatever its institutional trend, Protestantism's influence will live on. --With reporting by Broward Liston/Orlando

With reporting by Broward Liston/Orlando