For the year 2000, 84 percent of Americans expressed their religious preference as Christian: 56% Protestant, 27% Catholic, and 1% Orthodox.  Jewish adherence was indicated in two percent of respondents, while those indicating "none, or not designated were 8 percent.

(Source: The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ, "Gallup Poll Releases-Easter Season Finds a Religious Nation"; published 13 April 2001; in U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001 [121st edition], Washington, DC, 2001, p. 56.)

"Both my parents always had tremendous faith in God, even when times got rough and we were on welfare. They didn't give a hoot for money. My dad would say, 'It's a sin to worry. It's a lack of trust in God.'"

(Source: Mel Gibson, in Dotson Rader, "Even The Bad Times Make You Better," Parade Magazine, July 28, 2002, p. 6.)

Among Americans who have watched their parents split up, a great many reject the religious creed of their upbringing, some choosing to affiliate with a new religious denomination and others to repudiate religion altogether.  To clarify the effects of parental divorce on religious identity, a team of researchers from the University of Chicago and Founcer Techsociety Research recently scrutinized survey information collected from a nationally representative sample of 11,372 adults raised as either Catholics or mainline Protestants.  Their statistical parsing of the data provides strong evidence that, compared to peers raised in intact families, the children of divorce are "more likely to experience religious mobility either by switching to a different religion or by opting out of religion entirely."

The effects of parental divorce appear particularly pronounced among Catholics and conservative Protestants, groups who are "in general less likely to be religiously mobile."  The researchers use their data to estimate that, compared to Catholics raised in intact families, Catholics who experienced a parental divorce during childhood are "1.7 times more likely to switch to a moderate Protestant denomination . . . 2.6 times more likely to switch to a conservative Protestant denomination; and 2.2 times as likely to apostatize." 

Among Americans raised as conservative Protestants, experiencing parental divorce as a child increases the likelihood of switching to a moderate Protestant denomination by almost one-half (Odds Ratio of 1.478) and of repudiating religion altogether by over two-and-a-half times (Odds Ratio of 2.629).   In the especially high likelihood that parental divorce in childhood will cause a conservative Protestant to apostatize from religion entirely, the authors of the new study discern "a rejection of both family and religious community."

Indeed, the researchers see "strong and consistent effects of having experienced parental divorce in childhood on the likelihood of religious disaffiliation (apostasy) for all groups."  And although their primary focus is parental divorce, the researchers also determine that adult children's own divorces affect religious identity in a curious way, making these adults "less likely to switch" religious denominations, but more likely to repudiate religion altogether, so "leading to an increased likelihood of switching from Catholic to None, moderate Protestant to None, and conservative Protestant to None."

The authors of the new study interpret their overall findings as evidence that "parental divorce in childhood weakens religious ties through its disruption of both family and community."  Nonetheless, in the relatively high likelihood of conversion to Catholicism among moderate Protestants who as children have experienced parental divorce, the researchers detect the possibility of "a search for a stronger religious community, and perhaps also a rejection of divorce."

(Source: Leora E. Lawton and Regina Bures, "Parental Divorce and the 'Switching' of Religious Identity," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40.1 (2001): 99-111, emphasis added.)