Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often


Ingrid Case was a devoted church-goer as a child, not only attending Sunday school, but also serving as an acolyte at her Episcopalian church in Greeley, Colorado.

"Basically, it's the priest's assistant," she explained. "You carry a cross in front of them, get the things they need to perform the service, scurrying around doing what they need."

But after college, Case drifted away. She didn't feel like she fit in socially at the Episcopalian church in Princeton, New Jersey, and found herself uncomfortable with some of its theology.

"I began to see there were some things I wasn't able to get on board with fully. I don't like the traditional Episcopalian focus on the afterlife," she said.

Today she's a Quaker.

She got involved with the Society of Friends, as the denomination is formally known, through the man who later became her husband, Nat Case. He wasn't raised a Quaker either, she said, though he went to a Quaker-run boarding school as a child.

Her shift in religion was gradual, said Case, 41, a freelance writer and editor in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

"It wasn't so much 'You people stink and I am out of here,' as 'I like this better and this is what I want to do.' "

More here-

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/27/changing.religion.study/

and here-

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-religion-churn28-2009apr28,0,689954.story

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