I wanted to post the Catholic News Service article on the same study “Faith in Flux study tells why people change religions”, because it is a more balanced report of the same information, stresses positives and negatives and even draws some different conclusions, and in keeping with this forum is a Catholic source
catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901903.htm
one tidbit that did not make it in other summaries of the study is this: many people are reverting back to childhood or cultural faith roots, after years in a different denomination or even different religion. my uninformed guess is this is a little recognized and little studied phenom but my albeit limited experience bears out this trend.
in RCIA over 20 years, but as a catechist and director only 9, I have been surprised by the fact that the majority of our non-Catholic candidates have one or both parents who were baptized Catholic. Often the candidate had no idea of this until the topic of their conversion was brought up to their family members. The others often turn out to have at least one Catholic grandparent. This is not only among families where members turned to more cultish faiths like JW, but also mainline Protestants, and unchurched persons. It is a given that in our SoTex culture just about anyone with a Hispanic surname has Catholic family roots, so that is not really surprising, but it seems true in all ethnic groups. Even and especially Baptists (our other majority faith down here) which to me is surprising since in the South those roots are usually several generations deep.
this again is unscientific, but in my avocation (local history) working in close contact with Jewish community groups I have heard several times the speculation that non-observant Jews seem to be returning to their religious roots, not only later in life, but children of “secular” Jews who were not brought up in the religious and cultural practices, or the grandchildren, seem to be returning to conservative or even Orthodox life and practice.
so I throw this out for additional discussion for what it’s worth.