Departmental Papers (Sociology)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
9-2001
Publication Source
American Journal of Sociology
Volume
107
Issue
2
Start Page
468
Last Page
500
DOI
10.1086/324189
Abstract
U.S. Protestants are less likely to belong to “mainline” denominations and more likely to belong to “conservative” ones than used to be the case. Evidence from the General Social Survey indicates that higher fertility and earlier childbearing among women from conservative denominations explains 76% of the observed trend for cohorts born between 1903 and 1973: conservative denominations have grown their own. Mainline decline would have slowed in recent cohorts, but a drop‐off in conversions from conservative to mainline denominations prolonged the decline. A recent rise in apostasy added a few percentage points to mainline decline. Conversions from mainline to conservative denominations have not changed, so they played no role in the restructuring.
Copyright/Permission Statement
© 2001 by The University of Chicago Press.
Recommended Citation
Hout, Michael, Andrew Greeley, and Melissa Wilde. 2001. "The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change in the United States." American Journal of Sociology 107 (2): 468-500. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/324189
Included in
Christian Denominations and Sects Commons, Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Sociology of Religion Commons
Date Posted: 25 June 2018
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
This article was published when Dr. Wilde was associated with Indiana University, but she is now a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania.