---
title: "Switching Religions"
description: "About 44% of U.S. adults have switched religious affiliation including dropping any connection to a specific religious tradition."
date: "2009-04-21"
authors:
  - name: "Russell Heimlich"
    job_title: "Former web developer"
    link: "https://www.pewresearch.org/staff/russell-heimlich/"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2009/04/21/switching-religions/"
---

# Switching Religions

About 44% of U.S. adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether. If changes in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another are excluded, more than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion — or no religion at all. The 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape survey also found that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion. Included with the full report is a special interactive feature providing graphic profiles of the geographic and demographic distributions of religious faiths across America. [Read More](https://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/743/united-states-religion)