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When a recent national survey found that 44 percent of respondents had switched from the faiths in which they were raised, it was hardly news to Craig Smith of Fort Wayne.
After all, he’s one of the switchers.
A city firefigher, Smith, 37, was brought up Roman Catholic in Illinois and was married in the church. But by the time he got divorced in his early 30s, he’d fallen away from practicing the faith of his childhood. Still, he felt the need for spiritual sustenance.
“I kept trying to go back to the Catholic Church,” he says. “And every time I’d go, when I’d leave, I’d feel either uninspired or angry over something I’d heard. And you don’t want to feel that way about your church.”
After trying several Protestant denominations, including Methodism and Lutheranism, Smith ended up at Fort Wayne’s Beacon Heights Church of the Brethren.
“I really found my home there,” he says.
Indeed, many Fort Wayne-area residents who responded to a request from The Journal Gazette last week to discuss changing faiths say they’ve gone on journeys that led them away from their religious roots. Residents were asked for their stories in light of the findings of the Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, one of the largest studies of its kind.
Some local people, like Smith and 32 percent of Pew survey respondents who were raised Catholic, said they’d left the church to become Protestant or unaffiliated.
Others who were raised Protestant became Catholic. A few moved among Protestant denominations, and some went from Christianity to other belief systems or said they had no religious affiliation.
Local residents say they did not take changing faiths lightly. Most say it took years, or even a lifetime to come to the decision, and many said they studied doctrine and practices thoroughly before switching.
None who responded cited reasons such as the proximity of a particular church to their home, the influence of a charismatic pastor or a desire to keep peace within their family as reasons for switching.
Several said they pursued their decision to switch although it was upsetting to family members or friends.
“I’ve lost friends over this,” says Karen Deemer, 51, of Edgerton, Ohio, who recalls she didn’t tell most of them when, as an evangelical Protestant, she began considering becoming Catholic.
“I was raised Methodist, very strong Methodist, and then I went to a Billy Graham crusade and accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior, and I joined a Baptist church,” Deemer relates. She attended a non- denominational Protestant fellowship with her husband for many years.
But in 2001, her spiritual life took another turn.
“I started reading the early church writings and about different saints, just as devotional guides,” she says. “I thought, ‘This is the depth of Christianity.’ It was something that I hadn’t seen before.”
She began filling a notebook with Scriptures and “pros” and “cons” of the Catholic religion. Still, when a Catholic friend told her, “You know, God has given me in my heart that you have to become a Catholic,” she says, she “just laughed” because she had been raised to think Catholics were “the other side.”
When other friends learned of Deemer’s decision to become Catholic, she says, one told her she was losing her salvation and she would pray for her. Another thought she was having a midlife breakdown.
But her husband, who was not Catholic, and her priest encouraged her to do what she felt the Holy Spirit was calling her to do.
“I always say my spiritual life is like a jigsaw puzzle, and joining (the Catholic Church) was the step that made mine complete,” says Deemer, who is a member of St. Mary’s parish in Edgerton and often attends Mass with her husband, who is considering becoming a Catholic.
Some of those who switched faiths said they were prompted by unpleasant experiences in their former churches.
Michelle Bibbo, 38, of Fort Wayne, a former Catholic, says she felt shunned when she had a child out of wedlock. She is now a happy Lutheran, and so are her husband, Robert, and her children.
“They (Lutherans) had a lot of the same beliefs and values but were not so judgmental about your past,” she says. “They didn’t look at me as a perpetual sinner. I felt welcomed and relieved to be able to be honest about who I was.”
With her husband and son-in-law William Born about to be deployed by the Army to Iraq, Bibbo says she’s more grateful than ever to have found a church home.
“Religion brings comfort and safety and other things that you just can’t describe, especially now with the way the world is,” she says.
Deb Barton of Fort Wayne also found a Lutheran home when she and her husband left a non-denominational church after learning of activities they found immoral.
“We love it, so open and honest about everything,” she says of their new church, New Life Lutheran in Fort Wayne. “Getting involved again, the hurt gradually is going away.”
Others say they switched because they no longer believed what their previous church taught.
Bill Voors, 57, of Fort Wayne, a former Catholic, says he had increasing trouble accepting the Catholic belief of transubstantiation. “Actually eating flesh and drinking blood (in the Eucharist) got to be almost repulsive to me,” says the member of Fort Wayne’s Plymouth Congregational Church, which is part of the United Church of Christ.
John Moore, 70, raised by Episcopalian parents in Fort Wayne, moved first to the United Church of Christ because he liked the way congregations could govern themselves without being at the beck and call of a hierarchy.
“Eventually, however, I became convinced that all religion is a human construct,” he says.
Moore says he now believes “we invent our own Jesus” and he considers himself a UCC – Unitarian Considering Christianity.
“I don’t think I’m really Christian, but I don’t think Jesus was a Christian, and I don’t think he would be accepted in most Christian churches around here today,” Moore says. “Jesus was an iconoclast. He didn’t march to the drum of the temple, and that’s what got him killed.”
Moore says getting involved in presenting “Jesus Seminar” programs in Fort Wayne was a turning point for him.
Experts say economic, social and geographic mobility, marriage among members of different religions, the rise of minority religions in America such as Buddhism and Islam, and individualized faith styles are key reasons for the religious turnover. About 16 percent of Pew respondents said they were unaffiliated with any tradition, although many of those said personal spirituality was part of their life.
Some analysts say the findings reflect Americans’ consumer mentality.
“As with most things, for Americans, religion is a consumer product. But it’s not brand loyalty you can rely on,” the Rev. Eileen Lindner, a Presbyterian minister who edits the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches told The Associated Press.
Affiliation is dependent on “marketing, location and other things,” she says, adding: “Denominations have been slow to react to that.”
Regardless of where local faith changers have landed, most say they respect and learned a great deal from their former faiths.
“I don’t regret the other churches I attended, and I have received spiritual wealth from each different experience,” says Deemer, mentioning the “wonderful Wesley hymns” from the Methodist tradition and the evangelical zeal and biblical knowledge of the Baptists. “I think we should be joyous about the spiritual journeys of others and not judgmental.”
It teaches tolerance, says Smith, whose family now includes his mother, still a devout Catholic; his brother, a non-denominational evangelical Protestant, and his father, who is unaffiliated.
“We’re so fortunate that we live in America and we can practice the faith we believe. What a blessing that is,” Voors says. “It’s the most important thing in life, to follow the light within.”
rsalter@jg.net
