Leaving the faith: Testing theories of religious switching using survival models

Abstract

A number of theories have been put forward to explain the high rates of religious switching in the United States, but no study has tested these theories against each other. This study uses data from the 1988 General Social Survey to estimate event history models of religious switching. It is found that religious exogamy and homogamy, parental religious exogamy, lapses in religious practice, denomination of origin, and generation are the most important factors affecting religious switching. Intergenerational mobility is found to have a negative effect on switching rates, but educational differences from respondents' denominations of origin increase crease switching rates significantly. Lastly, it is shown that dynamic models are an improvement over static logistic regression models.