Switching Close to Home: Volatility or Coherence in Protestant Affiliation Patterns?

Data derivedfrom the General Social Surveys (GSS, 1973-84 and 1973-90) are analyzed using Goodman's loglinear mobility data techniques to assess assertions of Roof and McKinney (1987) regarding the switching of affiliation among "families" (conservative, moderate, or liberal) of Protestant denominations. Their claim that switching has increased in recent years is contradicted by results showing a statistically significant decline in switching incidence over time. The general notion of Protestant volatility is contradicted by a summary comparison with other religious groups in the GSS and is shown to be due to theoretical distortions caused by the use of Protestant subcategories in switching research. From the acceptable fit of a distance model to the data, it is argued that switching behavior within Protestantism demonstrates coherence rather than volatility. For the last 25 years, the switching of religious group identification, particularly among Protestants, has been studied with reference to theories of trends in religious involvement in the U.S. Such rearrangement of affiliations has been cited as evidence relevant to the membership growth and decline of denominations (Hadaway 1978); theories of personal and social theological development (Stark & Glock 1968); the secularization and decentralization of religion in American society (Roof & Hadaway 1979; Wuthnow 1976); and cultural accommodation across the life cycle of religious groups (Stark & Bainbridge 1985). With the decline of Protestant hegemony in American life, switching has been taken to indicate the disintegration of Protestant identity, relegating Protestantism increasingly to the status of a kind of residual category, a convenient collection of groups that are essentially unrelated. The assumption has been that switching directly indicates volatility in religious group life. Switching and retention are logically counterposed, and to increase one is necessarily to decrease the other. Due to the higher incidence of switching * My gratitude is expressed to Douglas Sloane for extensive review and editing of this article, and to William McKinney for the provision of data structures and computer code used in his research. Direct correspondence to D. Paul Sullins, Department of Sociology, Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. 20064. i The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, December 1993, 72(2):399-419 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.223 on Wed, 24 Aug 2016 05:41:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 400 / Social Forces 72.2, December 1993 associated with it, Protestantism has therefore been considered to be characterized by greater volatility and increased secularization. In contrast, this article suggests that Protestantism coheres and persists as a viable religious culture, and that this coherence is demonstrated, and may be made possible, by the character of switching behavior within Protestantism. The model of Protestantism as a viable religious culture is tested by a rigorous reexamination of two assertions made by Roof and McKinney in their extensive examination of switching in American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future (1987). While Roof and McKinney put forth a number of claims regarding the changing shape of denominational mobility since the 1960s, their discussion does not involve analytical techniques that support rigorous testing of inferences about the population from which the samples they employed were-drawn. The first assertion tested is that the incidence of switching within Protestantism has increased since the 1960s. The rejection of this hypothesis would provide direct support for the notion that switching is not an advancing condition of Protestantism. If switching is not increasing, it cannot be a sign of progressive decline of Protestant identity. To the extent that switching is an indicator of destabilization, the discovery of no change in the switching rate over time would indicate an equilibrium in Protestant stability, while a decrease in the switching rate would indicate that Protestantism is in fact increasing in stability. The second assertion tested is that there is a higher incidence of switching among Protestants than Catholics, Jews, or members of other religions. The acceptance of this claim forms the basis for much of the discussion on Protestantism's higher volatility. If this hypothesis is rejected, then there is no evidential basis for regarding Protestantism as less stable as a whole than the other major religious traditions in America. While it is intuitively appealing to consider switching as evidence of instability, it is by no means clear that all switching is equally destabilizing. If it were only instability that was being displayed, we would expect switching to be unordered, random in origin and destination. An ordered rearrangement of individuals within the religious groups of Protestantism would indicate a restructuring, but not a disintegration, of Protestant affiliation. A substantial consensus exists in the literature confirming Roof and McKinney's work on an ordered arrangement of groups within Protestantism from liberal to conservative. If it can be shown that switching behavior also is ordered along this dimension, then it can be argued that Protestant switching does not degrade, but rather enhances, the internal structures of Protestantism. Accordingly, a third hypothesis is tested, that Protestants tend to switch close to the point of origin along the liberal-to-conservative spectrum. If this hypothesis is not rejected, then the orderliness of switching behavior would illustrate the coherence and stability of Protestantism. While destabilizing to individual subgroups, the internal structure of switching patterns would in fact promote the stability of Protestantism as a whole. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.223 on Wed, 24 Aug 2016 05:41:24 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Protestant Affiliation Patterns / 401