Just before the South Carolina primary last week, there was a report from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on religion in the state. I couldn’t believe what was reported. It took some digging to find the source of the problem: it is very difficult to find valid surveys of states, and it’s even harder to find ones that can be compared over time.
Here’s what PRRI reported. Since Pew surveyed in 2007, the percentage of white born-again Christians dropped from 36 to 26 percent. Other white Protestants fell from 24 to 17 percent. This means that white Protestants lost nearly a third of their members in just eight years. White Protestants have gone from being a majority (60 percent) to a minority (43 percent).
If these results were true, then it was big news. Really big. Sure, South Carolina is becoming more diverse, but did white Protestants drop 800,000 in less than a decade? Such a change is incredible (literally).
That was my gut reaction. Figuring out whether my instinct was right took some digging. It took some time, but I found the problem.