According to the center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, about 34 percent of American adults have participated in religious switching, meaning their current religious identity is different from the one in which they were raised.
As a whole, Christianity loses more followers than it gains through religious switching. Although 85.6 percent of American adults say they were raised as Christians, more than a fifth of that group (19.2 percent of all U.S. adults), no longer identify with Christianity. The exception to this trend is evangelical Protestantism, which actually gains more adherents through switching than it loses. [...]
For some of my friends and family, religious identity is a matter of heaven or hell. When your religion has such stark eternal consequences, it makes sense that when you see a loved one doubting, your instinct is to find a way to bring that person back into the fold as quickly as possible. But to achieve that goal, perfectly well-meaning Christians sometimes do more harm than good ― even though they may not be aware of it. [...]
At first glance, phrases like these appear to give people permission to doubt. In reality, it’s only permission to doubt in a certain way, within a specific set of boundaries. Telling someone that they can “doubt but not deny” reveals an inability to step outside of your own worldview and into a space where the very existence of God is up for debate.
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