Fewer Than Half of Americans Stay in Parents’ Denomination : Affiliations: Switching is most common among such mainline groups as Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians, researchers say.

In years past, church affiliation was passed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom, but as the 21st Century looms closer, fewer than one of every two Americans clings to the denomination of their parents.

“The practice of switching faiths is rampant in contemporary America,” conclude the authors of one recent study, “The Presbyterian Presence: The Twentieth-Century Experience” (Westminster/John Knox Press).

Only 43% of the American public remain in the religious body they were born into, according to that study.

“No longer are the barriers separating different denominations strong enough to keep people from crossing over them,” wrote Robert Wuthnow, a leading sociologist of religion at Princeton University, in “The Restructuring of American Religion” (Princeton University Press, 1988).

According to Wuthnow: “An increasingly large number of people feel comfortable in switching from one denomination to another.”

Denominational switching cuts across all faith groups but is most common among members of the historic “mainline” denominations that were traditionally the most visible churches in American culture--Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Methodists, for example.

Those churches hit hard times in the mid-1960s, when membership and financial support took a dramatic plunge, even as conservative evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches began to flourish.

According to figures cited by Wuthnow from the 1970s and early 1980s, 45% of worshipers brought up as Presbyterians are no longer Presbyterians.

For Methodists, the defection rate is 40%; Episcopalians, 38%; Baptists and Lutherans, about 25%; Jews, 15%, and Catholics, 17%.

When individuals or families switch denominations, it is usually not so much because of misgivings about church theology or social policies, studies show. Rather, it is because the ecumenical movement, stressing church unity, has erased many of the boundaries that historically distinguished one denomination from another.

“In congregations, people have accepted the ecumenical movement to mean that there is nothing essentially different among the various Christian churches--in part because this is what mainstream Protestant churches have taught,” according to “The Presbyterian Presence.”

More than ever, Americans see religious life as an ecclesiastical delicatessen with a menu that includes not only the various Protestant denominations, which were predominant in the past, but also the Roman Catholic Church, new religious movements and others.

But in the case of congregations, such as the defection in Arlington, Tex., of St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church to Catholicism, it is precisely that dilution of denominational distinctiveness--and the dissatisfaction with it--that often prompts a switch.

In one of the most visible and acrimonious en masse defections, the wholesale flight of congregations in Mississippi from the liberal Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)--which has about 11,500 congregations nationwide--left the denomination “a shadow of its former self” in that state, according to “The Presbyterian Presence.”

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Nationally, during the eight-year period 1983-90, a total of 93 congregations left the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), virtually all to join the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America or Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

In the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 22 of the denomination’s about 11,000 congregations withdrew between 1990 and 1993. Eighteen of those affiliated with other denominations--almost all to more conservative Lutheran bodies--and four went independent.

In both cases, the loss of congregations came in the years after controversial mergers that created the 5.2-million-member ELCA and 2.8-million-member PCUSA.

Members of the more liberal Protestant mainline denominations such as the ELCA, PCUSA, Episcopal Church and United Church of Christ are more likely to switch denominations than their more conservative Protestant counterparts or Roman Catholics, according to studies of denominational switching.

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Even so, the liberal denominations attract more members from other churches--including conservative churches--than they lose, according to comprehensive studies by Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, who documented their findings in “American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future” (Rutgers University Press, 1987).

But switchers to liberal Protestant denominations tend to be older and less active than people who switch into the more conservative churches.

In addition, the liberal, mainline churches have lost substantial numbers of members to the “no religious affiliation” category.

The authors of “Vanishing Boundaries: The Religion of Mainline Protestant Baby Boomers” (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994) suggest that the key to the health of the mainline Protestant churches lies not in the regional and national denominational structures but, rather, in the local churches.

“Individual ministries and churches, learning from successes elsewhere and adapting them to their own particular settings, hold out the greatest promise for the future of the mainline churches,” the authors concluded.

They acknowledge, too, that recovery of a voice of authority in the churches is a necessary component to any mainline resurgence.

But an emphasis on doctrinal authority is likely to create only further dissent and splits, according to the authors. More fertile territory, they suggest, is in the moral arena, where the churches could “emphasize thoughtful and responsible Christian moral living in 20th and 21st century America.”