Unfulfilled Expectations Media Impact
Pew Research Shows the Where Americans
Faithful Switching Affiliation Get Their News
Television remains
Almost half of American adults have the most popular source
changed religious affiliation at least once of news, and nearly one-
during their lives, according to the latest third of Americans under
survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum the age of 40 see satirical
on Religion & Public Life. Most people who change their religion leave their child- news-oriented television
hood faith before age 24, and many of these who change do so more than once. programs like The Col-
Pew further reports that at the same time that the ranks of the “unaffiliated” bert Report and The Daily Show with
have grown to about 16 percent, this group has one of the lowest retention rates. Jon Stewart replacing traditional news
More than half of this group believe in God; the status often serves as a way sta- outlets, according to a new Rasmussen
tion en route to joining a group that fits their needs. Interestingly, most people who Reports survey.
were raised unaffiliated now belong to one religion or another. Among adults of all ages, 39 per-
cent believe such programs are making
Americans more informed about news
Cowboy Churches events; 21 percent believe they make
Faith Has Long Been Linked to Western Way of Life people less informed. Meanwhile, the
survey found that 70 percent of re-
Texas is the epicenter of a welcoming, come-as-you-are, 40-year- sponding adults claim such programs
old faith movement that’s grown gangbusters in the past decade. are not influential in shaping their own
From Colorado to North Carolina, wranglers meet in riding arenas political opinions.
and barns and baptize believers in horse troughs. No one passes a In an earlier survey, the research-
collection plate to the Stetson-and-spurs crowd, but they may set out a boot. ers found that most young readers also
The back-to-basics approach works because, “The cowboy is a way more are rejecting both their local daily
simple human being,” says Royce Gregory, pastor of the Life Brand Cowboy Church, newspaper’s print and website editions
in Ohio. Sermons are short and abound with Western allegories. as sources of information. Most of the
“We get people who will not go to church anywhere else, people who haven’t 52 percent of American adults who
been in 30 or 50 years,” says Gary Morgan, pastor of the Cowboy Church of Ellis routinely use the Internet find online
County, Texas. reporting comparable to that in their
“Churches, from the very beginning, were looking to restore the early church of local newspaper, although fewer than
Christ,” comments Kathleen Flake, a professor of American religious history at Van- half of them use the Internet as a daily
derbilt University Divinity School, in Nashville, noting how the cowboy churches’ news source. Overall, a majority of
message is classically American. “It was just a matter of how literal they were about voters believe the Internet has had a
it. “To find the nearest meeting or event, check
CowboyChurch.net/dir/. positive impact on journalism.
September 2009 21
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