sandi villarreal

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has news for you: You are not alone.

Forty-four percent of adult Americans have switched religions at least once in their lifetime, according to a new comprehensive religion study on religious affiliation in the United States.

The numbers show that the religious landscape in the United States is in flux, with forces like immigration, decline in birth rate and even consumerism at play.

What it boils down to, improbably, is this:

"Everybody in this country is losing members. Everyone is gaining members."

That’s the word from Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. At the release of the survey on Monday, Lugo said. "It's a very competitive marketplace."

But who are the winners and losers in this competition?

"It does appear to us that evangelical protestant tradition is still growing, but as it's growing, it's becoming more diverse," said John Green, senior fellow at the forum, in light of figures that reflect an increased fragmentation within Protestantism.

According to the study, there are hundreds of Protestant denominations "loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions: evangelical Protestant churches (26.3 percent of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1 percent) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9 percent)."

This diversity prompts Americans to evaluate their beliefs and line them up with a church, a trend popular especially among the young.

Mike Niebauer, 27, is a lay pastor at the Church of the Redeemer at Northwestern University, an Anglican church that he says "tries to find the middle way between Catholicism and the evangelical church."

Raised Catholic in rural Pennsylvania, Niebauer said that as a child, he "had never thought of Christianity as something that was a choice of mine to make."

When he encountered evangelical Christianity in college, he began to attend churches out of a "practical sense of wanting to be involved with a community of people who are intentional in following God." He said he later found his niche within the Anglican Church.

Niebauer isn't unique in making such a jump. According to the study, adults under 30 have a greater inclination to switch between traditions--for instance from Catholic to Protestant--than older adults.

But Niebauer said he's aware of the downfalls of each man creating his own faith.

"Part of it is the sense that there's this American, individualistic sense with the evangelical church where people switch denominations all the time," Niebauer said. "That is really based on the one person's decision on what is right for their life."

For some people, that decision is to leave organized religion entirely. According to the survey, the group showing the largest gain in "membership" was the unaffiliated, who make up 16 percent of the American population. That group includes atheists, agnostics and those who don't identify with any religion but say that religion is somewhat important or very important in their lives.

Competition for believers is a longstanding fact of the American religious landscape, said Dr. Vincent Miller, professor of theology at Georgetown University and author of "Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture."

But the cultural acceptance of individuals seeking their own religious identity outside of a longstanding tradition is new.

"In terms of liberation, people are freer to make intentional religious choices, so they actively embrace the teachings of a religious community rather than just passively accept them because they were born into that [tradition]," Miller said.

On the other hand, Miller added, "When religious communities become communities of choice, they become enclaves of the like-minded."

And Miller said that when dissenters flee "rather than challenging that community and going deeper into the traditions, communities harden." As a result, churches become less likely to engage their congregants' questions.