Flexibility

Fascinating report in the papers today about how much of the American population has changed religious affiliation. Some 28 percent of adults say they have changed their religious affiliation -- and that counts only serious switches, like Orthodox Christian-to-Catholic, not intramural stuff like Lutheran-to-Methodist.

On the one hand, it's a reminder that religious identity, like any other, can be altered or shed -- incredible as that may seem to people who have not known a society in which religion was not the guideline for distributing opportunity, safety and trust. Identity that seems ineluctable in one place is escapable in another.

On the other hand, the only reason that the news is of interest is precisely because religion still matters so much to Americans. It suggests a curious effect of religious liberation on a history of religious fervent: We now live in a country where, it seems, people feel free to give any answer they please to the religious question -- but where there still is a widespread consensus that the question must be answered.