A recent survey reveals that constant movement characterizes the American religious market, as every major religious group simultaneously gains and loses members. Those who grow due to religious change simply gain new members faster than they lose them. Conversely, those whose numbers are declining due to religious change simply do not attract enough new members to compensate for the number of adherents leaving those particular faiths. The United States, founded by dissident Protestants seeking religious freedom, is on the verge of becoming a nation in which Protestants are a minority. A growing portion of Americans identify as not affiliated with any religious tradition, and a small but growing number identify as Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Orthodox Christian. Additionally, an influx of predominantly Catholic immigrants, mostly from Latin America, is helping to offset the high dropout rate among U.S.-born Catholics. These are the key findings of a groundbreaking study of the American religious landscape recently published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The study, the most comprehensive assessment of the country in at least half a century, finds that the United States is in the midst of a period of unprecedented religious fluidity, during which 44 percent of American adults have left their religion's denomination. childhood for another denomination, another faith, or no faith at all. The study is based on a survey of 35,000 Americans ages 18 and older who speak one of five different languages. This is a very large number for survey research, which allowed researchers to obtain more detail about minority religious groups than is usually available in smaller studies. The study is also important because the quantification of religious association in the United States is often complicated and contested; the U.S. Census does not include questions about religion, and many studies rely on counts submitted by denominations, whose spontaneous reports are often unreliable (Dykman 41). The new study is replete with findings about an extraordinarily diverse nation, with a population that is shaped by affiliation with a vast and shifting set of religious groups and sects. A number of subgroups represent each religious family: Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists. The nation is still predominantly Christian - 78 percent of adults identify as Christian - but nearly 5 percent identify as members of other faiths and 16 percent say they are not affiliated with them (Dykman 41).