Are Protestants Mass-Converting to Roman Catholicism?

A VERY revealing look at the latest conversion data in America

Introduction

In the sports fan world, there is almost no currency as valuable as: hype and triumphalism.

It doesn’t matter if your team is in a horrible place and has been there for a long time. If you have enough hype edits, rumors of potential key trades, and fellow fans stirring up a frenzy of excitement for your team’s next season… you can almost drown out the fact that your team hasn’t made the play-offs in years. This is especially the case if you only tune in periodically and you catch your team winning a couple of games early in the season. The more fellow fans of your team go online and loudly proclaim victory over the other side, the more it seems like the hype is real and the legendary comeback rumors might finally come true — until your team flounders and gets nowhere close to the play-offs yet again. But hey, your legendary comeback was simply delayed. After all, the hype is already starting up for next season.

The Protestant vs. Ecclesialist apologetics world today often reflects this same state of affairs. Your favorite podcasters, online influencers, and apologists can pump out videos and posts like nobody’s business selling you a narrative that you hope is true: the other side can be easily destroyed with a single Google search and a 5-minute DEBUNKED video, your apologists can’t catch a single loss, millions are converting to your side — but for real this time. It will all pan out this time… right?

Now, I’m not a fan of this reality (in fact, I really wish it would change), but that’s just simply what it is: reality. There is no use closing our eyes to the facts. And while people from all Christian traditions do this, one of the largest groups participating in this hype-and-triumphalism apologetics fiasco is Roman Catholicism.¹ ² ³

So, in this article, we will seek to answer the following questions about America’s current religious reality:

Is Roman Catholicism in America experiencing a massive resurgence?

Are Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism en masse?

Let’s find out.⁴

Is Roman Catholicism Experiencing a Revival in the United States?

While the overall Christian population in America is no longer declining as drastically as it once was, a leading Roman Catholic magazine is sounding the alarm — the numbers are still looking REALLY BAD for Roman Catholicism in America.⁵

For evidence in support of that claim, let’s turn to the latest Pew Research Center data on “Religious Switching” in America. Here is how Pew Research Center defines what they mean by “Religious Switching”:

We use the phrase “religious switching” rather than more familiar terms like “conversion” because changes in religious identity occur in all directions, including from having a religion to having no religion. Also, these changes can take place without any formal ritual or declaration.

We measure religious switching with two survey questions. The first asks, “What is your present religion, if any?” The second asks, “Thinking about when you were a child, in what religion were you raised, if any?” By comparing each respondent’s answers to these questions, we can see whether they still have the same religion in which they were raised or whether they have switched.

However, these questions may not capture all the switching that takes place. For instance, they would not reveal whether a person has switched multiple times, or whether a person left their childhood religion and later returned to it. Our analysis of religious switching focuses on the difference (if any) between a respondent’s religious identity at the time of the survey and during childhood, not the steps that may have occurred in between.⁶

Pew Research Center provides the following examples:

Millions of Americans have changed their religion over the course of their lifetimes, switching from one religion to another, leaving religion altogether, or choosing to identify with a religion after having grown up without one. […] By this definition, religious switchers would include – to give just a few examples – a person who was raised Protestant and is now religiously unaffiliated; a person who was raised Catholic and now identifies as any kind of Protestant; a person who was raised in no religion but now identifies as Jewish; and a person who was raised as an Orthodox Christian and now identifies as a Catholic. However, a person who was raised as a United Methodist and now identifies as a Southern Baptist would not be considered to have switched religions, because both of those denominations are Protestant. Similarly, a person who was raised with no particular religion and now identifies as an atheist would not be counted as having switched, because both of those categories are part of the religiously unaffiliated grouping.⁷

With this definition in mind, let’s turn to the data on Roman Catholicism. If the hype and triumphalism from online Roman Catholics is to be believed, then we should see a massive surge of converts, right? Or, at the very least, Rome should be losing way less people than Protestantism is, right?

Well, as it turns out, Roman Catholics lose a much higher percentage of their people to "Religious Switching" than all Protestant traditions combined. Just how much higher? Well, while Protestants lose 180 people for every 100 that we gain, Roman Catholics lose 840 PEOPLE for every 100 that they gain.⁸

But hey, this includes all different sorts of different “religious switching.” So, maybe the numbers are bad in relation to deconversion from the faith altogether, but are looking great when it comes to Protestant conversions in particular, right?

Are Protestants Flocking to Roman Catholicism?

While Roman Catholic apologists would have you believe that Protestants specifically are jumping ship and swimming the Tiber to Rome en masse — this is simply NOT true.

When you look at all "Protestant"⁹ traditions taken together, what percentage of all people surveyed who were raised in those traditions became Roman Catholic?

Two. Percent.

For every 100 people raised “Protestant”… only 2 of them end up becoming Roman Catholic.¹⁰

So much for that tidal wave of converts, am I right?

And get this, of those raised in Roman Catholic households...

14% ARE NOW PROTESTANT.¹¹

Yup, that's right.

Percentage-wise, there are 7x MORE cradle Catholics who become Protestant than there are cradle Protestants who become Roman Catholic. In fact, conversions to Protestantism account for 32% of all cradle Catholics’ religious switches away from Rome.

As far as the data is concerned, the current Roman Catholic triumphalist narrative is simply verifiably false. And not only that, but the exact converse of the conversion narrative is true: Rome loses way more of its people to Protestantism than it gains. And this has been true year after year for a very long time.

Conclusion

So, why do so many Roman Catholics today scream from their online rooftops about the supposed death of Protestantism at the hands of Rome? Well, I think online Roman Catholics believe this for at least one of three reasons (most of them due to a combination of reasons #1 and #2).

Online Roman Catholics are likely:

1. Engaging in misinformed wishful thinking fueled by personal anecdotes from their own life.

2. Being led astray by their social media algorithms, which act as pipelines funneling testimonies of that 2% Former Protestant group straight to their timelines. As such, they think the number is much greater than it actually is.

3. Engaging in apologetics propaganda and trying to apply fake social pressure to those experiencing ecclesial anxiety in order to expedite what little conversions to Rome they can get. In other words, faking it till they make it.

Where does this leave us?

Well, for one, hopefully with a better grasp on reality... at least when it comes to this one particular issue. Overall, I think this should lead all of us to take a step back and ask some serious questions about our online bubbles and echo-chambers.

In other words: don’t be tricked by your social media feed. Go outside into the real world. Talk to regular people who are not being hand-selected by an algorithm to keep you on the app for longer and longer periods of time. Go touch some grass.

Updates/Edits: ¹²

1. Example #1:

2. Example #2:

3. Example #3:

4. In this article, we will be taking a look at some of the latest data from the “Religious Landscape Study (2023-2024)” performed by Pew Research Center, which you can find here:

Pew Research Center. (2025, February 26). Religious Landscape Study. https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/#u-s-religious-groups

5. Sammons, E. (2025, March). Catholics are Rapidly Losing Ground. Crisis Magazine. https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/catholics-are-rapidly-losing-ground

6. Smith, G., Cooperman, A., Alper, B., Mohamed, B., Rotolo, C., Tevington, P., Nortey, J., Kallo, A., Diamant, J., & Fahmy, D. (2025, February 26). Decline of Christianity in the U.s. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/decline-of-christianity-in-the-us-has-slowed-may-have-leveled-off/

7. Smith, G., Cooperman, A., Alper, B., Mohamed, B., Rotolo, C., Tevington, P., Nortey, J., Kallo, A., Diamant, J., & Fahmy, D. (2025, February 26). Religious Landscape Study: Religious Switching. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-switching/#fn-198579-34

8. Ibid.

9. Note: Pew Research Center includes as “Protestant” several groups which are not tied to the Protestant Reformation in any real way. I would disagree with that grouping; however, that doesn’t significantly affect this article.

10. Note: If you were to narrow down the scope to the core three Reformation traditions (Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, and Anglicanism) the conversion rate to Roman Catholicism is 4%. That means that for every 100 Americans raised in these traditions, only 4 of them become Roman Catholic.

11. Note: Additionally, if you look at that same chart, Eastern Orthodoxy loses 7% of its cradle Orthodox to Protestantism. And only 1% of cradle Protestants switch to “Another Christian Tradition” other than Roman Catholicism — that means that less than 1% of Protestants become Eastern Orthodox. So much for the EO triumphalist narrative there also.

12. Edit (4/03/25): Fixed some clunky wording and typos. Also added the 32% stat to the RC → Prot section.