USA Today (whose Cathy Grossman is one of the most interesting religion reporters writing today) offers an admittedly too-quick summary of key findings:

• Faith is fluid: 44% say they're no longer tied to the religious or secular upbringing of their childhood. They've changed religions or denominations, adopted a faith for the first time or abandoned any affiliation altogether.
• "Nothing" matters: 12.1% say their religious identity is "nothing in particular," outranking every denomination and tradition except Catholics (23.9%) and all groups of Baptists (17.2%).
• Protestants are fading: 51.3% call themselves Protestant, but roughly one-third of this group were "unable or unwilling" to describe their denomination.
• Immigrants sustain Catholic numbers: 46% of foreign-born U.S. adults are Catholics, compared with only 21% of native-born adults. Latinos are now 45% of all U.S. Catholics ages 18-29.

The JTA offers this summary of the report’s portrait of the American Jewish community: “Jews earn more money, are better educated and have fewer children at home than the members of most other faiths.”

The sheer amount of data is staggering, and it will take week and months to begin to digest the findings.   As I wade into the report, I will share my thoughts here.

In the meantime, a few links to best early discussions I have seen. 

• The always-insightful Get Religion website has a very helpful post collecting how different leading newspapers reported the story.
• The JTA’s Sue Fishkoff has a great story on the “Jewish angles,” including some interesting criticism of the study’s sampling technique of American Jewry.
• Over at Wall of Separation, the blog of American’s United for the Separation of Church and State, Rob Boston has an interesting post highlighting (of course) the study’s implications for religious liberty.

More soon.