While politicians argue whether “change” is coming to America, there’s no doubt real demographic change is happening right now. What emerges from the Census report is an American population less and less linked to Europe as the U.S. becomes a truly multi-racial and multi-ethnic country. These changes will dramatically impact every aspect of national life: political, social, economic, educational, cultural and religious. The religious trends are well under way and visible. The sharp decline in membership among the mainline Protestant churches will accelerate. Nearly 70 percent of American Jews (including my family) trace their roots to Eastern Europe and the huge immigration that took place between 1881 and 1924, the year Congress passed legislation that imposed severe quotas limiting entry to the U.S. The Census Bureau report reminded me of Bob Dylan’s song written years ago: “Well you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changing.”

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)