Pew Research Center's most recent major survey of religion in America has some remarkable results. In just the last several years, Christianity as a whole in the US has declined as a percent of the population. Most of that loss has been among Catholic and mainline Protestant churches, who now combined are a bit over a third of the citizenry, but even evangelical Protestant affiliation is down a bit (as a percent), to just over a quarter of the population.
Christians, as a whole, have dropped from over three-quarters of the the population to a bit over two-thirds.
The next biggest group after that is "unaffiliated" — folks who are believers but not church-affiliated, or are just "spiritual," or are atheist / agnostic / humanist / secular. They're just under a quarter of the population.
This has a variety of impacts, but the most visible (to my mind) is reflected in the growing dread and sense of martyr-like persecution amongst the vocal evangelical population (which is not quite the same as saying "conservative Christian," but there's a lot of overlap). All the fighting over marriage equality, and the "religious freedom" to discriminate, is a reflection of a perceived (consciously or not) loss of power and influence, explicit and implicit, over American culture and politics.
I'll be reading through the report more carefully, but those are some first impressions.
America’s Changing Religious Landscape
The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the share of Americans who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. These changes affect all regions in the country and many demographic groups.
One of the things I find most interesting about these studies is when I mention the high rate of non-believers to Christian Americans who are very religious, they don't believe it. They can't comprehend that there's a large portion of the population that don't believe in the same things they do.
+Melissa Walsh I would expect that reaction more from older devout Christians than younger ones; the former grew up in a time when being a non-believer was a serious outlier (and usually not talked about).
Some other tidbits:
– The rise of the "nones" is across the country: lowest in the South (19%), largest in the West (28% — more than the Catholics there).
– The makeup of the "nones" is changing. 31% call themselves atheist or agnostic (up from 25%). 39% say they are nothing in particular and that religion is unimportant in their lives. 30% The new survey finds that the atheist and agnostic share of the “nones” has grown to 31%. Only 30% (down from 36%) say they are nothing in particular but describe religion as important to them.
– For every one person in the US who has changed from a "none" to a particular religious faith, four have gone the other way.
– Among evangelicals, the number of "Baptists" is declining in favor of "non-denominational".
I'm at my mom's, and so subject to being in the same room with her while she watches the news. I was utterly incensed that a news reader today threw to this story from one on the Nepal earthquake by referring to it as another "seismic shift." I literally had to walk out of the room.
+Kate Testerman Yeesh.