This time I won’t digest the whole thing for you, as the title of the newly released Pew Survey, called “U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious,” tells the tale (full pdf here). But they try to leaven the “bad” news with some other findings:
Is the American public becoming less religious? Yes, at least by some key measures of what it means to be a religious person. An extensive new survey of more than 35,000 U.S. adults finds that the percentages who say they believe in God, pray daily and regularly go to church or other religious services all have declined modestly in recent years.
But the Pew Research Center study also finds a great deal of stability in the U.S. religious landscape. The recent decrease in religious beliefs and behaviors is largely attributable to the “nones” – the growing minority of Americans, particularly in the Millennial generation, who say they do not belong to any organized faith. Among the roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults who do claim a religion, there has been no discernible drop in most measures of religious commitment. Indeed, by some conventional measures, religiously affiliated Americans are, on average, even more devout than they were a few years ago.
Here are a few graphs and tables showing that “nones” are increasing:
And the percentage of “nones” who are atheists and agnostics, as opposed to simply believing in God but not having formal church affiliation, is growing—from 22% to 33% over seven years:
From the survey:
Declining Religiosity. At the same time, the share of the population with low levels of observance (e.g., those who seldom or never pray or go to religious services, and who say religion is unimportant in their lives) has, itself, grown. And the percentage of American adults who are highly observant – at least as measured by traditional indicators, such as their certainty of belief in God, frequency of prayer, self-reported rates of attendance at worship services and self-assessments of the importance of religion in their lives – has declined.
As I predicted (this isn’t rocket science), America is inexorably, but slowly, becoming increasingly secular. More good news is that attitudes towards gays have changed: acceptance of homosexuality has increased across both believers and secularists—another inexorable trend showing “the better angels of our nature.”
Finally, those of you who want to see the religious breakdown of American Democrats versus Republicans, here it is. God bless those secular Democrats! And look at the difference in the proportion of evangelical Protestants between the parties. This is why the GOP is so gaga for Ben Carson, and why all the Republicans fight to outdo each other in goddiness during their debates:
