New Poll Results on Americans' Religious Affiliations

[Yazata]

Pew has released new poll results on Americans' religious affiliation. There have been some interesting changes since Pew's last poll on the subject in 2007.

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/ameri...landscape/

70.6% of Americans identify themselves as some variety of Christian. (Down from 78.4%)

46.5% are Protestants
25.4 % are Evangelicals
14.7% are 'mainline' Protestants
6.5% are historically black Protestant denominations
20.8% are Roman Catholics
0.5% are Orthodox Catholics
1.6% are Mormons

5.9% identify with non-Christian religions (Up from 4.7%)

1.9% are religiously Jewish (the number of ethnic Jews is somewhat higher)
0.9% are Muslim
0.7% are Buddhist
0.7% are Hindu
0.3% are 'other world religion' (this includes groups like Sikhs, Taoists and Jains)
1.5% are 'other faiths' (this includes the Unitarians, 'New Age', Native American religions etc.)

22.8% are 'Unaffiliated' (up from 16.1%) This equated to 55.8 million American adults.

3.1% are atheists (up from 1.6%)
4.0% are agnostics (up from 2.4%)
15.8% are 'nothing in particular' (up from 12.1%)

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39% of Americans report themselves as being in religiously mixed-marriages.
24% of whites, 20% of Hispanics and 18% of blacks are unaffiliated
Among college graduates, 64% have Christian affiliations, and 24% are nones.
Among those without university degrees, 73% have Christian affiliations and 22% are nones.
27% of American males have no religious affiliation, while 19% of females are 'nones'. (That gender-gap surprised me.)

[C C]

[...] 3.1% are atheists (up from 1.6%)
4.0% are agnostics (up from 2.4%)
15.8% are 'nothing in particular' (up from 12.1%) [...]

Some growth, but doesn't look like the advertised epidemic that's been expected for years to spring from the Information Age.

[Yazata]

[...] 3.1% are atheists (up from 1.6%)
4.0% are agnostics (up from 2.4%)
15.8% are 'nothing in particular' (up from 12.1%) [...]

Some growth, but doesn't look like the advertised epidemic that's been expected for years to spring from the Information Age.

True, but that change has been over an 8 year period, since 2007. The number of Americans affiliated with a Christian denomination has been falling at almost one percent a year. That's pretty dramatic.

If it continues at that rate for 20 years (unlikely), Christians will fall to less than half of the US population.

The latest census figures in the United Kingdom (the UK census records religion but the American census doesn't) put the number of self-identified Christians in England and Wales at 59%. That''s pretty extraordinary. So the same kind of changes that Pew noted in the US also seem to be happening over there, and are apparently further along.

"The advertised epidemic that's been expected for years" was never expected by me, if it's interpreted to mean a withering away and disappearance of religion entirely, and the final triumph of atheism.

But I do expect religious diversity and eclecticism to rise as people are exposed to more traditions than their own ancestral one. Religion in the US (and in the West generally) is probably going to evolve towards something resembling a la carte religiosity. It will move away from being a matter of 'Christianity or nothing'. People will adopt religious ideas from many sources.

These Pew numbers don't show a big increase in adherents of organized non-Christian religions. But many of the 'unaffiliateds' doubtless still have religious ideas of their own, ideas that are unique to them.

[Yazata]

22.8% of the US adult population is unaffiliated with an organized religious group.

Of these, 31% identify themselves as atheists or agnostics.

Those who say that they are 'nothing in particular' split pretty evenly about whether religion is important in their lives. A little over half say that religion isn't important in their lives, while a little under half say that it is. Many of the latter refer to themselves as 'spiritual' but not 'religious'. So about 1/3 of the 'unaffiliated' still possess some kind of personal religiosity, however unique it is to them.

More findings:

Switching religion is routine in America. If all Protestants are taken as one group, 34% of American adults say they were raised in a different group than they are currently in. If you include people who switch from one Protestant denomination to another, that number goes up.

18% of American adults say that they were raised in a religious faith but now identify with no religious group.

4.3% say that they were raised with no religion, but now identify with a religious grouping.

[lapis lazuli]

It would be interesting to compare these figures with the rest of the world. Any available? Russia and China suppressed religion for years but there have been reported resurgences as the governments exploit the 'intolerances' of texts and interpretations. There also seems to be an amount of moral panic in areas where religion is in the majority as if it has somehow stemmed the extremes of human behaviour. Persecution of other disguised as the work of god or as the work of commerce? Same outcomes, sadly.