A few days ago the new addition to our staff video team, Andrew Marshall sent me this link. It's a story on the final pew study and tells about the changing religious affiliations in America. Here is a NY Times story about the same thing if you want to read it. I'll give you a brief synopsis that shows the climate of our country.
Here's some notable trends:
1) More than a quarter of all Americans have left the faith of their childhood for either another religion or no religion at all.
2) The Roman Catholic Church has shown the sharpest decline in membership in terms of people leaving that church, BUT this decline has been masked by the large influx of Hispanic population into America over the last fifteen years, the vast majority of whom are Catholic in affiliation, at least nominally.
3) Only 16% of all Americans say they have no religious affiliation at all (up from 5-8% in the 80s).
4) The decline of Protestantism is especially notable. In the 1970 Protestants accounted for two thirds of all Americans, now it is close to 50%.
5) The majority of all immigrants from any country are Christians of some sort--which means the percentage of Christians in our country would have dropped even further if it weren't for immigration.
6) 7.3 percent of the adult population said they were unaffiliated with a faith as children. That segment increases to 16.1 percent of the population in adulthood. The unaffiliated are largely under 50 and male. Nearly one-in-five men say they have no formal religious affiliation, compared with roughly 13 percent of women.
If you want to see the original survey which was done in 2007, it is here.
Thoughts, anyone?
3 comments:
The very latest data
shows that only 1 in 4
people in the US claim
to not be christian.
Things are not as bleak
as you paint them.
And most of those who
left the major religious
orginizations have gone
to other religions groups
mainly non-denominational
churches.
The state of the church in
th US is not near as dark
as you paint it.
Do me a favor and send a link to the data to which you are referring.
What data are you refering to anonymous. I haven't read any of the reports but what you said (75% Christian) does not match the experience I've had anywhere I've ever lived, nor any ball team my kids have played on or any school they've attended. It is not hard to find that most people aren't really involved in any form of relgion - not actively.
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