Quotations:
"The proportion of the [American] population that can be classified as Christian has declined from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2001." ARIS Study. 4
" 'We the people' of the United States now form the most profusely religious nation on earth." Diana Eck. 1
George Barna of The Barna Group: "There does not seem to be revival taking place in America. Whether that is measured by church attendance, born again status, or theological purity, the statistics simply do not reflect a surge of any noticeable proportions." George Barna. 2
"...evangelicals remain just 7% of the adult population. That number has not changed since the Barna Group began measuring the size of the evangelical public in 1994....less than one out of five born again adults (18%) meet the evangelical criteria." (N = 1003; margin of error = ±3.2%). 13
"...the number of Protestants soon will slip below 50 percent of the nation's population." National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey, 2004.
The shift away from Christianity and other organized religions:
The United States appears to be going through an unprecedented change in religious practices. Large numbers of American adults are disaffiliating themselves from Christianity and from other organized religions. Since World War II, this process had been observed in other countries, like the U.K., other European countries, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. But, until recently, affiliation with Christianity had been at a high level -- about 87% -- and stable in the U.S.
Polling data from the 2001 ARIS study, described below, indicate that:
81% of American adults identify themselves with a specific religion: 76.5% (159 million) of Americans identify themselves as Christian. This is a major slide from 86.2% in 1990. Identification with Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11 years -- about 0.9 percentage points per year. This decline is identical to that observed in Canada between 1981 and 2001. If this trend has continued, then: at the present time (2007-MAY), only 71% of American adults consider themselves Christians.
The percentage will dip below 70% in 2008.
By about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the Christians in the U.S.
52% of Americans identified themselves as Protestant.
24.5% are Roman Catholic.
1.3% are Jewish.
0.5% are Muslim, followers of Islam.
The fastest growing religion (in terms of percentage) is Wicca -- a Neopagan religion that is sometimes referred to as Witchcraft. Numbers of adherents went from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001. Their numbers of adherents are doubling about every 30 months. 4,5 Wiccans in Australia have a very similar growth pattern, from fewer than 2,000 in 1996 to 9,000 in 2001. 10 In Canada, Wiccans and other Neopagans showed the greatest percentage growth of any faith group. They totaled 21,080 members in 1991, an increase of 281% from 1990.
14.1% do not follow any organized religion. This is an unusually rapid increase -- almost a doubling -- from only 8% in 1990. There are more Americans who say they are not affiliated with any organized religion than there are Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans taken together. 6
The unaffiliated vary from a low of 3% in North Dakota to 25% in Washington State. "The six states with the highest percentage of people saying they have no religion are all Western states, with the exception of Vermont at 22%." 6
A USA Today/Gallup Poll in 2002-JAN showed that almost half of American adults appear to be alienated from organized religion. If current trends continue, most adults will not call themselves religious within a few years. Results include:
About 50% consider themselves religious (down from 54% in 1999-DEC)
About 33% consider themselves "spiritual but not religious" (up from 30%)
About 10% regard themselves as neither spiritual or religious. 6
The U.S. losing its Protestant majority?:
Prior to 1492, the entire population of what was to become the United States of America and Canada followed about 500 forms of Native American Spirituality. With the influx of immigrants from Europe and the genocide of the native population, the U.S. became predominately Protestant Christian by the time of the Revolutionary War. The percentage of Protestants in the U.S. has been diluted because of:
Immigration from Roman Catholic countries,
More recent immigration from the Middle East and Asia, and
The rise in numbers of Agnostics, Atheists, Humanists and other non-theists.
From 1972 to 1993, the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center found that Protestants constituted about 63% of the population. This declined to 52% in 2002. Protestants are believed to have slipped to a minority position between 2004 and 2006. 11
"Respondents were defined as Protestant if they said they were members of a Protestant denomination, such as Episcopal Church or Southern Baptist Convention. The category included members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and members of independent Protestant churches."
However, the data may be deceiving. Some subjects simply reported themselves as "Christians" and were not counted as Protestants since they were not affiliated with a Protestant denomination. 12
About people who walk away from organized religion:
Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington and a co-author of "Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion" commented:
"People who believe in God ?- and they do ?- who pray ?- and they do ?- are not secular, they are just unchurched. They've never been to church and, in many cases, their parents didn't go either."
Mark Galli, managing editor of the Evangelical magazine Christianity Today, said:
"It's a cliché now to call institutional religion 'oppressive, patriarchal, out of date and out of touch.' So what else is new? I feel sorry for those people who don't think there's anything greater than themselves. It must feel like a lonely and frightening world for them. Lone-ranger spirituality is not conducive to taking us to the depths God designed us to go. It leaves out the communal dimension of faith. If you leave out the irritations, frustrations and joy that community entails, you miss something about God."
About religious data:
Reliable religious information is hard to come by.
Some religions count every person that has been baptized into the denomination as a member. Many individuals change their religion later in life and thus may be double or triple-counted.
Other religions have no accurate accounting system. For example, Wiccans and other Neopagans are almost completely decentralized; probably half are solitary practitioners who do not belong to a coven. Estimates of their total number in the U.S. vary over a 20:1 ratio.
Some religions, like Christian Science and the Church of Satan have a policy of not releasing membership statistics to the public.
Some faith groups count only confirmed, baptized or initiated members; others count total adherents. Some count only adults; others include children.
There is an enormous range of estimates of the number of Muslims in the U.S. The ARIS study in 2001, described below, estimates "a national total population, including children, of up to 2.8 million." However, the Council on American-Islamic Relations states that "There are an estimated 7 million Muslims in America."
Many U.S. sources of religious information include the major religions -- Christianity, Islam, Judaism -- and many of their denominations or sub-divisions. But they often ignore what might be called "underground" religions. These are religions that often keep a very low profile to avoid conflict attacks from an uninformed public -- religions like Santeria, Vodun, and Wicca.
Many sources also ignore an amorphous group who may variously describe themselves as Agnostics, Atheists, Ethical Culturalists, Freethinkers, Humanists, or Secularists. In addition, there are also the "none of the aboves" -- individuals who may believe in God and may follow the Golden Rule, but regard themselves as not being part of any organized religious group.
Although the Canadian census does collect religious information from its citizens, the U.S. decennial census does not. Fortunately, the The Graduate Center of the City University of New York has conducted two major surveys in recent years which fill in many of the gaps.
