A new study by Pew Research Center has revealed that Americans are becoming less Christian, with approximately 25 percent of the total population not associating themselves with any faith whatsoever. According to the study that assessed more than 35,000 adults, those who identify as Christian have reduced significantly over the last seven years, but what is even more telling is that those who do not identify with any particular organized religion has risen in equal numbers.
Even though the decline witnessed by Christians is mostly prevalent among America’s youth, it is rather far-reaching, said the study that was published on May 12.
“It’s a very broad trend that we’re seeing. It goes across age groups, and regions and ethnic groups,” said Pew Research Center Senior Adviser John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron.
Pew also concluded that the shift is noticeable among both men and women, irrespective of how educated they are.
Considering the United States houses more Christians than any other country the world over, and a large majority of the country still identifies with that faith, it is significant that the number of Americans who identify with it dropped to 71 percent in 2014 from 78 percent in 2007. In that same period, the number of Americans who identify as agnostic or atheist, or say that they are “nothing in particular,” rose to 23 percent from 16 percent.
“The number of unaffiliated went up a percentage point a year, which is a pretty dramatic change,” Green said.
Green also said that some of the shift in America’s religious identity is generational, since children and grandchildren no longer involve themselves with the church as their elders used to.
This held particularly true in the case of 19-year-old Victoria Guillem, who was brought up Catholic and graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart.
“My whole life, I was drenched in religion, but I'm rationally an atheist,” said Guillem, a student at New York University. “I've taken classes about religion and I think most of them are weird and absurd.”
Similarly, freshman Josh Kane, who was raised Jewish and also celebrated his bar mitzvah when much younger, said he now identifies as an atheist.
“I was never too into it,” Kane said of his Jewish faith. “I think we're all here just as a miracle of the universe. ... My dad's Jewish. My mom is very mainstream Catholic. But they respect my opinions.”
The study also found that some churches are witnessing a quicker decline than others are, with most of the shifts taking place among Roman Catholics and Protestants. Both faiths saw a decline of more than three percentage points over the last seven years. In contrast, Black Protestant churches managed to maintain a much more stable portion of the population as did their Mormon counterparts. Additionally, the country’s share of Evangelical Christians witnessed a more modest decline, falling less than a percentage point in the same time period.
According to the study, adherents of non-Christian faiths have been increasing consistently in the United States, though their numbers may seem insignificant at this point. While the share of Muslims went up from 0.4 percent to 0.9 percent, Hindus increased from 0.4 percent to 0.7 percent and Jews grew from 1.7 percent to 1.9 percent over the last seven years.
Photo Credits: Alien Righteousness
