In June, a poll conducted by Gallup found that Americans’ belief in God was declining. Throughout the post-WWII era, 98 percent of U.S. adults said they believed in God, The Washington Post reported. Gallup’s latest survey found that only 81 percent of Americans believe in God anymore. The Post attributed this figure to the “larger growth in the number of Americans who are unaffiliated or say they have no religion in particular.”
Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, told The Post that “belief is typically the last thing to go.”
“They stop attending, they stop affiliating, and then they stop believing.”
A new study released this month by Pew Research Center found that if recent trends in religious “switching” continue, Christians will make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades.
Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” This accelerating trend is reshaping the U.S. religious landscape, leading many people to wonder what the future of religion in America might look like.
According to the report, since the 1990s, the growing number of American adults who identify as Christian has declined. The Center estimates that in 2020, about 64 percent of Americans, including children, will be Christian. By 2070, the Center predicts that number will shrink if religious switching continues at the rate it has been going:
Depending on whether religious switching continues at recent rates, speeds up or stops entirely, the projections show Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to between a little more than half (54%) and just above one-third (35%) of all Americans by 2070. Over that same period, “nones” would rise from the current 30% to somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population.
The study noted that switching rates are based on patterns observed in recent decades up to 2019. The Center estimates that 31 percent of people raised Christian unaffiliates between ages 15 to 29. Seven percent become unaffiliated after age 30.
Stephanie Kramer, the Center’s senior researcher on religion, who led the study, told NPR that “if recent trends in switching [changing one’s religious affiliation] hold, we projected that Christians could make up between 35 percent and 46 percent of the U.S. population in 2070.”
“Some scholars say that it’s just an inevitable consequence of development for societies to secularize. Once there are strong secular institutions, once people’s basic needs are met, there’s less need for religion,” she added.
“Other people point out that affiliation really started to drop in the ’90s. And it may not be a coincidence that this coincides with the rise of the religious right and more associations between Christianity and conservative political ideology.”
The Pew study pointed out that while the Christian numbers are decreasing, the percentage of those who identify as “religiously unaffiliated” is growing and could become the majority one day. It shows that Christians who leave the religion are not typically joining another non-Christian religion.
“That’s where the majority of the movement is going,” Kramer said. “We don’t see a lot of people leaving Christianity for a non-Christian religion.” She said the term encompasses atheist, agnostic, “spiritual,” or “nothing in particular.”
“Of course, it is possible that events outside the study’s model – such as war, economic depression, climate crisis, changing immigration patterns, or religious innovations – could reverse current religious switching trends, leading to a revival of Christianity in the United States,” it concluded.
