Religion Is on the Decline as More Adults Check ‘None’

By Ian Lovett
Wall Street Journal
October 17, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/religion-is-on-the-decline-as-more-adults-check-none-11571320801

Less than half of American adults attend church regularly, while 26% claim no religious affiliation

Religiosity in the U.S. is in sharp decline.

Less than half of American adults attend church regularly, while 26% claim no religious affiliation, according to a study released by the Pew Research Center on Thursday, with the ranks of people who don’t adhere to any faith growing fast while church attendance has fallen steeply.

Christians make up 65% of the U.S. adult population, according the 2018-2019 study, down from 77% in 2009. At the same time, those who don’t identify with any religion—often known as “nones”—now make up more than a quarter of the population, compared with 17% a decade ago. Only 45% of adults said they attended church at least once a month, down from 52% in 2009.

The data reflect a seismic social reordering that has seen the population shift away from Christianity and toward religious disaffiliation.

Some “nones” are atheists or agnostics, while others consider themselves to be spiritual but don’t adhere to a particular religious tradition.

Every age group, racial group and region of the country is less Christian than a decade ago, according to the study.

Less than half of millennials, the youngest demographic group in the study, identify as Christian; 40% of them are unaffiliated. The oldest demographic group, born between 1928 and 1945 and known as the Silent Generation, is 84% Christian and 10% unaffiliated.

Protestants fell to 43% of the population, down from 51% in 2009, while Catholics fell 3 percentage points, to 20%. Other Christians—neither Catholic nor Protestant—make up the other 2%.

Within the 26% of U.S. adults who are religiously unaffiliated, atheists grew to 4% of the overall population from 2%; agnostics grew to 5% from 3%, and those who identify as “nothing in particular” rose to 17% from 12%.

Non-Christian religions largely held steady. Jews remain at 2% of the population and Muslims are at 1%.