Pew report: One-in-five American adults have no religious affiliation
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The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.
In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%).
This large and growing group of Americans is less religious than the public at large on many conventional measures, including frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of importance they attach to religion in their lives.
However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.
With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.
The growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans – sometimes called the rise of the “nones” – is largely driven by generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones.4 A third of adults under 30 have no religious affiliation (32%), compared with just one-in-ten who are 65 and older (9%). And young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives.
These generational differences are consistent with other signs of a gradual softening of religious commitment among some (though by no means all) Americans in recent decades. Pew Research Center surveys conducted over the last 10 years, for example, find modest growth in the number of people who say they seldom or never attend religious services, as well as a declining number who say they never doubt the existence of God.
In addition to religious behavior, the way that Americans talk about their connection to religion seems to be changing. Increasingly, Americans describe their religious affiliation in terms that more closely match their level of involvement in churches and other religious organizations. In 2007, 60% of those who said they seldom or never attend religious services nevertheless described themselves as belonging to a particular religious tradition. In 2012, just 50% of those who say they seldom or never attend religious services still retain a religious affiliation – a 10-point drop in five years. These trends suggest that the ranks of the unaffiliated are swelling in surveys partly because Americans who rarely go to services are more willing than in the past to drop their religious attachments altogether. [More]
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10 Comments
If this Church does not recognize why people are leaving the Catholic faith OR rejoining it, there can be no excuses in a very short amount. Give it 10 years on this path. It is very sad.
aly, I am not sure if you are Catholic but if you are, then I will remind you that you are the Church..you can do something to hellp!!!
This past summer, my family went through two trumatic medical problems. One of my sons was diagnosed with throat cancer and operated with several months of theraphy and my husband needed to be sent to a nursing home. It was a blessing that we all stuck together during these times, but one thing I could not stop thinking about. How would we have done it without God in our lives. Without knowing that there is a loving God who is there for us every day – we need trust Him. How do people with no relationship with God handle crises such as these.
Part 11. When I was young man,I would listen on t.v. to Billy Graham. He would ask the question, “Do you have a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with Jesus Christ? Sadly a part of me would look down on him because Protestants didn’t have the same love relationship with Mary that Catholic and Othodox had and they needed to be converted into the Catholic faith, the TRUE faith. Today I can say, God bless him, Billy Graham was right on. What I are seeing today is that our relationship was with the legal rules of the church like don’t eat meat on friday, the obsessive difference between vinal sin imperfection, and moral sin. Now I can see why so many catholics left the church. St. Paul was a Pharisee, and like Catholics then was addicted to Jewish rules and rituals. When he encountered the risen Jesus Christ, and developed a personal love relationship with Jesus he took off the robes, changed his name and left the Pharisses. The new focus was on Jesus and Jesus’ love for us. It all about my “personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ, yes, developed and enhance through a prayer life, the eucharist, scripture. God bless you, Billy Graham, Looking back, Boy! was he on fire with love for Jesus. A true living saint today, an outstanding Christian. Where and who are the Billy Grahams in the Catholic church today? Boy do we need some Billy Grahams.
Josph; I came from an Evangelical Baptish Church – Protestant and have always had a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. I have always revered His mother Mary. (As I Catholic I have gotten to know Mary better and have a new and deep love for her) God is Love, that is the Truth and that is the centre of the Gospel, which we are to take out into the world. He loved us so much that He gave His only Son for you and I, that we may have eternal life. Because I truly love Jesus, God,I love to talk about Him to anyone who is willing to listen. I share stories of His love and the many blessings He has given to me personally and invite others to learn more about Him. I love my new Church, it is a most warm and welcoming place ..and I not only tell others about our Church, I invite them to join me at Mass or Scripture Study …doesn’t matter to me who or where they are …Jesus says just come, come as you are!
Joseph, I have always walked with my children and grandchildren and have always pointed out the marvels of God’s world to them as we walk and talk and thank God for His many gifts to us. The rain, sun, leaves, birds etc.
It was the workings of the Holy Spirit, that led me gently into the Holy Catholic Church, I only hope that someday I will be an asset to my Parish.
The image that the Catholic (and other churches) project is authoritarian and controlling rather than a supportive community where all are respected as thinking or learning adults. What young adults live in is a pluralistic society that honors individual freedom. If the Church is wise about its intention to introduce a new evangelization, it must take more seriously Vatican II’s “Church in the Modern World” document and approach both the young and their parents with catechesis that not only teaches doctrine but PERSUADES in a way that resonates more with genuine human need than tradition. It must LISTEN and encourage dialogue and SHOW itself by action to be a sacrament of God’s love.
So many kids were taught about a God who needed to appeased, a God who was always about to destroy the world because of sin, a God who was more like a dysfunctional parent than the God of Love, the aged o Jesus in the Gospels, that they couldn’t buy into a torrent God. And really can you blame them?
It’s the loving God of Jesus that needs to be taught.
Thanks for your observation Tony. Trouble is my kids were taught to love Jesus at home and in Catholic Schools and, now that they are on their own, they love Jesus dearly, do not follow most of the teachings of the Magisterium, do not go to Mass except maybe for Christmas and Easter and some of the grandchildren have no clue on who Jesus is. At this pace, in another 50 years or sooner the US will be probably be significantly non-christian.
I am 73 yrs old. I hold on to the catholic faith that was pass onto me by my Italian grandparents by watching them pray in the home. Today, my twin sister and I are the only ones who attend mass. I have watched my neices and nephews as they grew older and distance themselves from the faith as they embraces the world. After they recieved their confirmations they have not returned to mass except for Christmas. What ever religious traing they recieved in their lives was all BOOK KNOWLEDGE which they couldn’t understand. They never developed a RELATIONSHIP with Christ only book knowledge about him. There is the failure, the brakedown.
Perhaps it is because their elders have failed to model their faith in such a way that the youth of today will see it’s revelance in today’s society.