America is Still a Christian Nation, But the Past Seven Years Has Seen Significant Drop

Aleteia ^ | May 13, 2015 | JOHN BURGER

[NYer]

New Evangelization, where art thou?

The Pew Research Center reports that the number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen sharply, to the tune of nearly eight percentage points in only seven years. 

The survey, carried out in 2014, was the second "Religious Landscape Study" Pew conducted since 2007. Based on the 35,000 people the institute interviewed, the American populace is 21% Catholic. It was 23.9% seven years ago. 

While the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014, non-Christian religions are growing. Islam showed the greatest gains, growing half a percentage point to just under 1% of the population.

And while nuns may be aging and going on to their eternal reward, the "Nones" apparently are on the rise. Since 2007, Pew reports, Americans identifying as having no religion grew from 16% to 23%.

That means 56 million Americans do not observe any religion, making "nones" the second largest community after Evangelicals. 

Nevertheless, America is still largely a Christian nation, with roughly seven-in-ten citizens continuing to identify with some branch of Christianity.

Christianity, especially Catholicism, Pew reports, has been losing more adherents through "religious switching" than it has been gaining. "More than 85% of American adults were raised Christian, but nearly a quarter of those who were raised Christian no longer identify with Christianity," it says. 

Within Christianity the greatest net losses, by far, have been experienced by Catholics. Nearly one-third of American adults (31.7%) say they were raised Catholic. Among that group, fully 41% no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of American adults are former Catholics, while just 2% of U.S. adults have converted to Catholicism from another religious tradition. No other religious group in the survey has such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains.

Though Pew found that the Catholic Church in America has lost almost three percentage points during the seven years since the last survey, it admits that its numbers may be off:

Like mainline Protestants, Catholics appear to be declining both as a percentage of the population and in absolute numbers. The new survey indicates there are about 51 million Catholic adults in the U.S. today, roughly 3 million fewer than in 2007. But taking margins of error into account, the decline in the number of Catholic adults could be as modest as 1 million. And, unlike Protestants, who have been decreasing as a share of the U.S. public for several decades, the Catholic share of the population has been relatively stable over the long term, according to a variety of other surveys.

Pew also found an increasing diversity among religious groups. Racial and ethnic minorities now make up 41% of Catholics, for example, up from 35% in 2007.

Bucking the trends somewhat was the historically black Protestant tradition, which includes the National Baptist Convention, the Church of God in Christ, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Progressive Baptist Convention and others. Pew found that their numbers have remained relatively stable in recent years, at nearly 16 million adults.

"And evangelical Protestants, while declining slightly as a percentage of the U.S. public, probably have grown in absolute numbers as the overall U.S. population has continued to expand," the report said. 

 The BBC notes that non-religious Americans have become increasingly organized since 2007, forming political groups designed to keep religion out of public life.

Kelly Damerow with the Secular Coalition for America tells BBC News that the Pew findings "lend credence to the growth we've witnessed within our community and that we have the potential to hold a lot of political clout." 

[NYer]

Nearly one-third of American adults (31.7%) say they were raised Catholic.

Raised Catholic? That definitely requires more definition.

The secularist community may be growing but at the first sign of disaster, they will be the first ones to run into an abandoned church and ask for God's mercy.

Ping!

[chajin]

Racial and ethnic minorities now make up 41% of Catholics, for example, up from 35% in 2007.

The same could have been said in the late 1800s, except that the phrase "Racial and ethnic minorities" would at that time have meant Irish, Italians, and Poles. As the percentages of Latinos and Asians in the US population grows over the next generation or so, the alteration of perception as to what is a "racial and ethnic minority" will also occur, as it did in the early 20th century with the Irish, Italians, Poles, and other non-English/French/German Europeans.

[originalbuckeye]

‘’Islam showed the greatest gains’

Is ANYONE surprisd by this?? When the pResident promotes Islam, his minions will convert. His plan is coming along nicely.

[GreyFriar]

My Definition of “Raised Catholic” and “Raised Protestant”: Parents took children to church when the children were young. “Young” being defined as the years a child is under a parent’s care in being raised, but ending in late teen years. How, or how not, the parent passed on their religous faith is probably a factor in “raised ....” but no longer attending church/considering oneself as Christian.

[CharleysPride]

“at the first sign of disaster”

That would be about the time the survey mentions — seven years ago. Lol

[GeronL]

He has been flooding the country with muslim “refugees”

[C. Edmund Wright]

..and I would add that there are a good number of Christians who no longer go to church, because “organized religion” is beginning to get just as corrupt as “organized religion” was in Jesus’ day.

[MDLION]

“at the first sign of disaster, they will ... run into an abandoned church and ask for God’s mercy.”

After 9-11 this happened briefly.

[EBH]

“Democrats Deny Christ & Israel 3 Times”
https://youtu.be/2HUJO0MZOzs

And we’re surprised ...?

[Alex Murphy]

Christianity, especially Catholicism, Pew reports, has been losing more adherents through "religious switching" than it has been gaining. "More than 85% of American adults were raised Christian, but nearly a quarter of those who were raised Christian no longer identify with Christianity," it says. Within Christianity the greatest net losses, by far, have been experienced by Catholics. Nearly one-third of American adults (31.7%) say they were raised Catholic. Among that group, fully 41% no longer identify with Catholicism. This means that 12.9% of American adults are former Catholics, while just 2% of U.S. adults have converted to Catholicism from another religious tradition. No other religious group in the survey has such a lopsided ratio of losses to gains. Though Pew found that the Catholic Church in America has lost almost three percentage points during the seven years since the last survey, it admits that its numbers may be off...

Speaking of the last survey:

Catholics are leaving the faith at four times the rate that newcomers are joining. "Religious change is not simply a function of retention; it's a function of recruitment. It's both sides of the ledger," explains the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's Greg Smith. "In no other religious groups we looked at did we see this high a ratio people leaving versus joining."
-- from the 2009 thread Does the American Catholic Church Have a Numbers Problem?

No other religion in the United States has lost more members to other faiths, or to no faith at all, than Catholicism, according to the new survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The survey, conducted in 2007, found that 31 percent of Americans were raised Catholic, but less than 25 per cent of them still identify as Catholic. Roughly 10 percent of all Americans have strayed from Catholic roots, the study reported.....
-- from the 2008 thread Study: Catholics losing the faith

[jsanders2001]

Its because Satan has waged a huge propganda war using his false god, PC, and culture:

[jsanders2001]

Its because Satan has waged a huge propganda war using his false god, PC, and culture:

[EBH]

No one ever said it was easy to be a practicing Catholic, but then Jesus said it would never be easy to follow Him either.

There is a lot going on in our world right now. Lots of evil and deceptions on ALL fronts.

Faith isn’t easy.

[EBH]

The video from the DNC convention always amazes me.

Watch the cut away to the delegates...I noticed it from the beginning. They only show us Arab-Americans.

[MrB]

Prison conversion is huge, as well,
because Islam gives religious sanction to the way
criminals want to behave anyway.

[GreyFriar]

H’mmm, that ties in with the “home churches” concept that some of us in our congregation have talked about. Where, like first century Christians, we will only be able to worship in our homes; or in expansion for your idea, it is only in ‘home churches’ where one can preserve true tenants of Christianity as the mainline churches drift (rush?) into becoming secular humanist organizations with only a microscopically thin verneer of the teachings of our Lord and Savior, Jesus.

[circlecity]

Sounds like God is just separating the wheat from the tares. There will always be exactly many Christians as God elects.

[chajin]

The secularist community may be growing but at the first sign of disaster, they will be the first ones to run into an abandoned church and ask for God's mercy.

That was similar to my reaction to this news yesterday: that what we are experiencing is something cyclical rather than secular [in the "non-cyclical" sense of the term], that for all of our troubles in the last generation we still haven't come up against the manifestation of unmitigated crisis as occurred during the Civil War, or WWII.

There are two others possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive to each other nor to the cyclical theory. One is that as technology continues apace, the aspects of life that were previously answered by religion are now perceived as being answered by science: we go to doctors rather than prayer when we are sick, we go to the government rather than the church when we are poor, we go to science classes rather than Sunday school classes to understand the world, to psychologists rather than priests to deal with personal moral failings, to Facebook and Twitter, along with corporate workplaces, rather than the local congregation for fellowship.

The other is the perpetuation that opinion=truth, that if I "feel" something is true then it is true for me, and doesn't have to be true for anyone else. In an affluent society, one can run away from reality until death, when it is essentially too late.

[N. Theknow]

Not surprising with the number of churches embracing homosexuality as normal and the number of people, who being totally ignorant of God's law, accepting homosexual marriage as a "right."

Pillars of salt coming right up.