Protestants no longer the majority in U.S.
NEW YORK For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise.
The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans have their first presidential ticket with no Protestant nominees.
Among the reasons for the change are the growth in nondenominational Christians who can no longer be categorized as Protestant, and a spike in the number of American adults who say they have no religion. The Pew study, released Tuesday, found that about 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent over the last five years.
Scholars have long debated whether people who say they no longer belong to a religious group should be considered secular. While the category as defined by Pew researchers includes atheists, it also encompasses majorities of people who say they believe in God, and a notable minority who pray daily or consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious." Still, Pew found overall that most of the unaffiliated aren't actively seeking another religious home, indicating that their ties with organized religion are permanently broken.
Growth among those with no religion has been a major preoccupation of American faith leaders who worry that the United States, a highly religious country, would go the way of Western Europe, where church attendance has plummeted. Pope Benedict XVI has partly dedicated his pontificate to combating secularism in the West. This week in Rome, he is convening a three-week synod, or assembly, of bishops from around the world aimed at bringing back Roman Catholics who have left the church.
The trend also has political implications. American voters who describe themselves as having no religion vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Pew found Americans with no religion support abortion rights and gay marriage at a much higher-rate than the U.S. public at large. These "nones" are an increasing segment of voters who are registered as Democrats or lean toward the party, growing from 17 percent to 24 percent over the last five years. The religiously unaffiliated are becoming as important a constituency to Democrats as evangelicals are to Republicans, Pew said.
The Pew analysis, conducted with PBS' "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly," is based on several surveys, including a poll of nearly 3,000 adults conducted June 28-July 9, 2012. The finding on the Protestant majority is based on responses from a larger group of more than 17,000 people and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, Pew researchers said. Pew said it had also previously calculated a drop slightly below 50 percent among U.S. Protestants, but those findings had fallen within the margin of error; the General Social Survey, which is conducted by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, reported for 2010 that the percentage of U.S. Protestants was around 46.7 percent.
Researchers have been struggling for decades to find a definitive reason for the steady rise in those with no religion. The spread of secularism in Western Europe was often viewed as a byproduct of growing wealth in the region. Yet, among industrialized nations, the United States stood out for its deep religiosity in the face of increasing wealth.
Now, religion scholars say the decreased religiosity in the United States could reflect a change in how Americans describe their religious lives. In 2007, 60 percent of people who said they seldom or never attend religious services still identified themselves as part of a particular religious tradition. In 2012, that statistic fell to 50 percent, according to the Pew report.
"Part of what's going on here is that the stigma associated with not being part of any religious community has declined," said John Green, a specialist in religion and politics at the University of Akron, who advised Pew on the survey. "In some parts of the country, there is still a stigma. But overall, it's not the way it used to be."
The Pew study has found the growth in unaffiliated Americans spans a broad range of groups: men and women, college graduates and those without a college degree, people earning less than $30,000 annually and those earning $75,000 or more. However, along ethnic lines, the largest jump in "nones" has been among whites. One-fifth of whites describe themselves as having no religion.
More growth in "nones" is expected. One-third of adults under age 30 have no religious affiliation, compared to 9 percent of people 65 and older. Pew researchers wrote that "young adults today are much more likely to be unaffiliated than previous generations were at a similar stage in their lives," and aren't expected to become more religiously active as they age.
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When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
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Gotta love Dawkins!
Spot on, GorGor
But maybe we can start separating church and state finally!
Within the first few months of his Presidency he declared to the leaders of Muslim countries "YOU MIGHT SAY WE ARE A MUSLIM NATION".
No one has to devlare themselves to anybody wether they are Christian or Protestant by claiming affiliation with any organized religion.
The question should have been "Do you believe in GOD or a Higher Being.?
Whoever did this study; or whatever it is; sure didn't talk to me or any of the people I know.
Personally, I think this is just one more step by the government to remove any and all religious references in the US.
Obama wants the words "In GOD We Trust renoved fron our currency.
Obama wants the words "under GOD' removed from the Pledge of Allegiance.
He has already removed these words from our postage stamps.
He has forbidden any prayers at large gatherings, refused to let military heroes speak at any charity event with a religious background, forced college graduating students to resort to subtrefuge to get the words "God Bless You" into their commencement exercises, and this is just the beginning.
He has also ordered removed from the front of Federal buildings and courthouses any religious references such as the Ten Commandments; literally written in stone.
He has effectively taken away our freedom to worship as we please and our freedom of speech by invoking these laws.
So; I am just going to ignore the results of this latest ploy; and continue to worship GOD in my own way.
And when did i ever say i even was religious."
"CORVINO21
Since u r such a believer in darwinian logic i guess u must support that as well eh?"
The only people who reject Darwin completely are Bible thumpers.
The radical faction of conservative American Christianity now share many features with totalitarian movements, including suppression of individuality, a rejection of science, rejection of evolution, disparagement and suppression of intellectuals and the arts, anti-government (unless controlled within their parameters), anti-regulation, a deceptive and shifting ideology, xenophobia, fervently militant, obsession with national security, news propaganda with half-truths and misinformation spun to create dissent, power of corporations protected, corporate interests placed above environmental concerns, sexism, a good-or-evil view of the world, a deep intolerance and mischaracterization of people outside the movement (opposed to religious liberty), power of labor suppressed or eliminated, homophobic, and a desire to control the politics and judicial system of the US. Whatever happened to Christianity as a religion focused on compassion and caring for the downtrodden? They desire no room for any other view or policy, no democratic tolerance for rival parties, no individual freedom, and offer only obstructionism to those who oppose their viewpoints --- while calling themselves patriots.
The radicals among the Christians, the new Christian right, are no better than the radicals among the Islamic religion, and just as destructive to freedom and democracy. The Christian Right has become fascist and it is a form of Christianity that is the mirror opposite of what Jesus embodied.
America should wake up. These folks are not patriots. This dominionist movement needs to be stopped.
"But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty." From 'It Can't Happen Here' by Sinclair Lewis