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Late last week, the polling organization Gallup announced that "the percentage of Americans who identify with some form of a Christian religion has been dropping in recent decades, and now stands at 77 percent." In 1948, the percentage of Christians was 91 percent.

Another poll, the American Religious Identification Survey, found that 15 percent of Americans now claim no religious affiliation, nearly double the percentage in 1990.

Those figures suggest that Christianity is on the decline. Yet it remains a major force in American life: More than three in four Americans identify as Christians, and religion – Christianity in particular – is connected to many aspects of our lives.

It influences the debate over social issues and plays an important role in many families and communities; it touches everyone from death row inmates to the president, who Monday oversaw the traditional White House Easter Egg roll.

So is the United States, in the end, a "Christian nation?" And what does that mean, anyway? President Obama, as part of an effort to reach out to the Muslim world, explicitly rejected the formulation in Turkey last week.

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