Christianity in the U.S. is quickly shrinking and may no longer be the majority religion within just a few decades, research finds

When more and more people stop believing in God in a few decades, America’s slogan “one country under God” will need to be changed. Pew Research says that over the last 30 years, a lot of Americans have given up on Christianity in favour of atheism, agnosticism, or identifying with “nothing in particular.”

Even though the number of Americans who leave Christianity has been rising steadily, this is mostly due to people leaving religion altogether instead of choosing another. Only 6% of Americans say they follow non-Christian religions like Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism, while 30% say they don’t belong to any religion. But one study says that the population will not drop below 50% until 2070, at least in part because Christians continue to work hard to keep people and because religious education is passed down from generation to generation. Many people who don’t believe in religion, even those who believe in a higher power or spiritual force, haven’t completely given up tradition and still take part in religious rituals.

Since 1990, the number of Americans who don’t belong to a particular religion has almost tripled, from about 8% to 22%. By 2020, there will be more “Bones” than Catholics. By 2035, there will be more “Bones” than Protestants. Over the next 20 years, this trend will get worse.

ARE THESE PREDICTIONS CORRECT?

Society changes all over the place. Another “Great Awakening” could happen at any time and change these trends. But demographic projections are pretty safe because the things they say will happen have already happened in some ways. We already know about the 20-year-olds from this year, who will be 40 in 2037. People who will be 20 in 2037 were born already or will be soon. Because of this, these predictions will be wrong if today’s children are raised in a more religious environment or if today’s teenagers are more religious than adults in their twenties. But it’s more likely that the opposite is true in both cases.

The social desirability bias, which is when people tend to say things in a way they think is more socially acceptable, can affect the results of surveys like these. We think that these studies will underestimate the number of Nones so much that leaving a religion will be seen as a bad thing. As nonreligious people become more well-known, they may be more willing to take part in surveys. In this case, trends may show up faster than expected. There are clear turning points in the paths of Protestants and Bones around the year 1990. Predictions about the future that are based on the past tend to be too optimistic. If we only use data collected since 1990 to make predictions, we can say that the number of “Nones’ ‘ will be more than 40% in 20 years. Christianity has ruled the country’s politics and social life for many years. But a new study shows that this may be changing. A recent survey by the General Social Survey and the Pew Research Center found that the number of Americans who say they are Christians is going down.