Christianity in America in Rapid Decline

The following is excerpted from “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace,” Pew Research Center, Oct. 17, 2019: “The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular,’ now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. The data shows that the trend toward religious disaffiliation documented in the Center’s 2007 and 2014 Religious Landscape Studies, and before that in major national studies like the General Social Survey (GSS), has continued apace. The changes underway in the American religious landscape are broad-based. The Christian share of the population is down and religious “nones” have grown across multiple demographic groups: white people, black people and Hispanics; men and women; in all regions of the country; and among college graduates and those with lower levels of educational attainment. Religious ‘nones’ are growing faster among Democrats than Republicans, though their ranks are swelling in both partisan coalitions. And although the religiously unaffiliated are on the rise among younger people and most groups of older adults, their growth is most pronounced among young adults.”

​CONCLUDING COMMENT BY BRO. CLOUD: The root problem is not in society at large; the root problem is with lukewarm, worldly, spiritually dead, and apostate churches.

(Friday Church News Notes, October 25, 2019, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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