Pew: Religious numbers continue to plummet

-

Youth of America are shunning religions in droves


… young people believe in spirituality not eligion


The truth about the fall in the numbers of people who are following a religion is puzzling, but the number reveal that they are realistic. 


The numbers of people who are now saying that they belong to no religion has grown to about three in ten, while the number of people who profess to be Christians continues to fall. 


The question about why this is true is not clear, but what is evident that as Baby Boomers and those older than they are pass away, there are few young people who are following them into their religious beliefs. 


The latest numbers from the Pew Forum, which is the most credible in terms of religious numbers illustrate this. 


The fall is clear


This movement has been talking place for many years, for most of the 21st Century. Churches are closing, fewer ministers and priests are beginning to serve in the religions, and many churches remain closed or half-filled on weekends. 


This continues a trend that Pew has been following for about 15 years,


The secularizing shifts evident in American society so far in the 21st century show no signs of slowing. The latest Pew Research Center survey of the religious composition of the United States finds the religiously unaffiliated share of the public is 6 percentage points higher than it was five years ago and 10 points higher than a decade ago.


Christians continue to make up a majority of the U.S. populace, but their share of the adult population is 12 points lower in 2021 than it was in 2011. In addition, the share of U.S. adults who say they pray on a daily basis has been trending downward, as has the share who say religion is “very important” in their lives.


Currently, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) are religious “nones” – people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity. Self-identified Christians of all varieties (including Protestants, Catholics, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Orthodox Christians) make up 63% of the adult population. Christians now outnumber religious “nones” by a ratio of a little more than two-to-one. 


In 2007, when the Center began asking its current question about religious identity, Christians outnumbered “nones” by almost five-to-one (78% vs. 16%).


Gregory A. Smith, “About three-in-ten U.S. Adults are now religiously 

unaffiliated,” Pew Research Center, December 13, 2021


Protestants see biggest decline


The numbers are particularly brutal, although the Catholic totals may be somewhat skewed,


Overall, both evangelical and non-evangelical Protestants have seen their shares of the population decline as the percentage of U.S. adults who identity with Protestantism has dropped. Today, 24% of U.S. adults describe themselves as born-again or evangelical Protestants, down 6 percentage points since 2007. During the same period, there also has been a 6-point decline in the share of adults who are Protestant but not born-again or evangelical (from 22% to 16%).


Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research Center, December 13, 2021


Fewer than half pray daily


One of the victims of this is that young people are not being brought up to pray, and those numbers have dropped significantly. 


How many now pray regularly?


The 2021 NPORS also asked respondents how often they pray and how important religion is in their lives. Today, fewer than half of U.S. adults (45%) say they pray on a daily basis. By contrast, nearly six-in-ten (58%) reported praying daily in the 2007 Religious Landscape Study, as did 55% in the 2014 Landscape Study. Roughly one-third of U.S. adults (32%) now say they seldom or never pray, up from 18% who said this in 2007.


Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research Center, December 13, 2021


Few attend services regularly


Weekly religious services used to be a must for many Americans. No more,

  • Roughly three-in-ten adults in the new survey (31%) say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month, including 25% who say they attend at least once a week and 7% who attend once or twice a month. These figures are similar to 2020, when 33% reported attending religious services at least once or twice a month. Gregory A. Smith, Pew Research Center, December 13, 2021

I will address what I believe the skewed numbers are regarding Catholics. They not align with reality in the church’s numbers.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On the feast of St. Joseph, an evaluation of a “Josephite marriage”

-
Image
… Catholic view is Mary remained virginal March 19 is the feast of St. Joseph, and since we are children were taught by nuns of the St. Joseph’s order, we knew about the man.  However, many people are not aware that Joseph and Mary lived a celibate life, according to the Catholic Church.  Today, there exists within the Catholic Church what is called a Josephite Marriage. I had never heard of it, so I did some investigating.  Here is what I found. Catholic view of celibate marriage I had read about this because of a piece in the New York Times about a man whose parents, with four children, applied to the church to enter into a Josephite marriage. Today, many priests think that such a thing is abhorrent, but not all of them.  So, what is a Josephite marriage? There appear to be two forms of the Sacrament of Marriage, one that we could call the “ordinary form,” the other that one might call the “extraordinary form.”  While both are the same vocati...
Read more

Refuse to take communion from sinful priests: I turned the tables on one

-
Image
“Sixty-nine percent of all American Catholics do not believe that the host and wine that they receive is actually the body and blood of Jesus Christ”  How do Catholics know which priests are in the state of grace? If a priest or bishop is in a state of sin, should he be dispensing the body of Christ? This is a story about why I refused communion from a sinful priest. How could I know if a priest is sinful?  No one actually knows this but God himself.  However, I can know about a sinful priest in the same way that they they make the judgment about us, postulating that some of us are unworthy of receiving communion.  Important: I am in a state of grace with God, but not with the church. However, my guess is that many of those who take communion at a Catholic mass is in a state of sin.  Which is as Jesus would have wanted it. Still, how would a priest or bishop or cardinal know if someone is in a state of sin? Only God knows what is in our hearts and souls. An...
Read more

American Christian leaders have supported ex-atheist Putin over the years, praising his “morality”

-
Image
Putin’s morality is “higher than our own” … the brutal dictator is hardly a follower of Christ How times have changed. Vladimir Putin became a hero to American conservatives, particular those who call themselves “Christians.” They praised him as a leader with better morality than Americans.  Putin was an atheist for years as a member of the Communist Party in the USSR, which prosecuted anyone who followed God. He was a leader of the KGB that brutally enforced those policies and killed anyone who deviated from them.  Yet, over the past 15 years, American evangelical leaders have praised Putin, the brutal leader who is now being denigrated worldwide for his immoral and illegal invasion of and war in Ukraine.  In fact, one religious figure even praised Putin as having better morality than the American president.  And now? The worm has turned, and the snakes have started slithering away from adulation of Putin — though not all of them.  Why? Frankli...
Read more