Americans decreasingly call religion important to their lives and are divided over its role in society

A major new study on religious views in the United States finds – as Americans’ connection to organized religion continues to fade – there are deep divides over the appropriate role for religion in American public life, with sizable shares in favor of a more formalized role.

Less than half of all adults now say religion is very important in their lives, down from majorities who felt that way in earlier studies. Just 44% in the new poll say they pray daily, also down from majorities in prior polls. And while the vast majority continue to say they believe in a God or universal spirit, the share who say they are absolutely certain one exists has dropped from 71% in 2007 to 54% now.

The survey suggests, though, the decline in Christian affiliation and corresponding growth in the share who lack a religious affiliation that had been persistent over the past few decades appears to have plateaued.

A majority of Americans identify as Christian (62%, including 40% who are Protestant, 19% Catholic and 3% with another Christian affiliation), with 29% religiously unaffiliated and 7% saying they belong to religions other than Christianity, such as Judaism (2%), Islam (1%), Buddhism (1%) or Hinduism (1%).

Overall, 51% express mostly positive views of religious institutions across six questions on its role in society, with 21% expressing mixed views and 29% mostly negative.

In 2014, 63% held mostly positive views with 18% negative across the same six questions. Americans are also more apt to say that religion does more good than harm (44%), outpacing the 19% who feel the opposite, but with roughly a third (35%) saying religion does equal amounts of good and harm.

The survey’s findings among younger Americans point to a possible continued decline in religious affiliation and practice, as younger people with religious upbringings appear less likely than older ones to carry those behaviors into adulthood.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/26/us/re...index.html

Christianity is definitely on the decline in the UK and Europe. Islam is doing more than ok though.

Yeah, the decline of religion shouldn't be confused with the decline of religiosity. That's actually on the uptick. The market is expanding as the providers are contracting.

Fertile grounds for cultish movements.

Catholics Are Rapidly Losing Ground

A new survey shows that for every 100 new Catholics, more than 800 people leave the Church. As bad as that is, the news is actually worse when we look more closely at the numbers. Radical changes are needed.

Only 19% of Americans self-identify as Catholic, down from 24% in 2007. This is a 20% decrease. By comparison, Protestants decreased by 21%, while religious “nones” increased by 81% and Muslims increased by an astounding 200% (although they still make up a small percentage of the overall population—only 1.2%). Even though the Pew Survey headline suggests that the decline in Christianity in this country may have “leveled off,” it’s clear the overall direction is downward.

The numbers get worse for Catholics. No other religion has nearly as bad of a join/leave ratio. For every 100 people that become Protestant, 180 leave. That’s bad, but it’s not Catholic bad. Conversely, for every 100 people who leave the religious “nones” (i.e., they join a religion), a full 590 become part of that irreligious cohort.

Where are the former Catholics going? Of all the former Catholics, 56% become religious “nones” and 32% become Protestant. I think we all know from personal experience that these numbers ring true. What Catholic doesn’t have family members who have become Protestant or have stopped practicing any religion? It’s just part of being an American Catholic these days.

But it’s actually much worse than you might first think from those numbers.

But there’s something that keeps the numbers slightly afloat: immigration. So while millions are fleeing the Catholic Church, new migrants keep the overall numbers from looking horrific. I’m not saying our bishops are working so hard to keep mass immigration alive in this country to keep the true horrible state of the Church hidden, but the inflow sure does end up having that effect.

Only 29% of self-identifying Catholics attend Mass weekly. So only 29% of the 19% of Americans who identify as Catholic actually fulfill the Sunday obligation.

Let’s run these numbers:

●340 million Americans
●19% self-identify as Catholic: 64.6 million Catholics
●20% of those Catholics: 12.92 million practicing Catholics, or 3.8% of all Americans

There are almost eight times more religious nones in America than practicing Catholics.

https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/catho...ing-ground

So 3.8% of the population is Catholic, but over 50% of SCOTUS are Catholics (6 out of 9).

The Share of Religious Americans Will Continue to Decline

My generation, millennials, has been blamed for ruining so much: cloth napkins, traditional marriage, American cheese. But in the long run, we might be credited with destroying American religion. We are not a particularly faithful generation, and there’s evidence our offspring may be even less so.

As the Silent Generation, Boomers and Gen X become a smaller and smaller share of the population, there will simply not be enough religious young Americans to replace them.

The reality is that 20 percent of boomers are nonreligious and it’s at least 42 percent of Gen Z, about the same as millennials.

The move away from organized religion among younger people isn’t just with their feet — it goes much deeper than church attendance. Christian Smith argues that millennials created a “new zeitgeist” where religion is much less important to their overall worldview than it was to previous generations. Smith, who is the director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame, told me, “I think culturally religion is in bigger trouble than a little plateau might suggest.”

Smith described organized religion to me as having become a “polluted” idea in the American mainstream, because of the publicity around sex abuse scandals and financial malfeasance in many different faiths in the ’80s and ’90s as millennials came of age. “The scandals violated most of the virtues believed to make religion good,” Smith wrote. “They demonstrated that religion did not make people moral, did not help its own leaders cope with life’s challenges and temptations, did not promote social peace and harmony and did not model virtuous behavior for others.” Those scandals helped destroy religion’s credibility — and led to millennials no longer believing that religion could be a “glue” that held America together.

Part of why we’re seeing a particularly virulent strain of Christian nationalists’ fight for power in American society right now is because, deep down, they know that they’re losing the long game. But the irony that Smith points out is that the more religious Christians tightly embrace electoral politics, the more they will continue to repel many of those they seek to attract.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/opini...erica.html

-ands that's both why and how you know they're not counting on a democracy. It's also why our institutional politics can't deal with maga. They not telling us about a disagreement as to how we might best achieve a common goal. They're telling us they're done with the american experiment.

(March 17, 2025 at 11:19 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: -ands that's both why and how you know they're not counting on a democracy.  It's also why our institutional politics can't deal with maga.  They not telling us about a disagreement as to how we might best achieve a common goal.  They're telling us they're done with the american experiment.

Counting on Democracy could be a fools errand.

How can a democracy, based on religious mores and ethics, from a culture based on religious mores and ethics evolving from human society, itself based on religious mores and ethics act in opposition to it's own self interests? The society most people want functions most efficiently at a cooperation level precipitously close to a bee hive, everyone gets their fair share and everyone is equidistant from the "seat of power" .  

Hippea

(March 22, 2025 at 8:45 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote: How can a democracy, based on religious mores and ethics, from a culture based on religious mores and ethics evolving from human society, itself based on religious mores and ethics act in opposition to it's own self interests?

Democracy is not based on religious mores and ethics.

Take the Bible itself, which is written almost with the specific intent of keeping the humanity from the values the vast majority of us embrace today.

The Bible is against democracy where we don't entrust power and authority to one man.

You will also discover that the Bible is against our pluralist society where everyone is free to worship or not as they see fit. The notion of equality for women and the LGBTQ communities.

The right to privacy. Sexual Freedom. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. The right to publish. Questioning of authority. - none of these things you will find in the Bible.

For more than a thousand years, Christianity demanded that the authority of the church and its leaders be respected almost entirely without question. Needless to say that our values today are the opposite of that.

We're at a pretty clear point of conflict between secularism and theocracy. If our government or society actually were based on those things as they see them there would be nothing for the riech wing culture warriors to whine about. Part and parcel, the riech is not content with our civil religion either. Civic nationalism is defective, and must be replaced with white nationalism.

(March 22, 2025 at 10:45 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:

(March 22, 2025 at 8:45 am)Hippea Fly Guy Wrote: How can a democracy, based on religious mores and ethics, from a culture based on religious mores and ethics evolving from human society, itself based on religious mores and ethics act in opposition to it's own self interests?

Democracy is not based on religious mores and ethics.

Fair enough, share where it derives it's authority? There are no natural law parallels prohibitions or proscriptions for stealing, deception or killing these are all effective survival strategies rewarded in nature and anathema to democracy. Clearly it's not based on anything natural. It's not nature, evolution and biology that has an issue with LGBTQ, those objections come from society, governed by mob rule (your Democracy) based on something other than objective reality and natural selection.