New research shows the religious landscape in the U.S. is changing as Christians are on track to lose their majority status within a few decades if recent trends continue, driven mostly by young people leaving the faith.
A report by Pew Research Center and the General Social Survey shows more and more people continue to leave Christianity to join the growing ranks who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular."
According to the report, about 90% of U.S. adults identified as Christians as recently as the early 1990s. In 2007 the share was at 78%. Today, that number is down to 64%.
At the same time, the number of people who identify as religious "nones," who are not affiliated with a religion, has grown from 16% in 2007 to 29%, according to the research.
"Most people don't change their religious identity. But among those who do, the switch typically happens between the ages of 15 and 29," the report noted. "However, since the rise of the 'nones' began in the 1990s, a pattern has emerged in which a measurable share of adults ages 30 to 65 also disaffiliate from Christianity."
"Whatever the deeper causes, religious disaffiliation in the U.S. is being fueled by switching patterns that started 'snowballing' from generation to generation in the 1990s," the Pew Research Center said on Twitter. "The core population of 'nones' has an increasingly 'sticky' identity as it rolls forward, and it is gaining a lot more people than it is shedding, in a dynamic that has a kind of demographic momentum. Christians have experienced the opposite pattern."
If these recent trends continue, the report suggests that Christianity will no longer be the majority religion within just a few decades.
The report looked at four hypothetical scenarios to determine what the country's religious landscape would look like if switching stayed at its recent pace, continued to speed up, or suddenly halted. It also accounted for factors such religious differences by age and sex, birth rates and migration patterns.
Projections show Christians of all ages shrinking from 64% to between 54% and 35% by 2070. Over that same period, "nones" would rise from the current 30% to somewhere between 34% and 52% of the U.S. population, according to the report.
"Depending on the future of religious switching, people who identify as atheist, agnostic or 'nothing in particular' could become America's largest (non)religious group within our lifetime," Pew researcher Stephanie Kramer said on Twitter.
The report noted that these are not the only possibilities, and they are not meant as predictions of what will happen; the projections simply show trends revealed by decades of survey data.
"The decline of Christianity and the rise of the 'nones' may have complex causes and far-reaching consequences for politics, family life and civil society," the report states. "However, theories about the root causes of religious change and speculation about its societal impact are not the focus of this report. The main contribution of this study is to analyze recent trends and show how the U.S. religious landscape would shift if they continued."
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