Pew Report: The Decline of Christianity in America

Only 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians, down 12 points from a decade ago, according to a just released Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2018 and 2019. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated—people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”—stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009.

Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009.  Twenty percent identify as Catholic, down from 23% in 2009.  All subsets of the “nones”—those professing no faith—have seen their numbers swell.  Atheists have doubled from 2% to 4% of U.S. adults, agnostics have grown from 3% to 5%, and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

In 2009, those who claimed to attend worship services at least once or twice a month outnumbered occasional attenders by a 52%-to-47% margin. Today those figures are reversed: 54% than say they only occasionally, whereas 45% said they attend at least monthly.

It is not surprising that older people are more religious.  Eighty-four percent (84%) of those born between 1928 and 1945 identify as Christians, compared to 76% of Baby Boomers.  But it is surprising how irreligious the younger generation is:  less than half of Millennials (49%) describe themselves as Christians, and 40 percent are “nones,” identifying with no faith. 

Among the U.S. Hispanic population, those who identify as Catholic fell to 47%, down from 57% a decade ago, and Hispanics who say they are religiously unaffiliated rose to 23%, from 15% in 2009.