Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
The number of Americans identifying as Christians has stabilized after years of steady decline, the recent Religious Landscape Study from Pew Research Center found.
After dropping from 78 percent to 71 percent between 2007 and 2014, the share of U.S. adults identifying as Christian has now dropped to 62 percent. However, this percentage has been relatively stable since 2019, varying between 60 percent and 64 percent.
“The U.S. is a spiritual place, a religious place, where we’ve seen a signs of religious stabilization in the midst of longer-term decline,” said Gregory Smith, a senior associate director of research at Pew.
Protestants are still the largest subgroup of Christians, with 40 percent of American adults identifying as such. However, all major Protestant denominations have declined since the first Pew report in 2007. The percentage of respondents who identify as evangelical Protestants dropped from 26 percent to 23 percent; those who identify as mainline Protestants dropped from 18 percent to 11 percent; and those in historically black Protestant denominations decreased from 7 percent to 5 percent.
Catholics are the second-largest group, representing 19 percent of the entire Christian population. Other denominations, including Greek and Russian Orthodox, the Church of Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses, represent 3 percent of the Christian population.
Members of the United Methodist Church declined from 5 percent to 3 percent of U.S. adults since 2007. The report also indicates similar declines in Baptist and Lutheran Christians.
However, those identifying as non-Christian religious adults rose from 4.9 percent in 2007, to 5.9 percent in 2014, and to 7.1 percent in 2023-24. Among them, 1.7 percent identified as Jewish, 1.2 percent as Muslim, 1.1 percent as Buddhist and 0.9 percent as Hindu, in addition to 2.2 percent who identified as “other non-Christian religions.”
The growth of the religiously unaffiliated, also called nones, has plateaued after decades of rapid growth. In 2007, they represented 16 percent of U.S. adults, rising to 23 percent in 2014, and 29 percent in 2023-24. It includes 5 percent who identify as atheists, 6 percent who describe themselves as agnostics and 19 percent who identify as “nothing in particular.”
More than eight in 10 American adults indicated they were spiritual or believe in the supernatural; 86 percent agreed people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body. A large portion also believe in God or a universal spirit (83 percent) and/or something spiritual beyond the natural world (79 percent). About 70 percent indicated they believe in heaven, hell or both. These figures are relatively the same across age categories.
Although this latest study shows a stabilizing religious composition in the United States, researchers project a decline in religiousness in the future. Less-religious younger generations are progressively expected to replace older, highly religious and heavily Christian generations.
“This means that, for lasting stability to take hold in the U.S., religious landscape, something would need to change,” the report explains. “For example, today’s young adults would have to become more religious as they age or new generations of adults who are more religious than their parents would have to emerge.”
–Alan Goforth
