Pew: Decline Of Christianity In The U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off

Pew Research, Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off (Executive Summary):

After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off – at least temporarily – at slightly above six-in-ten, according to a massive new Pew Research Center survey of 36,908 U.S. adults.

The Religious Landscape Study (RLS) is the largest single survey the Center conducts, aiming to provide authoritative figures on the size of U.S. religious groups because the U.S. census does not collect that information.

We have conducted three of these landscape surveys over the past 17 years, with more than 35,000 randomly sampled respondents each time. That’s enough to paint a statistical portrait of religion not only nationally, but also in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as in 34 large metro areas.

This introductory essay walks through the big-picture trends: evidence both of a long-term decline in American religion and of relative stability in the last few years, since 2020 or so. ...

• 62% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Christians: 40% are Protestant, 19% are Catholic, and 3% are other Christians.
• 29% are religiously unaffiliated: 5% are atheist, 6% are agnostic, and 19% identify religiously as “nothing in particular.”
• 7% belong to religions other than Christianity: 2% are Jewish, and 1% each are Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu (all figures are rounded). ...

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