Only a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic, a groundbreaking poll by Pew Research was published highlighting the shocking pace of decline of Christianity in America.
The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip.
The data shows a wide gap between older Americans (Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation) and Millennials in their levels of religious affiliation and attendance. More than eight-in-ten members of the Silent Generation (those born between 1928 and 1945) describe themselves as Christians (84%), as do three-quarters of Baby Boomers (76%). In stark contrast, only half of Millennials (49%) describe themselves as Christians; four-in-ten are religious nones, and one-in-ten Millennials identify with non-Christian faiths.
One of the worlds leading social scientists Ronald Inglehart, above, of the University of Michigan claims in a book soon to be published that the United States is experiencing a more dramatic shift away from religion than any other nation.
Religions Sudden Decline: Whats Causing It and What Comes Next is to be released in January by Oxford University Press. Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine in an advance summary titled Giving Up on God: The Global Decline of Religion Dr Inglehart said:
Growing numbers of people no longer find religion a necessary source of support and meaning in their lives. Even the United States long cited as proof that an economically advanced society can be strongly religious has now joined other wealthy countries in moving away from religion
Several forces are driving this trend, but the most powerful one is the waning hold of a set of beliefs closely linked to the imperative of maintaining high birthrates. Modern societies have become less religious in part because they no longer need to uphold the kinds of gender and sexual norms that the major world religions have instilled for centuries.
Although some religious conservatives warn that the retreat from faith will lead to a collapse of social cohesion and public morality, the evidence doesnt support this claim. As unexpected as it may seem, countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than more religious ones.
Needless to say, religion itself doesnt encourage corruption and crime. This phenomenon reflects the fact that as societies develop, survival becomes more secure: starvation, once pervasive, becomes uncommon; life expectancy increases; murder and other forms of violence diminish. And as this level of security rises, people tend to become less religious.
The most dramatic shift away from religion has taken place among the American public. From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the worlds more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data.
Inglehart says that other factors beyond rising levels of economic and technological development help explain the waning of religion.
In the United States, politics accounts for some of the decline. Since the 1990s, the Republican Party has sought to win support by adopting conservative Christian positions on same-sex marriage, abortion, and other cultural issues. But this political appeal to religious voters has had the corollary effect of pushing other voters, especially those who are young and culturally liberal, away from religion