The American Religious Identification Survey finds that fewer and fewer Americans call themselves “religious�. The survey was conducted between February and November of 2008. Read more, photos and video below.
America Less Religious
According to the survey conducted, Catholics are moving and secularists are increasing. Catholics which used to predominately live in the northeast, are now moving to the southwestern part of the United States. Secularity is growing in staggering numbers throughout all regions of the country. From the survey:
ARIS 2008 is the third in a landmark series of large, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults in the 48 contiguous states conducted by Kosmin and Ariela Keysar. Employing the same research methodology as the 1990 and 2001 surveys, ARIS 2008 questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish. With a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent, it provides the only complete portrait of how contemporary Americans identify themselves religiously, and how that self-identification has changed over the past generation.
In its original survey conducted in 1990, Americans who considered themselves as having no religion came in at 8.2%; that figure increased to 14.2 in 2001 and now stands at a whopping 15% who claim no religious affiliation. Northern New England is the least religious part of the country, the pacific northwest held that honor in 2001. Vermont led all states with 34% answering “none�, not surprising considering that Howard Dean was once Governor of Vermont. From the Survey:
The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 percent to 76.7 percent, has now edged down to 76 percent. Ninety percent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ.
These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 percent.
Other findings in the survey include the fact that Baptists, the largest of the non-Catholic Christian denominations have increased their numbers but continue to decline as a proportion of the population. Muslims have grown as a proportion of the population by .6% while Jews have declined from 3.1 million in 1990 to 2.7 million in the current survey. The number of outright atheists have doubled since 2001 to 1.6 million. New religious movements such as Wiccans and pagans have grown faster in this decade than in the 1990’s.
A video of Less Religion is below.
America Less Religious Video
March 9th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
“Catholics which used to predominately live in the northeast, are now moving to the southwestern part of the United States.”
I think you misinterpreted that, or maybe I’m reading it wrong. It is because of Mexicans, etc., that Catholics are now more prevalent in the SE, not because of NE to SW intermigration.
March 9th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
You’re right leftrightleft, if you read the survey, it states that the catholic population has increased in the southwest due to the increase in the hispanic population. I just didn’t develop that point.
March 9th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
The reason the US has been such a religious country is separation of church and state. Whenever the gov’t gets into the religion business in any way, it leads to suppression of religion. It is like, simply looking into an atom changes things. The separation of church and state, one of our most precious founding priniciples, was eroded during the Bush years, and unfortunately Obama is coninuing the trend with his endorsement of the Bush faith-based initiatives. These statistics are proof positive of this.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
All I can say is, the good news just keeps on coming.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:02 am
Let’s hear it for the non-religious!! We’ll overtake the Christians soon enough.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:37 am
We will see pretty soon where the erosion of Christian values are going to lead us. (We have been a few years down that path already).
March 10th, 2009 at 7:43 am
It´s a private deciton. America isn´t better or worse for that.
March 10th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Arch,
You said, ‘ The separation of church and state, one of our most precious founding priniciples, was eroded during the Bush years, and unfortunately Obama is coninuing the trend with his endorsement of the Bush faith-based initiatives. These statistics are proof positive of this.’
Separation of church and state is not a founding principle. Our government is based on our Constitution. Where does it mention any separation of church and state.
How did Bush erode religious freedoms?
March 10th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
George, the phrase “separation of church and state” is not once mentioned in the Constitution but there are some articles who talk about that.
For example, in the First Amendment the Establishment Clause has generally been interpreted to prohibit 1) the establishment of a national religion by Congress, or 2) the preference of one religion over another or the support of a religious idea with no identifiable secular purpose.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
And you can see too the Article Six of the Constitution: Article Six of the United States Constitution provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
I noticed that Archie didn’t answer. I know what the Constitution says. But Archie like most liberals thinks the phrase ’separation of church and state’ in it and that it means you can’t pray in school and other crazy things.
I am still waiting on his answers about it and Bush!
March 10th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
“Article Six of the United States Constitution provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United Statesâ€?.”
This was the idea that came from men with judeo christian values.
March 10th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
as far as God is concerned religion is a great organizing tool for team building among the humans. He had to put this into a metaphor the humans could understand. The magic parable as the gem of wisdom and so forth. Unfortunately certain domineering humans use religion to harness people for their own causes, their own wars, and empire building, but in that further hone God’s machine of civilizing through the ages. You can channel God through certain prophets quite well or you can see him for yourself in either real time or sensuate reality and perilimbal enmeshment as in dreams and seances and yes even in concerts. God doesnt have to be electromagnetic as we are to be real. He may well be in the dark matter of the universe that rarely interacts with light matter, perhaps through the weak force of the electroweak force at a particular kinetic gradient. Fundamentalists fuse the God archetype with their actual working day and go mad. To see God you must see through the eyes of the archetype, as simply seeing the archetype is only seeing the chalis or vessel that holds him. Its perfunctory but aconcious.
To see God directly is not only blasphemy to the humans but almost universally illegal in all the ex-Roman cultures. Its okay to wed to the symbolic vessel and follow the dictated rules of unclear origin as a man. To be Godly you have to go a bit further. Few do, but those that do come back as prophets in their own right, quiet though they may be.
March 11th, 2009 at 5:37 am
Brian, tell what his favorite take-out is so I’m sure to bring some with me when I croak.
“as far as God is concerned religion is a great organizing tool for team building among the humans.”
Yea, the rest of his life forms dont take advantage of this concept. Although we see many species group together in packs or schools this action is usually a method for preservation and not really one used for worship.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Brian,
You are smoking something. Whatever you said shows that you know nothing about God. Or what you think you know is pure made up.
God is a personal God. You can have a personal relationship with him. Start with reading the New Testament.
As for this story, Religion is spelled “DO THIS, DO THAT, DON’T DO THIS, DON’T DO THAT.”
Christianity is spelled, “DONE”.
It was done on the cross and we can’t get to God any other way. Not to preach, but Jesus took upon himself all the sin of the world to pay our ransom from death and eternal separation from God. And to allow us to have a personal relationship with him.
Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. Religion in the sense that the Media speaks of it is mumbo jumbo. We are all religious about something. We do things the same way at the same time of the day, because that is the way we have always done.
My faith is in Christ and trying to live as Christlike as I can. That means following his example of loving one another as he first loved us. I will fail but I am forgiven and so I live one day at a time.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:05 am
Let’s not confuse religiosity with spirituality. Formal affiliation with an organized sect of an established and recognized body of believers only gives us information about the institutions of faith, not the personal beliefs and religious behaviors of individuals.
It’s a little like judging food consumption by looking at grocery store and restaurant receipts. There are quite a few who keep their own garden; and there are a few in restaurants who can’t finish their meal and some pretty good food ends up in the dumpster.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Other,
It is like this. I can read books and study everything there is about the president. But because I know all about him, doesn’t mean he knows me. If I call the White House and ask to speak to him, he will not take my call.
Unless I put money in the bank, I can’t cash a check. You can only get out what you put in.
That is the way a lot of people are. They confuse going to church with having a personal relationship with the living God.
It is not either or. It is both and.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:52 am
I think people are beggining to feel the way I have for a while now.
I have no problem with God or Jesus.
Its the whole “organized religion” thing thats turning people off
March 14th, 2009 at 10:26 am
George you say you know everything and show nothing in the same sentence. You can disagree, to disagree but that doesn’t make you right. And when you talk about love and criticism in the same sentence your inconsistencies rise above threshold. So what are you contributing exactly? Seriously, what is in your microwave bowl your flailing around?
March 16th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Brian,
I never said I know everything. I am a conservative and we unlike liberals know that we don’t know everything.
But I do about Christianity. Your comment @13 sounds as if you have had you head in a microwave. Brother you are going down the wrong path with comments like that.
Religion will lead you straight to hell.
October 21st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
[...] Society, John Rafferty says that the American Religious Identification Survey, which we wrote about here, concluded that “no religion” was the fastest growing “religion” in the country; this is [...]