NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise.
The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50
percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no
Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans have their
first presidential ticket with no Protestant nominees.
Among
the reasons for the change are the growth in nondenominational
Christians who can no longer be categorized as Protestant, and a spike
in the number of American adults who say they have no religion. The Pew study,
released Tuesday, found that about 20 percent of Americans say they
have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the last
five years.
Scholars have long debated whether people who say they
no longer belong to a religious group should be considered secular.
While the category as defined by Pew researchers includes atheists, it
also encompasses majorities of people who say they believe in God, and a
notable minority who pray daily or consider themselves "spiritual" but
not "religious." Still, Pew found overall that most of the unaffiliated
aren't actively seeking another religious home, indicating that their
ties with organized religion are permanently broken.
Growth among
those with no religion has been a major preoccupation of American faith
leaders who worry that the United States, a highly religious country,
would go the way of Western Europe, where church attendance has
plummeted. Pope Benedict XVI has partly dedicated his pontificate to
combating secularism in the West. This week in Rome, he is convening a
three-week synod, or assembly, of bishops from around the world aimed at
bringing back Roman Catholics who have left the church.
The trend
also has political implications. American voters who describe
themselves as having no religion vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. Pew
found Americans with no religion support abortion rights and gay
marriage at a much higher-rate than the U.S. public at large. These
"nones" are an increasing segment of voters who are registered as
Democrats or lean toward the party, growing from 17 percent to 24
percent over the last five years. The religiously unaffiliated are
becoming as important a constituency to Democrats as evangelicals are to
Republicans, Pew said.
The Pew analysis, conducted with PBS'
"Religion & Ethics Newsweekly," is based on several surveys,
including a poll of nearly 3,000 adults conducted June 28-July 9, 2012.
The finding on the Protestant majority is based on responses from a
larger group of more than 17,000 people and has a margin of error of
plus or minus 0.9 percentage points, Pew researchers said. Pew said it
had also previously calculated a drop slightly below 50 percent among
U.S. Protestants, but those findings had fallen within the margin of
error; the General Social Survey, which is conducted by the University
of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center, reported for 2010 that
the percentage of U.S. Protestants was around 46.7 percent.
Researchers
have been struggling for decades to find a definitive reason for the
steady rise in those with no religion.' The spread of secularism in
Western Europe was often viewed as a byproduct of growing wealth in the
region. Yet among industrialized nations, the United States stood out
for its deep religiosity in the face of increasing wealth.
Now,
religion scholars say the decreased religiosity in the United States
could reflect a change in how Americans describe their religious lives.
In 2007, 60 percent of people who said they seldom or never attend
religious services still identified themselves as part of a particular
religious tradition. In 2012, that statistic fell to 50 percent,
according to the Pew report.
"Part of what's going on here is that
the stigma associated with not being part of any religious community
has declined," said John Green, a specialist in religion and politics at
the University of Akron, who advised Pew on the survey. "In some parts
of the country, there is still a stigma. But overall, it's not the way
it used to be."
The Pew study has found the growth in unaffiliated
Americans spans a broad range of groups: men and women, college
graduates and those without a college degree, people earning less than
$30,000 annually and those earning $75,000 or more. However, along
ethnic lines, the largest jump in "nones" has been among whites.
One-fifth of whites describe themselves as having no religion.
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Online: http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx
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Follow Rachel Zoll at http://www.twitter.com/rzollAP
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