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The United States has long been seen, on a domestic as well as an international level, as a deeply religious place.
However, Millennials are ditching religion. The number of young adults unaffiliated with any religious group is rising at an astonishingly rapid rate. In fact, 35 percent of Millennials (individuals born between 1981 and 1996) belong in the increasingly immense classification labeled “religious nones,†a group comprising people who are not affiliated with any particular religion.
Only one in four Millennials attends weekly religious meetings. Millennials are also far less likely to likely to say religion is important in their lives and relinquish much less approval of religious institutions than their parents or grandparents did are their age.
More broadly, a survey conducted earlier this year by Pew Research found that a record 46 million Americans are classified as “nones.†That means that 23 percent of Americans are nonreligious, a momentous nine percent leap from the 14 percent of nonreligious Americans just eight years ago in 2007. To give perspective, that number is equal to the black, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American populations combined.
This isn’t the only important metric, though. In 2007, Pew conducted a nationwide survey concluding that roughly 60 percent of Americans who attend religiously-oriented services “seldom or never†still described themselves as belonging to some particular religious group. Just five years later (in 2012), only half of those surveyed claimed that they belonged to a religious group of some kind, which equates to a 10 point net drop in just five years. The study also concluded that only half of Americans regularly attend religious services of any kind. The share of Americans who say they are “absolutely certain†God exists has dropped sharply from 71 percent in 2007 to 63 percent in 2014.
Religious disaffiliation is even more pronounced among the youngest Americans. Nonreligious Americans are younger, on average, than the general population to start with, and the youngest adults in the group â€" that is, those who have entered adulthood just in the last several years â€" are even less religious. Seven in ten Millennials born between 1990 and 1996 with no religious affiliation say spirituality is not at all important in their lives.
Demographically, the cohort of nonreligious people in the United States is 20 percent more likely to be educated at the collegiate level and about 15 percent more likely to be white.
Read more at: http://suindependent.com/millennials-are-ditching-religion/
The flip side of that is non-white (Hispanic, black, mixed race, whatever) numbers are growing. Whitey is no longer a majority. However, the non-white population I do believe tends to be more religious. So the ditching of religion doesn't necessarily translate as an across the board shift, though the numbers are constantly greater for the nons than the believers.
Overall good, but until we have leaders that mirror the shifting demographics and stop doing everything possible to keep the white christian in the drivers seat, real change is not going to happen soon.
Quote from: stromboli on December 26, 2015, 09:59:04 AM
The flip side of that is non-white (Hispanic, black, mixed race, whatever) numbers are growing. Whitey is no longer a majority. However, the non-white population I do believe tends to be more religious. So the ditching of religion doesn't necessarily translate as an across the board shift, though the numbers are constantly greater for the nons than the believers.
Overall good, but until we have leaders that mirror the shifting demographics and stop doing everything possible to keep the white christian in the drivers seat, real change is not going to happen soon.
Each generation rejects the one just before. The Baby Boomers turned out to be rather religious. This isn't what was expected, and didn't become clear until the 1980s. The Millennials have had too much religion from their parents and being forced to go to church ... and have naturally reacted against it. Cycles, not lines.