Belief in the existence of God has now dropped to an all-time low for Americans, with only 81% of Americans surveyed believing in God.
This is a 6% drop since the last time this question was asked by Gallup in 2017.
While the "new atheist" movement of the 2000s is falling out of style, that doesn't mean that belief in God is coming back into fashion. As it stands now, 1 out of every 5 people in America don't think God exists at all.
Gallup started asking this question in the 1940s, and through the '40s, '50s, and '60s, the number of theists consistently remained at 98%. There was no change at all during those decades and Gallup stopped asking the question until 2011.
When it came back in 2011, Gallup found the number had dropped to 92%, and ever since then as the question is asked every few years the number continues to drop.
It's no shock to this writer that this is the most atheistic America has ever been considering how obviously our culture is becoming more and more godless.
Belief in God has fallen the most in recent years among young adults and people on the left of the political spectrum (liberals and Democrats). These groups show drops of 10 or more percentage points comparing the 2022 figures to an average of the 2013-2017 polls.
Most other key subgroups have experienced at least a modest decline, although conservatives and married adults have had essentially no change.
Would you look at that? Everyone is rejecting the existence of God except people who marry and start a family and/or those with traditional, conservative values.
Huh.
The groups with the largest declines are also the groups that are currently least likely to believe in God, including liberals (62%), young adults (68%) and Democrats (72%). Belief in God is highest among political conservatives (94%) and Republicans (92%), reflecting that religiosity is a major determinant of political divisions in the U.S.
