According to new Pew Research data, the amount of Americans that call themselves Christians has dropped from 75% in 2011 to 63% in 2021.
In the same time, the number of people who say they are "religiously unaffiliated" has risen from 16% in 2007 to 29% in 2021.
Christians continue to make up a majority of the U.S. populace, but their share of the adult population is 12 points lower in 2021 than it was in 2011. In addition, the share of U.S. adults who say they pray on a daily basis has been trending downward, as has the share who say religion is "very important" in their lives.
If you want my honest opinion, the majority of people who call themselves Christians on these surveys aren't Christian at all.
- Are the majority of Americans really picking up their cross to follow Jesus Christ daily as his disciples?
- Do they wake up each morning with the fear of the Lord in their hearts and a desire to serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, paying careful attention to His statutes and commands?
- Does zeal for the Gospel consume them, pushing them to proclaim the amazing hope of salvation found only in Christ and the reality of eternity apart from God for those who do not believe?
America hasn't been majority-Christian for a long time. Change my mind.
Also color me unsurprised that the greatest decline has been among Mainline Protestant denominations that went liberal in their theology (also known as abandoning the faith) a century ago.
The recent declines within Christianity are concentrated among Protestants. Today, 40% of U.S. adults are Protestants, a group that is broadly defined to include nondenominational Christians and people who describe themselves as "just Christian" along with Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and members of many other denominational families. The Protestant share of the population is down 4 percentage points over the last five years and has dropped 10 points in 10 years.
A better metric of faith might be the 25% of Americans who attend religious services regularly.
But even then, your rear end in a pew each Sunday doesn't mean a vibrant faith in Almighty God.
Currently, about three-in-ten U.S. adults (29%) are religious "nones" – people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular" when asked about their religious identity.
These increasing number of "religiously unaffiliated" are kidding themselves if they think they don't belong to a system of faith and an ideological worldview. People are made with eternity in their hearts: it isn't possible for them to be "unaffiliated" in religious thought.
They just haven't finalized their theological system of creeds, catechisms, soteriology, and saints yet.
Rest assured, however, the nearest woke corporate Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity department is aiming to fix that problem!
Live look:
This isn't all bad news.
The veneer of Christianity may be fading in America, but a reformation of those who truly profess Christ is growing. I'll leave you with a comic from this cool guy I know to explain:
