How many preachers have looked out into the congregation and wondered, “Why aren’t there more people here?”
Not every church faces that predicament, but an extensive new study by the Pew Research Center shows the religious landscape of the country is changing, as fewer people identify themselves as Christians.
“The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining,” Pew found, “while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing.”
Specifically, the percent of Americans who identify themselves as Christian dropped from 78.4 percent in 2007 to 70.6 percent last year. The biggest drops were in Catholics (3.1 percent) and mainline Protestants (3.4 percent), with a slight decline in Evangelical Protestants (0.9 percent).
Pew’s survey of more than 35,000 Americans found a corresponding six percent increase in those who are unaffiliated with any particular religion. There was also a 1.2 percent increase (4.7 percent to 5.9 percent) in non-Christian faiths, likely attributed to immigration.
Greg Smith, the Pew study’s lead researcher, said the percent of Americans who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” has steadily increased, but “I am struck by the pace at which that group continues to grow.”
Growth in the unaffiliated category comes mostly among young people. Just 56 percent of those born between 1990 and 1996 identify themselves as Christian, down from 78 percent of those born between 1950 and 1955, and 85 percent of those born between 1928 and 1945.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, “Researchers say the rise of the unaffiliated is driven by a generational divide—younger Americans aren’t replacing their parents and grandparents in church.”
It’s worth noting, however, that despite the decline, America has hardly entered a post-Christian period. “The United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world,” and seven in ten Americans still identify with the Christian faith.
But clearly there are shifts in adherence to Christianity, and those are changes the church itself may have to adjust to. As Pope Francis said, “Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.”
As the Pew research shows, there is an increasing number of those folks out there.