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posted by Blackmoore on Wednesday October 22 2014, @09:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the hypocritical-or-just-confused-by-the-survey dept.

Citing a Pew Research survey as well as other sources, Priceonomics reports – with nice charts – that the younger an American is, the more likely is to not have or feel a religious affiliation.

81% of all Americans aged 30 and older, and 88% of American septugenarians (aged 70 and older), identify as Christian. Young Americans, on the other hand, are pretty singularly secular in comparison. Only 68% of adults under 30 identified as Christian. 25% of adults under 30 didn’t affiliate with any religion whatsoever.

Is this just because people tend to get more religious as they get older, or is religion actually on the decline with younger people? According to Pew, today’s young adults reject organized religion at a significantly higher rate than generations before them at their age: In the late 1970s, 13% of Baby Boomers had no religious affiliation; by the late 1990s, 20% of Generation X-ers had no religious affiliation.

TFA also cites a study (PDF warning) which shows that the loss of religiousness started to accelerate during '90-ies:

The GSS has asked adults the following question for forty years: “What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?” The percentage answering “no religion” was 18 percent two years earlier in 2010, 14 percent in 2000, and 8 percent in 1990. The upward trend in the “no religion” choice is very broad. While some types of Americans identify with an organized religion less than others, Americans in almost every demographic group increasingly claim “no religion” since the trend began to accelerate in 1990. Preferring no religion is not atheism which is still very rare; in 2012, just 3 percent of Americans said they did not believe in God.

Unfortunately, the things appear to me "as clear as mud"; The Atlantic find something interesting in the same data:

There's a curious set of numbers in Pew's new survey about faith and politics.

Seventy-two percent of Americans think religion is losing its influence on public life, while 48 percent think houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues. Since 2010, both of these numbers have grown by at least five percentage points, and they're accompanied by another interesting data point: 41 percent of Americans say there has been "too little expression of religious faith by political leaders," up from 37 percent in 2010.

So, Soylenters, what is your take on it?

 
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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 22 2014, @04:29PM

    by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday October 22 2014, @04:29PM (#108751)

    Maybe a "half-Jewish" is like a "half-Nelson."

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