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For the first time "No Religion" has topped a survey of Americans' religious identity, according to a new analysis by a political scientist. The non-religious edged out Catholics and evangelicals in the long-running General Social Survey.
Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University and a Baptist pastor, found that 23.1% of Americans now claim no religion.
Catholics came in at 23.0%, and evangelicals were at 22.5%.
The three groups remain within the margin of error of each other though, making it a statistical tie. Over 2,000 people were interviewed in person for the survey.
[...] "We are seeing the rise of a generation of Americans who are hungry for facts and curious about the world," she says.
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Survey: As Many Americans Claim No Religion as there are Evangelicals, Catholics
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Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday April 15 2019, @02:24AM
Agreed, but it's pretty standard for these religion polls in the U.S. For historical reasons, Catholics tended to be segregated in their own group, for example, and the polls generally have kept the question the same for the past several decades to keep data collection consistent.
I agree the headline is misleading. I also would argue that the timing of this is interesting -- often around Easter season, there tend to be headlines both for and against Christianity every year.
And there's nothing really new here. Here are Gallup results [gallup.com] from 2017, which show basically a tie among Catholics, Evangelicals, and "none." Here are Pew results [pewforum.org] that show the same. Here's an ABC poll [go.com] from last year with basically the exact same argument as TFA here. And here's one talking about the rise of the atheists [scientificamerican.com] published -- again, I'm sure not coincidentally -- on Easter Sunday 2018.
It's pretty much an annual tradition in the news media for someone to promote the rise of atheism around Easter. (For the record, although I tend not to talk much about my own beliefs, I've been a skeptic since I was in middle school. However, I also note the annual opportunism of non-Christians in the media around Easter.)
So no, there's not much to discuss here. The numbers have been trending the same for quite a few years. The fact that one poll finally registers that those with no affiliation are a "bigger" (though statistically insignificantly bigger) group than the arbitrary divisions of Christians in these polls... well, it's just an excuse to publish another headline.
Also, I question the meaningfulness of these numbers. The numbers of Americans identifying as "non-religious" or "not very religious at all" or "don't attend religious services/church" have trended up a LOT faster than those who claim "no religious affiliation." I think there are many people who are loathe to admit to being non-religious, since in many communities, religion is still the default. I suspect many of these recent polls how people simply being a little more honest, rather than pretending to remain with some vestigial church affiliation even though they haven't gone in years.
Lastly, note that most of these surveys are NOT about "no religion" -- they're about no religious affiliation, which is a significant difference. Those admitting to be atheist or agnostic still are a small minority of these "no religious affiliation numbers," as the Pew survey I linked above notes, generally in the 5-7% for both atheist and agnostic together.
So, I'm not sure this is necessarily a cause for celebration among skeptics. Polls consistently reveal very high numbers of Americans believe in religious things (like angels, the virgin birth of Jesus, an afterlife, etc.) even if they don't identify as being very religious. I don't have time to find the link right now, but I remember reading a couple years ago about a poll that showed only ~70% of Americans identifying as Christian (and >30% saying they aren't very religious at all), but something like 85% of Americans saying they believed in the virgin birth of Jesus. Yeah, ponder that for a second.
Not to mention all the other weird crap Americans admit to believing in in polls... supernatural phenomena, etc. The number in TFA is probably most meaningful to those concerned about local churches dwindling in members and closing because of non-attendance. I don't know that American society is overall becoming more skeptical in a scientific sense or stopping believing in weird crap.