People With ”No Religion” Not Increasing in the US

A new Gallup survey shows that the number of people who identify as having “no religion” has stopped growing over the past six years.

In 1950, no one in the United States identified as having “no religion.” But by 2022, 21% of Americans identified as having “no religion.” This percentage has remained stable over the last five years.

The contrast between the increase from 1950 to 2022 and the stability over the last six years is clear when looking at the results of Gallup polls from that time period.

Gallup sociologist Dr. Frank Newport says the findings are significant because they suggest secularization isn’t a general tendency in the US.

“There are hundreds of academic articles, academic reviews and books that examine the phenomenon of religious identity. The majority of these operate under the supposition that the percentage of those ‘without any religion’ increases constantly, as part of a general tendency to secularization in American society. Our tendency about religious identity suggests a certain caution when assuming that these tendencies are inexorable.”

For example, the data from Gallup also shows that the number of people with “no religion” stabilized in 1980 at 10%, and remained at that level until 2000.

Dr. Newport explained “we don’t know what will happen with religious identity in the future.”

“However, regardless of what happens in the future, I believe that a key conclusion of the Gallup data is the evidence that a constant increase, year after year, in the percentage of Americans that don’t have a religious identity is certainly not inevitable.”

Pray for the faith in the US!

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Photo credit: Gallup