{"id":750,"date":"2009-03-09T09:52:11","date_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html"},"modified":"2009-03-09T09:52:11","modified_gmt":"2009-03-09T09:52:11","slug":"fastest-growing-religion-no-re","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html","title":{"rendered":"Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The blockbuster new American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College reports that the fastest growing &#8220;faith group&#8221; is the one claiming &#8220;no religion.&#8221;  (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org\/\">Full study here<\/a>.)<br \/>\nLook at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/religion\/2009-03-09-american-religion-ARIS_N.htm\">USA Today&#8217;s stunning visual depiction <\/a>of the flight from Catholicism and &#8220;Other Christian.&#8221; Then click on the slide for &#8220;no religion.&#8221;  A jarring difference.<br \/>\nCathy Grossman of USA Today summarizes thusly:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;So many Americans claim no religion at all (15%, up from 8% in 1990), that this category now outranks every other major U.S. religious group except Catholics and Baptists. In a nation that has long been mostly Christian, &#8220;the challenge to Christianity &#8230; does not come from other religions but from a rejection of all forms of organized religion,&#8221; the report concludes. &#8220;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A few other bits struck me.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Evangelicals for years could mock mainliners for their lethargic growth numbers. It&#8217;s more complicated than that.  <strong>Baptists, the largest evangelical denomination, dropped <\/strong>from 19.3% in 1990 to 15.8%.  What has grown is the group called &#8220;non-denominational Christian,&#8221; often associated with megachurches which grew from 200,000 people in 1990 to 8 million today &#8212; from 5% of the population in 1990 to 11.8% in 2008.<\/li>\n<li>The two regional <strong>strongholds for non-believers: New England and the Pacific Northwest<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Catholics have &#8220;moved&#8221; South <\/strong>(actually, it&#8217;s that Hispanic immigrants represent the growing part of Catholicism). The Catholic portion of the New England states fell from 50% to 36% from 1990 to 2000; while it rose in California from 37% to 44% and in Texas from 23% to 32%.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Jewish population continues to d<\/strong>ecline (from 3.1 million in 1990 to 2.7 milion in 2008).<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Muslim slice of the population has grown <\/strong>from 0.3% in 1990 to 0.6% now.<\/li>\n<li>The ethnic group <strong>most likely to have no religious identity: Asians.<\/strong>  27% say they have no religion (compared to 16% in 1990)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Only 59% of Hispanics are Catholic now<\/strong>, down from 66% in 1990. Biggest winners? &#8220;Christian generic&#8221;  (rising from 8% to 11%) and &#8220;None&#8221; (doubling from 6% to 12%).<\/li>\n<li>Only 1.6% call themselves atheist or agnostic, though ARIS concludes that based on their beliefs 12% are either atheist or agnostic. 27% expect that when they die, they won&#8217;t have a religious service.<\/li>\n<li><strong>12% of the population believe in a higher power <\/strong>but not a personal God.<\/li>\n<li>Still, from 2001 to 2008, the percentage of the population that&#8217;s Christian remained stable at 76%. <strong> 34% now call thesmelves &#8220;Born Again or Evangelical<\/strong> Christians.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><strong>82% say they believe in God<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Best educated faiths (% of college graduates):  Muslim, Other Religins, Eastern Religions, Jews, Mormons and Mainline Christian.<\/li>\n<li>Least educated: Pentecostal, Baptist,  &#8220;Protestant Denominations&#8221; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The blockbuster new American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College reports that the fastest growing &#8220;faith group&#8221; is the one claiming &#8220;no religion.&#8221; (Full study here.) Look at USA Today&#8217;s stunning visual depiction of the flight from Catholicism and &#8220;Other Christian.&#8221; Then click on the slide for &#8220;no religion.&#8221; A jarring difference. Cathy Grossman of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey) - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey) - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The blockbuster new American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College reports that the fastest growing &#8220;faith group&#8221; is the one claiming &#8220;no religion.&#8221; (Full study here.) Look at USA Today&#8217;s stunning visual depiction of the flight from Catholicism and &#8220;Other Christian.&#8221; Then click on the slide for &#8220;no religion.&#8221; A jarring difference. Cathy Grossman of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-09T09:52:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey) - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey) - Steven Waldman","og_description":"The blockbuster new American Religious Identification Survey from Trinity College reports that the fastest growing &#8220;faith group&#8221; is the one claiming &#8220;no religion.&#8221; (Full study here.) Look at USA Today&#8217;s stunning visual depiction of the flight from Catholicism and &#8220;Other Christian.&#8221; Then click on the slide for &#8220;no religion.&#8221; A jarring difference. Cathy Grossman of&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-03-09T09:52:11+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html","name":"Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey) - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-03-09T09:52:11+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-09T09:52:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/03\/fastest-growing-religion-no-re.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fastest Growing Religion = No Religion (New Religious Identification Survey)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}