10th March, 2009

The percentage of Americans who claim to have no religion has climbed to 15 per cent of the adult population, according to the results of the landmark American Religious Identification Survey.

The survey, the third to be conducted, shows that the number of people professing to have no religion has grown by 4.7 million since the last survey was conducted in 2001. In 1990 only eight per cent of people claimed to be in this category, a figure which rose to 14.2 per cent in 2001.

The poll data also shows that the percentage of people who claim to be Christians has declined from 86.2 per cent at the start of the Nineties to from 76 per cent. Ninety per cent of the decline was experienced in the non-Catholic portion of Christian population, a group which includes Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and the United Church of Christ.

In contrast, most of the growth in the Christian population took place among those who would only identify themselves as ‘Christian’, ‘Evangelical/Born Again’ or ‘non-denominational Christian’. The non-denominational Christian category has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to eight million people today, growth which the report says is associated with the growth in megachurches.

Elsewhere the survey showed that only 1.6 per cent of Americans call themselves atheist or agnostic.

~ www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org

- DAVID ADAMS