Nearly three in ten people in the United States don’t identify with any religion, according to a survey published by Pew Research Tuesday.
The survey, conducted by Pew from May 29 to August 25, 2021, found that 29% of Americans identify as religious “nones,” which includes atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular.” That number is a 6 percentage point increase from 5 years ago and a 10 percentage point increase from a decade ago.
The survey found that Christians still make up the vast majority of religiously affiliated Americans, with 63% of respondents identifying as Christians, but that number is 12 percentage points lower than it was in 2011, Pew notes.
The steep decline in religious affiliation among Christians comes from Protestants, which includes mainline Protestant denominations like Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Anglicans, and others, as well as non-denominational Christians and people who identify themselves as “just Christian.” Protestants have dropped to just 40% of the population, a 4 percentage point decline in 5 years and a 10 percentage point decline in 10 years.
Protestants are still currently dominated by evangelicals. 60% of Protestants responded “yes” when asked whether they describe themselves as “born-again or evangelical,” compared with 40% who said “no” or declined to respond. But both evangelical and mainline Protestants have seen six-point declines in their share of the overall population, with evangelicals dropping from 30% to 24% and mainline Protestants dropping from 22% to 16%.
Catholics have experienced a decline of about 3 points over the past decade but remain relatively steady. Catholics make up 21% of religious affiliations, and while they had declined incrementally between 2011 and 2019, the number of Catholics has ticked back up and remained steady since then.
Mormons and Orthodox have remained steady over the past decade. Mormons experienced a slight dip in recent years but remain at about 2% of religious Christians. Orthodox sit at just about 1 percent.
The Pew Survey coincides with a report by The Associated Press that found that “nones” are the fastest-growing religious identity in surveys.
“If the unaffiliated were a religion, they’d be the largest religious group in the United States,” Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University, and the author of “Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones,” told AP. She also noted that “nones” were once concentrated in coastal urban areas, but have since spread across the country and occupy a variety of ages, ethnic groups, and social classes.
The unaffiliated are not entirely atheist, the report notes. A recent poll conducted by AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 30% of respondents felt some connection to God or a higher power, and 19% say religion has some importance to them, even though they are not affiliated with a particular faith. About 12% of respondents identified as both “religious and spiritual,” while another 28% identified as “as spiritual but not religious.” More than 50% identified as neither spiritual nor religious.
“There are people who do actually practice, either in a particular faith tradition that we would recognize, or in multiple faith traditions,” Drescher told AP. “They’re not interested in either membership in those communities formally or in identifying as someone from that religion.”
The AP also noted that there was a significant percentage of “nones” who grew up religious but then disaffiliated. 60% of respondents said that religion was at least somewhat important to their families during their childhood.