FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
An altar girl and boy walk into St. Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica, California. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Majority of Americans don’t belong to a place of worship in historic decline, poll finds
For the first time in eight decades, fewer than 50% of Americans say they belong to a church, synagogue or mosque amid an ongoing steep decline in religious attendance, according to a new biannual Gallup poll.
Gallup first began polling Americans on church membership in 1937. In the six decades that followed, between 68% and 76% of Americans said they belonged to a place of worship. Then, at the turn of the century, a persistent decline in religious membership began – and has continued for 20 years.
Poll: Majority in U S don t belong to place of worship columbian.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from columbian.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
I think there are a number of things to unpack here as religious belief/identity is notoriously difficult to define, just ask any atheist jew or catholic.
My amateur sociological assessment of much US society is that church membership has always functioned as the glue that held relatively ‘new’ communities together. Sunday church is where everyone meets up and gets to know each other. A Chicago born friend of mine talked about having moved to the Deep South for work and having neighbours turn up on his door in the first week asking about his church affiliation. He first thought they were trying to proselytise and was pretty offended, then he realised they were simply asking if he wanted to make the effort to be part of the community, so despite being non-religious he went with the flow and found that they were wonderful neighbours.
Think U.S. Evangelicals are Dying Out? Well, Define Evangelicalism.
(The Conversation) – The death spiral of evangelicalism has long been written about in both the religious and mainstream press. The assumption is that evangelicalism has weathered the storms of secularization and politicization poorly. Journalist Eliza Griswold, writing for
The New Yorker, chalks this up to the theological rigidity of evangelicals: that they have been structurally incapable of changing course quickly enough to stem the tide.
Others have suggested that the alliance between White evangelicalism and Republicanism is largely to blame for the decline of evangelicals. They believe that becoming so intertwined with the polarizing figure of former President Donald Trump has marginalized evangelicals in the public arena, making it even less likely for them to win over new converts.