According to the results of the General Social Survey, only fifty percent of Americans are now certain God exists. This stands out among the new data about religion in the United States.
Unprecedented Figures
Per the 2022 survey, which the University of Chicago research organization released, just under 50% of Americans say they have no question about God’s existence. In 2008, the percentage of firm adherents exceeded 60 percent.
Big data in the religion data world. @GSS_NORC just released some of their survey results from 2022!
Here's religious attendance in 1972 vs 2022:
Never: 9% -> 33% ⬆️24%
Seldom: 8% -> 11%⬆️3%
Yearly: 25% -> 23% ⬇️2%
Monthly: 16% -> 10% ⬇️6%
Weekly: 41% -> 22% ⬇️19% pic.twitter.com/n16fWL96cV— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) May 17, 2023
NORC discovered that 34 percent of Americans never attend church, the highest percentage recorded in fifty years of surveys.
Another recent study by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that in 2022, 27% of Americans said they had no religion, up from 19% in 2012 and 16% in 2006.
The PRRI report documents an unprecedented decline in the nation’s Christian populace, particularly among whites. Since 2006, the number of Americans who identify as white evangelical Protestants has decreased from 23% to 14%.
The percentage of Caucasian mainstream Protestants declined from 18 percent to 14 percent. The percentage of white Catholics slipped from 16 percent to 13 percent of the population.
America is drifting ever-further from its religious roots, new data shows in a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.
Sadly just 16% say religion is the most important part of their lives — down from a fifth a decade ago.😟 pic.twitter.com/cv7S61irFe
— Mr Pål Christiansen 🇳🇴😍🇬🇧 (@TheNorskaPaul) May 17, 2023
This does not imply that Americans lack spirituality. Per NORC findings, nearly three-quarters of individuals believe in life after death. Throughout the decades, this number has remained relatively stable.
Seven percent of the population does not believe in God.
Pandemic Years
During the pandemic years, membership in churches, church attendance, and faith in God all declined, but the shift away from organized liturgy dates back generations.
Religious scholars regard NORC as the gold standard for surveys on faith. In 2021, 29 percent of Americans reported having no religion, up from 23 percent in 2018 and 5 percent in 1972, according to the General Social Survey.
Potentially for the first time in American history, the percentage of Americans who belonged to religious institutions fell below 50 percent during the pandemic of 2020.
Since the Great Depression, when more than 70% of Americans belonged to some sort of place of worship, Gallup polling has tracked church attendance. Despite a gradual decline in religiosity, the United States continues to be a highly religious nation by international standards.
In one international comparison, Pew Research discovered that 19% of Americans claimed to be atheists.
The percentage was higher in Germany (26%), the United Kingdom (31%), France (32%), China (52%), and Japan (60%) than in Russia (15%), Italy (13%), and India (1%).
This article appeared in NewsHouse and has been published here with permission.
