The Catholic population of the United States has shifted away from the Northeast and towards the Southwest, while secularity continues to grow in strength in all regions of the country, according to a new study conducted by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. 'The decline of Catholicism in the Northeast is nothing short of stunning," said Barry Kosmin, a principal investigator for the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). "Thanks to immigration and natural increase among Latinos, California now has a higher proportion of Catholics than New England."
Conducted between February and November 2008, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults in the 48 contiguous states were conducted by Kosmin and Ariela Keysar. Employing the same research methodology as the 1990 and 2001 surveys, ARIS 2008 questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish. With a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent, it provides the only complete portrait of how contemporary Americans identify themselves religiously, and how that self-identification has changed over the past generation.
In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 survey. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million "Nones." Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent "Nones," leading all other states by a full 9 points.
"Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly," Keysar said. We now know it wasn't. The'Nones' are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union."
The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 per cent to 76.7 per cent, has now edged down to 76 per cent. Ninety per cent of the decline comes from the non-Catholic segment of the Christian population, largely from the mainline denominations, including Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians/Anglicans, and the United Church of Christ. These groups, whose proportion of the American population shrank from 18.7 per cent in 1990 to 17.2 per cent in 2001, all experienced sharp numerical declines this decade and now constitute just 12.9 per cent.
Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/ Born Again," or "nondenominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of mega-churches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 per cent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 per cent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.
"It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism--mainline versus evangelical--is collapsing," said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States."
Other key findings:
Conducted between February and November 2008, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults in the 48 contiguous states were conducted by Kosmin and Ariela Keysar. Employing the same research methodology as the 1990 and 2001 surveys, ARIS 2008 questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish. With a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent, it provides the only complete portrait of how contemporary Americans identify themselves religiously, and how that self-
In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 survey. The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million "Nones." Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent "Nones," leading all other states by a full 9 points.
"Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly," Keysar said. We now know it wasn't. The'Nones' are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union."
The percentage of Christians in America, which declined in the 1990s from 86.2 per cent to 76.7 per cent, has now edged down to 76 per cent. Ninety per cent of the decline comes from the non-
Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as "Christian," "Evangelical/ Born Again," or "nondenominational Christian." The last of these, associated with the growth of mega-
"It looks like the two-
Other key findings:
Baptists, who constitute the largest non-Catholic Christian tradition, have increased their numbers by two million since 2001, but continue to decline as a proportion of the population.
Mormons have increased in numbers enough to hold their own proportionally, at 1.4 per cent of the population.
The Muslim proportion of the population continues to grow, from 0.3 per cent in 1990 to 0.5 per cent in 2001 to 0.6 percent in 2008.
15% of Americans Now Have No Religion