WASHINGTON, D.C. — The 17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life — from 66% in 2015 to 49% today — ranks among the largest Gallup has recorded in any country over any 10-year period since 2007.
About half of Americans now say religion is not an important part of their daily life. They remain as divided on the question today as they were last year.
Such large declines in religiosity are rare. Since 2007, only 14 out of more than 160 countries in the World Poll have experienced drops of over 15 percentage points in religious importance over any 10-year period.
Only a small number of mostly wealthy nations have experienced larger losses in religiosity, including Greece from 2013-2023 (28 points), Italy from 2012-2022 (23 points), and Poland from 2013-2023 (22 points). Other countries, including Chile, Türkiye and Portugal, have seen declines similar in magnitude to the U.S. decline.
Posted by optichange
6 Comments
https://preview.redd.it/h9drrzrnuj1g1.png?width=202&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7f272eb1ac602a40bd16140c281a76d60f9d5a0
The radical change in the perception of religion across the entire English speaking world since the start of the century is extraordinary, but it was also *just* too slow for us to fully fathom it in real time.
When I was growing up to call yourself an Atheist was an active political statement, one that people immediately took issue with. Now (at least in my circles) people will act more surprised if you identify as a Christian.
This is partly what MAGA means when they talk about “losing their country.” The shift toward irreligion, especially among those under 30 where a majority do not identify as Christian, frightens them. And fear makes people seek powerful and unscrupulous people who will do whatever necessary to RETVRN to those supposed glory days.
Seeing 95% of everyone you’ve ever known and looked up to reveal that their entire moral framework is a sham in service of one of the biggest morons in world history will do that speaking from personal experience
A good opportunity to replace the social/networking function of churches with something that offers a social gathering and (maybe, ideally, in utopia land) something that espouses empiricism or at least nudges in that direction.
Or, maybe we all just kind of drift into non specific, unlabeled, vibes based mysticism.
Trump did actually do this