Some 62 percent of U.S. adults currently describe themselves as Christians.
The decline in the number of Americans who identify as Christian appears to be slowing down after years of losses, according to a Pew Research Center survey published Wednesday.
The expansive Religious Landscape Study (RLS) study found the number of people in the U.S. who identify as Christian has been stable since 2019. It also discovered that the number of those who are unaffiliated with a religion, after years of uptick, has plateaued.
Around 62 percent of Americans identified as Christians. Some 40 percent were Protestant, 19 percent were Catholic, and 3 percent identified with other Christian groups, according to the survey.
The share of Americans who identify as Christians has been hovering in the 60s from 2019 to 2024. In 2023, it was 63 percent, down from 78 percent in 2007.
That the slide has stopped is good news but is tempered by the fact that only 62 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. We were at 78 percent less than twenty years ago.
That’s a steep drop.
Nearly 3 in 10 Americans, 29 percent, were religiously unaffiliated. Among those, 5 percent were atheist, 6 percent were agnostic and the other 19 percent said they identify as “nothing in particular,” Pew found.
Approximately 7 percent of the U.S. population is non-Christian but religious: 2 percent were Jewish, while Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist were each at 1 percent, according to the poll.
What’s fascinating is that our liberal or “progressive” friends, who support all manner of sexual deviancy, have become increasingly irreligious.
Researchers also noted that 37 percent of self-described liberals identified with Christianity, a 25-point drop from 2007 when it was 62 percent. Just more than half of liberals, 51 percent, said they have no religion, a 24-point jump from 2007’s 27 percent.
Young adults also presented as far less religious than those of older generations—a fact that the study’s researchers noted could portend an eventual decline.
“It is inevitable that older generations will decline in size as their members gradually die,” the researchers wrote in their report. “We also know that the younger cohorts succeeding them are much less religious.
“This means that, for lasting stability to take hold in the U.S. religious landscape, something would need to change.”
That change could be on the horizon.
In the weeks since President Donald Trump took office, he has taken several steps to put Christianity front and center, from creating a new White House Faith Office led by Pastor Paula White-Cain to establishing a Justice Department task force to root out anti-Christian bias.
He has also vowed to create a Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty.
At the National Prayer Breakfast on Feb. 6, Trump lamented the decline of faith in the United States and called on the nation to “bring God back” into its life.
“We have to bring religion back,” he told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “We have to bring it back much stronger. It’s one of the biggest problems that we’ve had over the last fairly long period of time.”
I’m not sure if Trump understands that Christianity is not a “religion,” which is a secular way of describing it. A religion is marked by rules and regulations; Christianity is about a personal relationship with God. Yes, we engage in worship and acts of service and read our bibles and pray, but those are expressions of gratitude and obedience, not a list of activities that we check off to keep God happy or to stay in His good graces.
Trump’s instincts are right, even though his call to “bring religion back much stronger” isn’t quite what we need. What we need is to humble ourselves and repent of our corporate sin, then encourage the act of making disciples, which is the way the Church has grown of the centuries.
We were once considered a Christian nation, founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Trump can’t “make” America Christian again, but he can call attention to our need for God.
Praying for our President to invite Jesus into his heart …..
What I find interesting is how when people comment that America was/is a Christian nation (founding, laws, attitudes) the left, typically poo poos that with cries of no we aren’t, we were never meant to be etc. Yet when there are needs like immigrant issues, poverty issues, justice issues etc. the cries ring out that we need to be more Christlike, more Christian, WWJD etc.