Researchers at the Connecticut-based Trinity College surveyed 54,000 people between February and November 2008 in the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and found some surprising results: the number of people identifying themselves as Christians has dropped to 76 percent, down from 86 percent in 1990. So what do people consider themselves in the United States?
New Terminology for Christians
Among those who still consider themselves Christian, terms like "nondenominational," "evangelical" and "born again" are becoming increasingly common.
In fact, Mark Silk, the director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, was quoted in a March 9th Washington Post article as saying, "There is now this shift in the non-Catholic population - and maybe among American Christians in general - into a sort of generic, soft evangelicalism."
The number of people who use nondenominational terms has skyrocketed from 194,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million currently.
Sociological Trends in Religiousness
The article also cites other trends substantiated by the survey, such as the decreasing importance of denominational labels in the country, an increase in religious minorities such as Muslims, Mormons, Wiccans, Scientologists and Pagans, and the growing number of people who identify as having no religion at all.
In fact, there was only one group that increased in every state in the U.S. since 2001: people saying they have no religion. This group accounts for 15 percent of the entire country's population, and according to Silk, is the most likely culprit for the U.S.'s shrinking Christian percentage.
Regional Trends in Religion
The least religious state in the union is Vermont, with 34 percent of residents identifying themselves as having no religion. This fits in with the entire northern New England region, which has now overtaken the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country.
The Growing Irreligious Minority
Substantial percentages of people interviewed for the survey were clear in their desire to lead non-religious lives. In fact, 30 percent of people who were married said they did not have religious services, and 27 percent said they did not expect to have a religious funeral when they died.
And according to the Washington, D.C. NBC affiliate WRC-TV, the study also found signs of a growing influence of churches that either don't belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group.
Catholic Shifts in America
Catholics still remain the nation's largest religious group, with 57 million Americans using that label. They gained 11 million followers since 1990, but still saw a fall in overall percentage to 25 percent.
The religious group also seems to be shifting demographically from the Northeast to the Southwest. Specifically, 36 percent of adults in the Northeast identified as Catholics last year, a precipitous drop from 43 percent in 1990. But other regions are bucking that trend: Latino immigration to places like California, Texas and Florida caused the number of Catholics to grow to about one-third of the adult population.
Researchers are unsure if these trends will continue. Societal factors and social conditions can affect people's belief systems.
Perhaps co-director of the 1990 ARIS, Seymour Lachman, summed it up best in that year's survey, "America does not have one religious future. It has many futures. It could be one path or 20 paths."
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