A new survey released Tuesday found that Americans are becoming less religious.
The poll, published by the Pew Research Center, found that 29% of U.S. adults responded with “none” when asked about their religious identity. Only 16% of Americans identified as religiously unaffiliated in 2007.
The poll was conducted from May 29 to Aug. 25 and surveyed 3,937 American respondents. It had a margin of error of 2.1%.
Elizabeth Drescher, an adjunct professor at Santa Barbara University, told The Associated Press that those who did not identify with a religion usually came from urban and coastal areas but due to recent diversification — through age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background — this has become a commonality across the U.S.
“If the unaffiliated were a religion, they’d be the largest religious group in the United States,” Drescher said, according to the outlet. (RELATED: Leaked Documents Show Coast Guard’s Plan To Grill Service Members Over Religious Vaccine Exemption)
The population of Protestant American adults decreased to 40% in 2021, a 4 percentage point decline in the last five years, the survey found.
Another poll published in July by the Public Religion Research Institute surveyed nearly a half-million Americans and found that more than a third of U.S. adults under 30 were religiously unaffiliated, compared to just 10% in 1986.
Christians as a whole — including Protestants, Catholics and Mormons — surpassed religiously unaffiliated Americans by nearly 5-to-1 in 2007. That number has dwindled to about 2-to-1, according to the Pew study.