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)
MUNICH, GERMANY – MAY 04: People attend a holy evening mass at Frauenkirche ‘Cathedral of Our Lady’ cathedral on the first day churches and other houses of worship are allowed to hold services again in Bavaria since March during the novel coronavirus crisis on May 4, 2020 in Munich, Germany. Nationwide state and local governments are easing lockdown measures that were imposed in March in order to stem the spread of the virus in a careful attempt to begin bringing normalcy back to public life in Germany. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)
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.