US religion surveys

[Bluenose]

In the 'USA Today' today Americans who said they were Protestant was around 62% from 1972 until 1993, according to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

"Then the number fell steadily to 52% in 2002,
survey director Tom Smith says."

Article said that RC @ 25% and Jewish @ 2% continues and the % for other religions are on rise.

"• A steep rise in the number of people who said they currently have
no religion: 14% in 2002, up from 9% in 1992. It's even higher for
younger people: Among those born in 1980 or later, 27% said they
have no religion. 'Each succeeding group is less religious than the
preceding,' Smith says. "

With the 'LDS' growing rapidly, and the feeling among many religious groups that Mormons or other American 'cults' are not Protestants, or even Christian, the majority status of so called Protestants may have already passed.

Those trends should make some people happy and others start arguing about the definitions :fuming:

[livius drusus]

Here's (http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gnoreligion/flash.htm) a nice graphic breakdown of the survey by state. (12% "No religion" in Georgia!) It's always interesting to me to see these kinds of results. For instance, it seems to me that even the (so-called) Bible Belt seems to have quite a bit of religious diversity - which is something I've personally experienced in my 10 years in the deep south, even though others have harrowing encounters with fundamentalism of various sorts regularly.

I don't know about what conclusions can be drawn wrt trends, though. Couldn't people just be more comfortable saying "No religion" now than they were in 1972?

[LadyShea]

I always have found it amusing that "Non-religious" is actually the second largest religious group behind Christians. If you separate out Catholics, mainstream Protestants, and fringe denominations like Mormons and JW's, non-religious are hardly a minority.