United States Religious Membership Falls Below 50%

by Mike James

The number of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, mosque or synagogue has dropped to 47 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll. In 1937 when Gallup first began asking Americans if they were part of a church, mosque, or synagogue—membership was at 73 percent.

In a recent blog from November (https://www.cgi.org/news-and-events/2020/11/17/losing-our-religion) we provided other survey data on the lack of religious commitment in the United States (US). The Gallup poll is just another new indicator of this. Some analysts say this is going to have major implications for politics, business, and how Americans group themselves in the future.

The new Gallup poll also found that the number of Americans who say religion is very important to them has fallen to 48 percent.

According to Ryan Burge, religious membership is seen as a relic of an older generation for a growing number of Americans. Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a pastor in the American Baptist Church.

The Gallup data breaks it down this way: 66 percent of U.S. adults born before 1946 belong to a church, compared with 58 percent of baby boomers (born 1947-1964), 50 percent of those in Generation X (born 1965-1981) and 36 percent of millennials (born 1982-2000).

Burge says many Christians still go to church, but they don’t consider membership to be important, especially those who attend nondenominational churches. The nondenominational churches are growing as mainline denominations continue to decrease in size. No matter how researchers measure it, religion is on the decline in America.

Burge recently published a book called The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going? In the book, he predicts that in the next 30 years the US will not have one dominant religion.

A lot of the decline in religious affiliation is due to our younger generations. Tara Isabella Burton, author of Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, provides two major trends for this decline. First, she believes young people today are turned off by institutions in general, whether it be the police or pharmaceutical companies. Second, Burton feels young people are mixing and matching various religious traditions to create their own.

Burton goes on to say younger generations “grew up in Internet culture that celebrates ownership, the idea that you can re-create a meme or narrative. You have ownership over curating your own experience.”

Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued in a recent essay for the Atlantic that what was once religious belief is being replaced by political belief in some communities. On the right, some conservative Christians focused on the previous President as a political savior. On the left, “wokeism” has taken on religious notions like sin and excommunication and repurposed them for secular ends.

Hamid goes on to say, “The vacuum [of religion] can’t just remain a vacuum, Americans are believers in some sense, and there has to be structures of belief and belonging. The question is, what takes the place of that religious affiliation?”

What takes the place, indeed? That is a very profound question as our society transforms and changes. Some believe as the world becomes more connected thru globalization a new world culture may develop and become prominent.

Transculturalism could increase. Transculturalism addresses the very complex transmutations of culture that can be phased in acculturation, deculturation, and neoculturation. Acculturation focuses on the transition of one culture into another culture and the acquisition of features of this new culture; deculturation is the parallel process that ends in a loss or uprooting of home culture; neoculturation highlights the creation of new cultural phenomena.

I am not against other peoples and cultures, but my concern is that as we move further from Christianity we begin to equate all religions and cultures in the same way. This goes against the One and Only true God (YHWH) (Deuteronomy 6:4). As society and our country begin to equate all religions the same, a new religion may develop, a religion where all religions are equal and right. This is not the religion of the Bible or the true God. God’s Word makes it clear there is only one path to salvation (Acts 4:12).

Sources:

“Religious Membership in U.S. Falls Below 50%, Poll Finds,” by Sarah Pulliam Bailey and Scott Clement, The Washington Post, March 30, 2021.

“Transculturalism,” Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology, by Lars Allolio-Nacke, https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-5583-7_316.