Over the past five years, the religious makeup of the United States has remained remarkably stable, according to Gallup.
Recent Pew Research confirmed earlier trends of a plateauing of the religiously unaffiliated and a pause, at least, of the decline in Christianity. The latest Gallup study demonstrates this is not a new development.
“Americans’ religious preferences have generally held steady in the past five years, after a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation and concurrent declines in Protestant and Catholic identification over the prior two decades,” writes Jeffrey Jones at Gallup.
From 2000 to 2017, the share of Protestants in the U.S. fell from 57% to 46%, and Catholics dropped from 25% to 21%, while religious nones jumped from 8% to 20%. Since that time, however, each group has remained within a few percentage points of its share. Currently, Protestants are at 45%, Catholics are at 21%, and the unaffiliated are at 22%.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Aaron Earls and originally published by Lifeway Research.
