Religious Affiliation

Religious affiliation of large masses of people is damnably difficult to establish with what might be called scientific precision. The reason for this is that the most cost effective method is by telephone survey. A really good census would be prohibitively costly. One way to do that would be to select four Sundays a year, one in each season, by randomized methods. Then, with observers stationed at every church in America, actual headcounts would be undertaken. The usual survey method is quite missy, one might say, because those conducting the surveys rely on the self-identification of the respondents. Thus, in addition to some 41 named religious or non-religious categories, the results include choices like “Christian,” not further specified,  “Protestant,” no denomination listed, and also “Nondenominational.” People could also vote for “No Religion” either by subcategory or by that label. The subcategories respondents supplied were Atheist, Agnostic, and Humanist. Here I am showing results obtained by the most respected survey of this kind in the United States, the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS); it is run by the Graduate School of the University of New York.

I got to thinking about this while reading an article by evangelical pastor John S. Dickerson (“The Decline of Evangelical America”) in the New York Times this morning.  I got to wondering if ARIS had updated its earlier results, which had been for 2001. It turned out that it had. Data for 2008 are now available and were published in the 2012 Statistical Abstract (link, see Table 75). It now turns out that Pastor Dickerson may be wrong—or that he is reflecting a decline in quality rather than quantity. Those who self-describe themselves as Evangelical and/or Born Again more than doubled between 1990 and 2001 and nearly tripled in number between 1990 an d 2008.

Now when we next look at those who just say that they are Christian, they doubled in the 1990-2008 period (108.5% increase). Those who identified themselves as Protestants, however, declined by 70 percent. But those who called themselves Nondenominational increased by a whopping 4,040 percent. What to make of this? Are we dealing here with a drift in self-identification? So that once church-going people have been re-purposing Sunday and hence are kinda forgetting where they belong? Or does that huge Nondenominational increase mean drawing closer to religion?

The most potent increase in numbers is shown by Catholics (up in this period by 11.2 million, 24.33% in 1990-2008) and Baptists (up by 2.2 million, 6.4%). As for the single largest percentage increase, 4,175 percent, that belongs to Wicca. In 1990 there were 8,000 of them, in 2008 342,000. They know the name of their denomination. In this period, all Christian denominations increased their adherents by 14.7 percent (to 173.4 million), other religions by 50.28 percent (to 8.8 million), and the nonreligious by 138.4 percent (34.2 million). I last wrote about this subject in February 2010 (link). Back then I noted a drift toward unbelief. That still seems to be going on.

Decade-Old Trend? Unbelief!

We plan to visit another local convention—by we I mean those of us involved with Dwarf Planet Press—to see what kind of venue it might represent for my novels. This one is called ConVocation 2010, a New Age sort of venue. Even with ample notice, we could not secure a vendor table at this con; every table had already been assigned two months in advance. In perusing the program, I noted that this gathering has a much richer offering of lectures than ConFusion had had in panels.  Even the names signal a certain difference. In any case, this led me to check  the progress of belief in the United States. A reasonably reliable source for data on beliefs is ARIS, the American Religious Identity Survey. The survey is produced by the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Some of the tabulations are available from Adherents.com’s website here.

Interesting trends emerge for the United States. In the period 1990 to 2001, the largest increase by religious affiliation (adults identifying themselves by belief), has been in those who labeled themselves Deists (up 717% in the period). Second were those who labeled themselves Sikhs (up 338%). In third place in this period were those who identified themselves as holding to New Age beliefs (up 240%). These folks are those most likely to visit ConVocation 2010.

These groups are practically invisible; they are less than 1 percent of U.S. adult population. But the trend is fascinating. Between these two years, Deists increased by 43,000, New Agers by 48,000, and Sikhs by 44,000. By contrast, self-defined Agnostics decreased by 195,000 and those professing Judaism by 306,000. These last two are the only categories that showed a numerical loss of adherents. Christianity showed a loss of share in believers in this period, but of that more below. No data on atheists for 1990 were available; they only show up in 2001. All of these comparisons relate to adults. But let’s take the two largest groups. Those who described themselves as Christians increased by 5 percent and 7.8 million; those who described themselves as Nonreligious or Secular increased by 110 percent and 14.4 million.

Another way to look at these data is to ask who has lost or gained in market share—in total share of adherents. Here the biggest loser was Christianity, down in share by 7.5 percent (88.7 in 1990, 81.2% in 2001), followed by Judaism, down 0.4 percent, and Agnosticism, down 0.2 percent. Among the gainers, the largest was Nonbelievers/Secularists, gaining 6.37 in share (7.7 in 1990, 14.1% in 2001). The Nonbelievers’ share would have been even greater if atheists, not broken out in 1990, were added in as nonbelievers in 2001, an additional 902,000 adults. Taken as a whole, the total net gains in “believers” in this period amounted to 10.1 million, the net gain in nonbelievers to 15.1 million. Believers in 1990 accounted for 91.6 percent of the adult population, in 2001 for 85.0 percent. Believers still dominated, but unbelief was the trend—a decade ago. No new surveys appear to have been conducted since.

Numbers to please or to worry just about any reader of this blog? The big pattern is obvious, but tea leaves at the bottom of this or any other survey cup may be read this way or that.