life happened because i turned th epages

There are many theories on why disaffiliation sped up so much in the 1990s and how long this trend might continue. adults who identify as Christian has fallen from 78% to 63%. Since 2007, the percentage of adults who say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” in the Center’s surveys has grown from 16% to 29%. Pew Research Center has been measuring religious identity since 2007 using a slightly different question wording – “What is your present religion, if any?” – as well as a different set of response options. This growth has continued, and 29% of Americans now tell the GSS they have “no religion.” 7

But then disaffiliation started speeding up – in 1996, the share of unaffiliated Americans jumped to 12%, and two years later it was 14%. In the next two decades, the share of “nones” crept up slowly, reaching 9% in 1993. In 1972, when the GSS first began asking Americans, “What is your religious preference?” 90% identified as Christian and 5% were religiously unaffiliated. Switching gained significant momentum in the 1990s, according to the General Social Survey (GSS) – a large, nationally representative survey that has consistent data on religious affiliation going back several decades. While religious switching is the focus of this report, other demographic forces that can cause religious change – transmission, migration, fertility and mortality – will be briefly discussed in the second half of this chapter. At the same time, having no religious affiliation has become “stickier”: A declining percentage of people raised without a religion have converted or taken on a religion later in life.

In other words, a steadily shrinking share of young adults who were raised Christian (in childhood) have retained their religious identity in adulthood over the past 30 years. 6 The change in America’s religious composition is largely the result of large numbers of adults switching out of the religion in which they were raised to become religiously unaffiliated. But today, about two-thirds of adults are Christians. As recently as the early 1990s, about 90% of U.S. Only a few decades ago, a Christian identity was so common among Americans that it could almost be taken for granted.

Life happened because i turned th epages