I am really hesitant to jump on the “God is dead” bandwagon, but what surveys of US population show about views on God and religion is truly stunning. Despite objections cast by denialist pollsters, study after study corroborate the trend of secularization in the US, and particularly among young people. The latest poll verifies what we already know, and offer a few interesting curiosities.
Echo Boomers are less likely than their counterparts in all older generations to express belief in God (64% Echo Boomers, 75% Gen Xers, 81% Baby Boomers, 83% Matures), miracles (65%, 74%, 76% and 78%, respectively), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (58%, 67%, 74% and 75%, respectively) and angels (59%, 71%, 73% and 68%, respectively.
Turning to the political spectrum, Democrats and Independents show similar levels of belief in most of the tested concepts, with Republicans consistently more likely than either group to express belief in those concepts aligned with the Judeo-Christian belief system; Republicans are less likely than either group to express belief in Darwin’s theory of evolution (36% Republicans, 52% Democrats, 51% Independents). [Well, we already know that-No Cross No Crescent]
In a separate line of questioning, focused on Americans’ degree of certainty that there is or is not a God, two-thirds of Americans (68%) indicate being either absolutely or somewhat certain that there is a God, while 54% specify being absolutely certain; these figures represent drops of 11 and 12 percentage points, respectively, from 2003 testing, where combined certainty was at 79% and absolute certainty was at 66%.
11 to 12% drop in belief in God, in just 10 years? If that is not a sea change, I don’t know what is. Just as impressive is the growth of those of us who are “not at all” religious:
Just under two in ten Americans (19%) describe themselves are “very” religious, with an additional four in ten (40%) describing themselves as “somewhat” religious (40%, down from 49% in 2007). Nearly one-fourth of Americans (23%) identify themselves as “not at all” religious – a figure that has nearly doubled since 2007, when it was at 12%.
Belief in either the New or Old Testament totally/mostly representing the word of God is also down 6%, over the same period.
