{"id":32188,"date":"2022-09-10T15:59:54","date_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/evangelicals-steady-but-nones-surge-in-latest-population-study\/"},"modified":"2022-09-10T15:59:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:59:54","slug":"evangelicals-steady-but-nones-surge-in-latest-population-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/evangelicals-steady-but-nones-surge-in-latest-population-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Evangelicals Steady, But \u2018Nones\u2019 Surge in Latest Population Study"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by alexandra marcu on Unsplash<\/div>\n

By Aaron Earls<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the largest religious group in America? For the first time in more than 30 years, it\u2019s not Catholics or evangelicals.<\/p>\n

Evangelicals and Catholics remain slightly less than a quarter of the American population, and now so are the religiously unaffiliated, according to the latest release of the General Social Survey (GSS).<\/p>\n

While each of the groups are statistically tied, this marks the first time the percentage of \u201cnones\u201d\u2014those who were raised with no religion\u2014has climbed above evangelicals and Catholics.<\/p>\n

For the past 10 years, evangelicals have consistently ranged from 22.5 to 24 percent, according to Ryan Burge, a researcher at Eastern Illinois University, in Christianity Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 2018 GSS data found evangelicals make up 22.5 percent of the population, a small drop of 1.5 percentage points from 2016\u2014a decline within the study\u2019s margin of error.<\/p>\n

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Nones continued their 25-year climb to reach 23.1 percent\u2014the highest ever for the religiously unaffiliated and the most of any other religious group in the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cNones have been on the march for a long time now,\u201d Burge told Religion News Service. \u201cIt\u2019s been a constant, steady increase for 20 years now. If the trend line kept up, we knew this was going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1972, nones accounted for only 5.1 percent of America. They stayed in single digits until significant jumps in the 1990s and started the 2000s slightly less than 15 percent.<\/p>\n

Since then, the religiously unaffiliated has seen precipitous growth, which has coincided with declines among mainline Protestants.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest story is that \u2018no religion\u2019 is coming from the mainline,\u201d Burge said to RNS. \u201cMainliners are jumping ship.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In 1975, more than 30 percent of Americans were mainline Protestant. That fell to only 10.2 percent in 2016, before a small rebound in 2018 to 10.8\u2014the first increase in almost 20 years.<\/p>\n

For evangelicals, demographics present potential problems in the future, Burge wrote at Christianity Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 2018, 81 percent of evangelicals were white, compared to 72.4 percent of the population overall. More than 4 in 10 Americans under 25 are people of color. For evangelicals to keep offsetting losses in future generations, they\u2019ll need to become more racially diverse.<\/p>\n

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Aaron Earls<\/h2>\n

@WardrobeDoor<\/p>\n

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Aaron is a writer for LifewayResearch.com.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n