According to the Pew Research Center, the proportion of Americans who identify as Christian may drop below 50 percent by the year 2070.
A recent analysis from the Pew Research Center suggests that the percentage of U.S. citizens who identify as Christians could drop from 64% in 2020 to 50% or less by 2070 if current trends continue.
The survey also indicated that the number of persons who identify as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular” could be more than 40%.
In the report titled “Modeling the Future of Religion in America,” the researchers blend decades of data collected by the Pew Research Center with data from the General Social Survey to provide four different scenarios for the future of religion in the United States.
In 2020, Pew predicts that 64% of Americans (including children) will identify as Christians.
However, in each of the four scenarios, that share will diminish.
In fact, in three of the four models, the number falls below 50 percent.
According to the four scenarios presented by Pew, the percentage of Christians could drop to 54%, 46%, 39%, or 35%.
However, Pew predicts that the percentage of “nones” (those who identify as atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular”) would increase from the current 30% to 34%, 41%, 48%, or 52% by 2070.
All models are noted to be hypothetical in the study.
If “religious switching continues at recent rates, accelerates up, or stops totally,” the paper says, the results will be different.
The report states, “All the predictions start from the current religious composition of the U.S. population,” which includes consideration of religious disparities by age and sex.
Then they consider migration and birth rates.
To model how the religious landscape of the United States would change if switching remained at its current pace, continued to speed up (as it has been doing since the 1990s), or suddenly halted, the models take into account different rates of religious switching (the process by which people move into and out of broad categories of religious identity).
It specifically states that the models “are not designed as predictions of what will happen.”
As the paper notes, global events may have a significant influence on religious movements.
Pew concedes that “events beyond the study’s model,” such as “war, economic slump, ecological crises, shifting immigration patterns or religious innovations,” might cause “a rebirth of Christianity in the United States,” reversing the current religious switching tendencies.
However, “there are no existing switching patterns in the U.S. that can be included into the mathematical models to project such an outcome.”
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