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Is Religion Dying in America? The Worrying Stats
In this episode, we dive into the alarming state of religion in the United States with shocking statistics and insights. We discuss the significant decline in church attendance and religiosity among Americans, highlighting key findings from various studies, including the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study. The conversation reveals a startling drop in religious affiliation, particularly among younger generations, and examines how different religious groups, such as Mormons and Catholics, are faring. We also explore the implications of these trends for the future of religion in America and the potential societal impacts.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be discussing the horrifying state of religion in the United States. I'll be discussing some statistics I found, and you'll be discussing the statistics you found. Mm-hmm. The fifth one that I found that was shocking, where there was a recent study where they looked at where people were going in the United States using cell phone data.
Mm-hmm. And they found out that despite 21 to 24% of Americans saying they attend church weekly, only 5% do. Which is way lower rate of religiosity than anyone expected.
Simone Collins: Why would you lie about going to church on a survey? We'll get to that when we get to the interesting stuff. What is your, the gist of what I found is that religion is literally dying in the United States in every measurable way, and specifically by dying.
I mean that the only people who still had God were the old ones. This isn't even about young people losing their faith. They never had it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and this is something that people really get [00:01:00] wrong, is they look at the pupil where it showed religion going, not going down this year in the United States, and they think that that's an indication that the erosion of traditional religion in the United States is over.
It is not. But let's go into the data
Simone Collins: so with regard to the United States and what the pew, and by the way, you should definitely check out the interactive tools with this pew research to give some background, has a religious landscape study.
This spans over 17 years. They first did it in 2020, 2007. Then they did it in 2014, then they were gonna do it again in 2021, you know, every seven years. But then. You know, pandemic. So they actually did it 20, 23, 24. So you get this really wide span and you're able to see really how quickly over this 17 year period, we lost God.
So, basically what happened was we went from 16% of Americans being religiously unaffiliated, like, you know, not that many to over 29%. So almost, almost a third of Americans just aren't religiously affiliated. And I would say it's [00:02:00] gonna be higher than that because they considered other religions to be things like Unitarian Universalists and spiritual people of like new age and that no, like dangling crystals does not make you religious.
I'm so sorry. What? People fall
Malcolm Collins: into that category other.
Simone Collins: It's, it's like one, 1%, so very, very little. Now 2% actually. So it was 1% around 20 2007, and then around 2% in 2014. But I still, you know, that's. That ain't religious. So everything, I think
Malcolm Collins: before we get into the statistics, the reason why a lot of people from religious communities aren't seeing this is because they are from religious communities.
Yeah. And definitionally, it's the people when they leave your community. I. That they are disappearing from your religion so you no longer see them, you know, when they move or whatever. Mm-hmm. This is and, and people when they deconvert from religions, don't do it for the reasons people think.
The, the number one reason why people stop
Published on 8 months ago