The Eclipse of White Christian America A once powerful demographic group is losing ground in America
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Looking at the numbers, two features immediately jump out. First, the proportion of white Christians (including Protestants and Catholics) in the country, while still comprising the largest single wedge in the pie chart, has slipped below a majority to 47 percent. Moreover, if that measure is restricted to include only the direct descendants of white Christian America—white mainline Protestants and white evangelical Protestants—the number decreases to only 32 percent of Americans. Second, the religiously unaffiliated—a group that is growing rapidly—comprise more than one in five Americans today.
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The next chart digs deeper into these numbers and provides some insight into what the future may hold. Like an archaeological excavation, the chart sorts Americans by religious affiliation and race, stratified by age—demonstrating at a glance the decline of white Christians among each successive generation. This snapshot uncovers a striking finding: Today, young adults, ages 18 to 29, are less than half as likely to be white Christians as seniors. Nearly seven in 10 American seniors are white Christians, compared to fewer than three in 10 young adults. Although the declining proportion of white Christians is due in part to large-scale demographic shifts, this chart also highlights the other major force of change in the religious landscape: young adults’ rejection of organized religion.
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To understand just how fundamentally the American religious landscape is being altered, it’s important to look back to the 1970s, when—despite the growing acceptance of Catholics and Jews into the mainstream—Protestantism was still pervasive enough to be thought of as America’s default faith. Sixty-three percent of Americans identified as Protestants in 1974, while approximately one quarter identified as Catholic. Only a 7-percent sliver of the population claimed no religious affiliation.
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These numbers remained mostly steady until the 1990s, when something unusual happened: The numbers of Americans who identified as Protestant began to slip. At the same time, more and more Americans were reporting to pollsters that they had no particular religious affiliation. The last year on record in which Protestants as a whole—not just white Protestants—represented a majority of the country was in 2008. By 2014, the religiously unaffiliated rivaled Catholics’ share of the religious marketplace, with each group making up 22 percent of the American population. Looking ahead, there’s no sign that this pattern will fade anytime soon. By 2051, if current trends continue, religiously unaffiliated Americans could comprise as large a percentage of the population as Protestants—which would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago.
The past quarter century’s religious revolution is almost entirely due to the decline of white Protestants. As recently as 1993, 51 percent of Americans identified as white Protestants, but that percentage dropped to 32 percent by 2014. Meanwhile, the number of black Protestants remained steady at around one in 10 Americans, while Hispanic Protestants gained strength, making up 4 percent of Americans by 2014.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/the-eclipse-of-white-christian-america/490724/?utm_source=atltw
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