All major Christian denominations declined, some more than others, and in some states more than others. For example, the percentage of Minnesotans identifying themselves as Catholic declined from 28% to 22%, or a drop of one-fifth in the total number of Catholics.
Non-Christian religions increased their share of the population by 1.2%.
But the largest increase was in the number of unaffiliated -- people who belong to no religion, a group which increased by 6.7%. Interestingly, the increase in unaffiliated Americans increased in all age brackets, not just the young.
Being unaffiliated doesn't mean they don't believe in a god -- though the number of atheists and agnostics went up 3.1% -- it just means that they claim no membership in an organized religion.
The question is, why?
Religiosity declines in wealthy, modern societies. People turn to religion because they need moral and spiritual support; inequality, poverty and desperation drive religious belief. This survey backs that up: the number of black Protestants remained stable. In fact, in the United States the most religious people are black women, who as a group are probably the worst off in this country.
A cynic might say that this is the real reason conservatives don't want government to help people: they don't want to lose control over the general populace that religion gives them. The more miserable people are, the more they turn to religion for solace, and the more power they give the conservatives. Of course, some branches of Islam are far more conservative than the most conservative American religions, but American conservatives hate it because it's a competitor. Basically, for political reasons.
Another factor is the betrayal and hypocrisy among the clergy. For example, in Minnesota, like many states, the Catholic Church has been mired in scandal after scandal with pedophile priests, archbishops turning a blind eye, paying them off, not calling the cops and covering it all up. Across the country numerous evangelical preachers have been caught having affairs with women, engaging in homosexual trysts and doing drugs.
Another factor is social change. Young Americans are turned off by the generally intolerant and specifically anti-gay agenda of conservative religions. They think the churches' stances against birth control and sex education are foolish and counterproductive.
Related to this is politics. Some believe that the right-wing political stances that some churches espouse are turning off young people.
“Traditionally, we thought religion was the mover and politics were the consequence," Michael Hout, a sociologist and demographer at New York University, told the Religion News Service. The opposite appears the case today, he said, as some have left evangelical denominations and the Catholic faith because “they saw them align with a conservative political agenda and they don't want to be identified with that.” Last year, Mr. Hout cowrote the paper “Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012,” which studied the trend.Some might contest this, saying that conservative evangelicals have declined less than more moderate religious groups (the share of evangelicals declined by 0.9% and Catholics and mainline Protestants declined by 3.1% and 3.4% respectively). But since we can't see exactly who is moving where in these broad statistics, it's completely possible that conservative Catholics and Protestants are changing their religions to align with their politics, joining evangelical churches where their Republican buddies hang out.
For example, except for women's issues (the position of women in the clergy, abortion and birth control), the Catholic Church is quite moderate and reasoned. The Church opposes the death penalty, endorses gun control, favors social policies that help the poor, and stopping climate change. Other churches favor these stands, allowing birth control and limited abortion, and some even allow women and gay priests.
How many Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopalian Republicans and have abandoned their more moderate churches for conservative evangelical denominations that favor their own political stances?
Mr. Hout is being naive when he says religion is the mover and politics are the consequence. Because politics has always been the mover. Organized religion is politics.
The first organized religions were state-sponsored, monarchies where the pharaoh or king was a self-declared god. Judaism started as a tribal religion with Moses as the king. Christianity was a fringe sect until Constantine made it the official state religion. Christianity formed the basis of the feudal system in Europe, whose kings ruled by divine right. The Church in the Middle Ages was essentially its own country and the pope a king. The Anglican Church was formed when Henry VIII couldn't get what he wanted from the pope. The Reformation was all about internal Church politics, money, land and power. Mohammed was a warlord who spent the last 10 years of his life fighting battle after battle. Communist China and the Soviet Union embraced atheism to strip political power from religious leaders; Marx knew how much political power religions held. Scientology was formed because L. Ron Hubbard didn't want to pay taxes, and he needed foot soldiers to create the illusion of a religion.
The purpose of religion is to control behavior by promising spiritual rewards if you obey their laws, and if you disobey, death and eternal torment -- at least according to the conservative religions.
The purpose of politics is also to control behavior, but by establishing laws.
This country was founded on the principle that politics and religion should be separate, to avoid repeating the innumerable wars in Europe and the abuses of power that resulted from the marriage of politics and religion. In the eyes of the Founders, religion should be a moral philosophy, not a prescription for running a country.
That separation of church and state was perhaps the most revolutionary idea the Founders had. And it was for that reason they wrote a Constitution that mentions god nowhere, and starts with:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
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