Broke the news in "After Religion" today that Pew has released a new Religious Landscape Study of the US, the third! (The first and second appeared in 2007 and 2014.) They also do annual smaller surveys, which allowed for a new headline based on reports from the last four years. Instead of the past studies' fear-mongering headlines about the decline of Christianity or the rise of the "Nones," they now report that Decline of Christianity in the U. S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off. I'm not sure what to make of it - it's based on how many people "identify as Christian," and since 2020 we know that a new kind of person has been doing so, for nationalist rather than religious reasons. But perhaps the headline will make the Christian nationalists behave a little less ferocious in their attempts to deny the reality of a pluralist society?
But scratch the surface and the trends Pew has been tracing continue - each generation is less likely to do the things Pew defines as religious, from affiliation to regular church attendance to daily prayer. Indeed, each seems to do less over time, too. But Pew's finally started asking (or publishing) other questions, which allow those whose spiritual lives don't manifest in affiliation, "prayer" or community participation to be seen as more than undead "nones." And when you ask those questions, there's a startling lack of generational change. There are still more subtle generational differences and it would be great to have data on these questions going farther back, but even without it, this points in intriguing new directions for understanding American religious culture today. I'll have to study their findings more closely!
