Americans who identify as religious unaffiliated appear to be slowing in their population growth, according to a recent analysis from the prominent polling organization Gallup.
Gallup Senior Scientist Frank Newport noted that while the nones population had risen from near zero percent in the 1950s to around 20% of the U.S. population, this growth has “stabilized” since 2017.
Newport wrote, “An average of 20% or 21% of Americans in Gallup surveys in each of these years say they don’t have a formal religious identity. We are not seeing the yearly increases that occurred in previous decades.”
He also documented some of the complexities of classifying religious belief when polling people, noting that there exist “other measures of religiosity, and they don’t all show the same patterns.”
Melissa Deckman, a Public Affairs professor at Washington College and affiliated scholar with the Public Religion Research Institute, reported on the possible slowing down in a February 2020 report.
Deckman found that millennials, Americans born between 1981 and 1996, and Gen Z, Americans born after 1996, are “awfully similar” to each other regarding “religious affiliation and religious behavior.”
“In other words, it appears that the rate of younger Americans departing from organized religion is holding steady.”