Pages

21 July 2023

The Slow Death of God, Heaven, Hell, Angels, And The Devil

The percentage of Americans who believe in God, Heaven, Hell, Angels, and the Devil fell to record lows in 2023, following two decades of steady decline in the 21st century and significant declines before then.

The percentage of people who believe in God dropped by more than one-sixth of those who believed in 2001.

As usual, non-belief in these things was associated with less frequently attending church, not identifying as Christian (with Catholics less likely to believe in these things than Protestants), Democratic political party identity (and not being a Republican), higher household income, more education, younger age, and being male rather than female.

A majority of (1) less than monthly church attenders, (2) non-religious people, (3) Democrats, and (4) people 18-34 do not believe in the Devil, and less than 53% of college graduates or these demographics believe in either Hell or the Devil.  If the trend continues, majorities of all of these demographics will not believe in either Hell or the Devil by the year 2030. 

Belief in God is on track to fall below 70% by the year 2030 in the population as a whole.



Church attendance is at record lows (apart from a temporary steep decline due to the early part of the COVID pandemic when churches had to be closed in many places) too, although it is not dropping as rapidly since secularization has been greatest among people who didn't regularly attend church anyway.

record high percentage of people (21%) now identify has having no religion.

The U.S. isn't a secular society by a long shot yet, but the trends are very promising.

No comments:

Post a Comment