Talk Elections

Option 6

Um, never. The demographics of the country will be getting more and more Christian in the years to come.

Hard to really project out that far, but non-Catholic Christians should become a minority around 2040.

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     Probably never. While the percentage of Christians is declining in the long term, trends change & attitudes change. One of the more annoying assumptions that my fellow atheists sometimes make is that society will naturally follow a constant progression towards atheism, something that I emphatically doubt.


     I think you mean plurality. They're still ahead of the next biggest group by 33%, so minority is unlikely anytime soon.

Certainly not anytime soon.

Uh, Catholics count toward the Christian majority.

No I meant minority, like the Canadian Conservative party is a minority party. Sure, it's also a plurality.

interesting that the percentage of non-Catholic Christians has stayed mostly steady for nearly 3 decades. also surprising given immigration that the Catholic percentage has lowered a bit.

religious people generally have higher birthrates, so the way we get to a Chrisitan minority would be a) massive immigration of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, etc. and/or b) a dramatic decrease in religiousity in future generations. 

I think the amount of non-religious will continue to rise for at least the next 30 years. 

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At this rate in 30 years "None" still won't be above 20% even.

Not anytime soon.

Religious people, tend to have higher fertility rates and thus while there might be some secular kids, the majority will stay religious.

True, and regardless of what the young folks here think many so called "atheist" teens will turn back to their religious roots once they start having children of their own, it's pretty much a given.

Not until the end of the century, if then.


Even if the 'godlessness' of my generation is overplayed, each succeeding generation generally turn out less religious than their predecessors, however.  I see no reason to think why mine will somehow buck this trend.  

Proof? I doubt religious identity would have even broken 70% even two hundred years ago.

Here it is. (http://pewforum.org/Age/Religion-Among-the-Millennials.aspx)

     So? The deists that probably would have made up the bulk of non-identifiers then were much different than the atheists/agnostics who make up the bulk of non-identifiers today. It's hard to deny that religious authorities in much of the country today are much weaker than they were 200 years ago.

It's a youth thing I promise. Most young folks, like many here, question their faith once they get out from under their parents wings, then, as they age and have children they usually come home.

Many dislike organized religion, they don't dislike the belief in God or an afterlife.

     Not disliking has anything to do with it. Unless you are trying to suggest that bulk of the irreligious today are in fact deists, you aren't really making any sort of point here.

Because it's nothing worth worrying about religion will come back, it's in no threat of disappearing.

     I agree with that, though I suppose the issue is that you are talking about organized religion specifically while I am talking about Christianity specifically. While it happens that there have always been people who reject organized religion, I do not think it would be controversial to suggest that apathy towards or rejection of the Christian God is more socially acceptable now than it ever has been in the past.

That doesn't suggest permanence. Religion might surge back in the next twenty years, it's happened plenty of other times in history.

     History is cyclical; as such, I agree that religion will experience a resurgence. I was rather taking issue with the notion that the irreligious now will become religious later on. Perhaps some of them will, but I expect it would be part of a greater society-wide trend towards religion rather than any sort of independent movement.

In a word, never.

The graph in Frodo's link certainly doesn't support StatesRights' point:

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Regardless, 74% is still an overwhelming majority. The answer to the question is not in the lifetime of anyone on the forum.

I think someone on this Forum might make it to 2100.

I don't buy the "atheism is a fad" thing.  Not only are there plenty of atheist, agnostic, and non-religious parents in the United States, but many countries in Europe have significant non-religious populations.  According to a 2005 Eurobarometer poll, only nineteen percent of people in the Czech Republic believe in God.  Only sixteen percent in Estonia.  But in these countries, a majority claimed a believe in some spirit or life force, whatever the shit that means, but there was still a very fair percentage of those who believed in neither God nor a spirit of some sort.  According to one source, about forty-seven percent of people in France are agnostic.

Never in the next centuries, as the growing demographics in the US (hispanics, white evangelicals)  are even more religious than the average American of today.

The only thing that could seriously 'endanger' the Christian majority at least in parts of the US would be mass immigration of non-Christian folks, as happens in Europe. I don't see that for the US.

That doesn't prove that a major shift couldn't happen. ::)

Moving the goal post a little?

No, I stand by what I say.

Yeah, but you started in the thread demanding evidence that secularism has increased, and now you're rolling your eyes because people's response "doesn't prove that a major shift couldn't happen"...has someone claimed that that's an impossibility?

I think the majority will be at least nominally Christian for the long haul.  That said, that majority might eventually be in the 60% range rather than the 75% range.  And, once again, "Christians" include those people that go to Church on Christmas and Easter and never even think about religion the rest of the year.

Alcon my friend I never claimed that. I just went back a re-read the entire thread. What I said is that I doubted that religious I'd was ever really above 70%.

Ah, I get it, you were disputing the idea that there's been an historical linear progress toward secularism, not that there has been for several generations.  Still, though, when did anyone claim this was an unconditionally irreversible trend (provoking the eye-rolling)?  That's why I said I felt you were moving the goalposts.

Confusing secularism with secularisation is... um... bad. Just saying...

Only in the dreams of the left.

Thank you for sharing.

Mabye in a few states, AFAIK there are a few (Hawaii, arguably Utah), but not any time soon nationally.

Utah is heavily Christian and Mormons consider themselves Christian. So, I don't see Utah losing it's Christian majority before the Northeast and West Coast does.

Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean a Christian surge. In twenty years we could become a Scientologist nation :P

Within 100 years, I believe that the majority of the population of the United States will either declare to be agnostic, or in essence be agnostic.... as many people already are.  (those people who through family or going strictly by holidays they observe might identify themselves with a certain religion... but when honestly asked about God, the afterlife, etc., give the very agnostic answer of "I really don't know"). 

How much you want to put on that?

I don't see the majority of the U.S. population embracing a cult. Also, I thought Scientologists were Christian, at least by self-identification?