The Ada Evening News has a nice story on a Trinity College survey of religious attitudes in the United States that has found the same rise of secularism as similar studies,
Trinity College conducted the American Religious Identification Survey, which analyzed religious trends occurring in the U.S. during the last 18 years. The results were not good for people of faith.
According to the survey, the groups that experienced the largest increase were those belonging to no religion, which had a 138 percent growth in the 18-year period. The number of non-religious groups, which includes atheists and agnostics, grew from 14.3 million in 1990 to 34.1 million in 2008.
While atheism and agnosticism have increased, the number of those who consider themselves Christians has decreased, with 86 percent claiming to be Christian in 1990 compared to the 76 percent in 2008.
One of the more interesting questions that is rarely answered sufficiently is “why?” For example, there has long been an obvious disparity between the level of religious belief in the United States vs. Europe. A current favorite explanation of that difference is that religious institutions act as a bulwark against economic downtimes and, as such, is not viewed as favorably in Europe where the welfare state tends to take on that role, but is popular in the United State which has the highest level of economic inquality of any modern industrial nation. Which would not explain at all why people are suddenly turning to secular ideologies over the past 20 years which have hardly seen a turn to a European-like welfare state.
Similarly, another claim is that since the United States doesn’t pick and choose religious winners with targeted subsidies and official approval, that competition between denominations and religions has meant those organizations had to innovate to meet the needs of people, whereas in Europe supposedly direct state funding and endorsement of specific denominations and religions led those winners to stagnate and become distanced from what people were genuinely looking for. Again, that doesn’t hold up very well if people are suddenly abandoning that religious market for non-religious views.
It would be interesting to see a survey of atheists, agnostics and other non-believers to see if there are one or two factors that stand out that are driving them away from religion.
As for the differences between the US and Europe, I’ve always liked the notion that the most hardcore of religious zealots and fanatics were exported to America in the colonial period and started a quicker slide away from religion.
For decline in general, I think it’s working the same as the acceptance of just about any minority lifestyle; a few people are brave enough to buck the trend and make public their personal preferences. Others, who feel the same, emulate them and the concept grows and becomes more acceptable. Nowadays, I would argue (and have argued) that outside of small-town America there is virtually zero stigma attached to being an atheist or agnostic, and people who find themselves uncomfortable with religion have no problem rejecting it.
If you want a demographic explanation, I might suggest the increased mobility and physical community isolation of Americans has meant that there is much less day-to-day social pressure to attend church services and thus there is a growing alienation from one’s cradle faith which reduces the barriers to agnosticism. At the same time there’s growing exposure to alternative ways of thought such that even exposure to other faiths or sects can increase faith confusion and cause a general step away from faith, even if atheism or agnosticism is never presented itself as a positive way of thought.
But I also believe (without much supporting evidence, mind, just a hunch based on personal experience) that even the 76 percent number is artificially high, given that there are likely many who identify as Christian culturally, but are not specifically or thoughtfully religious. But, then, I also think that has been generally true since there was a majority religion at all, going back before Christ. It is, it seems to me, something that occurs especially in state or community faiths where people are brought up to accept their faith as just another fact of their lives; such facts are easily knocked away. Which is why revival culture in American Evangelicals can be so crucial. Even small town American Evangelicalism can fall prey to this, hence the need to essentially get out and reconvert folks, make their faith a significant and thoughtful part of their lives, rather than just the faith of their parents and Sunday mornings.
Which harks back to my prior points–that is, a departure of religious zealots to America in Europe reduces pressure on those who were culturally Catholic or Lutheran or Anglican. The greater population density and increased mobility of Europeans–and hardcore religious and philosophical battles being fought on the battlefield and in the cultural arena–exposes more Europeans to more new ideas, allowing them to all-but abandon their faith in droves. Meanwhile, a spread out and dispersed America offers the option for every little sect of extreme fundamentalism to set up their own frontier enclave and essentially go on unmolested and unchallenged for generations–expanding, building, growing, staging periodic revivals to keep everyone’s faith fresh and forming a physical community built around the church. Thus outsiders are shunned and voices of opposition from outside the community are distrusted.
But urbanization, globalization, increased mass communication and mass media, and the breakdown of the revival culture (related to urbanization and the depletion of the small homogenous communities in which it thrives) leads first to an increase in the percentage of cultural Christians, which then leads to a growing rejection of the cultural faith.
Anyway, I could probably ramble on about this for a while, but I think the reasons are certainly far more complex and interesting than simple economic or demographic causes.