Pew study: More Americans reject religion, but believers firm in faith

(washingtonpost.com) 11/03/2015 - Americans as a whole are growing less religious, but those who still consider themselves to belong to a religion are, on average, just as committed to their faiths as they were in the past — in certain respects even more so.

The 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, released Tuesday (Nov. 3) by the Pew Research Center, also shows that nearly all major religious groups have become more accepting of homosexuality since the first landscape study in 2007.

The new study may provide some solace to those who bemoan the undeniable rise in America of the “nones” — people who claim no religious affiliation.

“People who say they have a religion — which is still the vast majority of the population — show no discernible dip in levels of observance,” said Alan Cooperman, director of religion research at Pew.

“They report attending religious services as often as they did a few years ago. They pray as often as they did before, and they are just as likely to say that religion plays a very important role in their lives,” he continued. “On some measures there are even small increases in their levels of religious practice.”

More religiously affiliated adults, for example, read Scripture regularly and participate in small religious groups than did so seven years ago, according to the survey. And 88 percent of religiously affiliated adults said they prayed daily, weekly or monthly — the same percentage that reported such regular prayer in the 2007 study.

“We should remember that the United States remains a nation of believers,” said Gregory A. Smith, Pew’s associate director of research, “with nearly 9 in 10 adults saying they believe in G-d.”

That said, overall, belief in God has ticked down by about 3 percentage points in recent years, driven mainly by growth in the share of “nones” who say they don’t believe in G-d. But even among Christians — 98 percent of whom say they believe in G-d — fewer believe with absolute certainty: 80 percent in 2007 compared to 76 percent in 2014.

And now 77 percent of adults surveyed describe themselves as religiously affiliated, a decline from the 83 percent who did so in Pew’s 2007 landscape study. (FULL TEXT)