Study shows steady levels of religious practice

The number of nonreligious people in America is increasing, but the faithful remain observant, according to the second part of the 2014 U.S. religious landscape study from the Pew Research Center, released in November. The first part of the study, released in May, showed that the nation is significantly less Christian than it was seven years ago given the rising number of people with no religious affiliation.

“Is America becoming less religious?” asked Gregory Smith, the Pew study’s lead researcher. “It depends on where you look. If you’re looking at the public as a whole, then the answer is yes—we find small but statistically significant declines, overall, in belief in God and several other conventional measures of religious commitment. But if you focus just on people who say they belong to a religion—and that’s the vast majority of Americans—they are, on balance, every bit as religious as they were in the recent past.”

Self-described nones grew from 16 percent of American adults in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014, and those who say they believe in God dropped from 70 to 61 percent in the same time period.