Are People Less Religious?
Dec. 2
On the way back to CNU from Thanksgiving Break, my girlfriend and I got onto the topic of religion and our experience with it growing up. (Don’t ask me how we got to that topic, because I honestly couldn’t tell you.) For me personally, my family and I would occasionally go to church on Sundays and always for holidays, such as Christmas and Easter. I also attended CCD (reluctantly because no kid - at least the ones I knew - enjoyed that) after school, which furthered my involvement in religion. My girlfriend, however, never went to church as a kid. In fact, the first and only time she has gone to church was her freshman year at CNU with her roommate, who she stayed with over Thanksgiving break (so she had to go). She explained that even though her parents grew up going to church, they didn’t continue to go with her and her sister. This conversation struck my curiosity of whether or not this is a common thing - are people less religious now? According to an article I found, over the past two decades, and especially the current decade, there has been a growing decrease of U.S. church membership. The article relates this trend with the decreasing number of people attending church and increase of people reporting no religious affiliation. In 1998-2000, 8% of people in the U.S. had no religious affiliation. In 2016-2018, that number increased to 19%. In addition, the number of religiously affiliated people who are not a member of a church is steadily increasing. For the traditionalist generation (born 1945 and earlier), 74% of religiously affiliated people were a member of a church. In contrast, the millennial generation (born 1980-2000), that percentage is 57%. Even from the generation before millennials, Generation X (born 1965-1979) to millennials, the number of religiously affiliated people not a member of a church dropped 8%. It begs the question of whether or not this trend will continue, and if it does, when will it stop? Only time will tell.
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