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| Source: Gallup | | By: Frank Newport | | Monday May 24th, 2010 |
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Americans have become increasingly less tied to formal religion in recent decades, with the percentage saying they do not have a specific religious identity growing from near zero in the 1950s to 16% this year and last.
This upward trend in the percentage having no religious identity has been evident for a number of years in Gallup and other surveys.
Gallup began systematically tracking religion using this measure in 1948, asking Americans to name the major religion with which they personally identified. At that point, 2% of Americans volunteered "no religion" and another 3% had an otherwise undesignated religious identity. In 1949 and in the 1950s and 1960s, these percentages stayed low. The number of Americans with no formal religious identity began to increase in the 1970s, reaching 11% by 1990. After some fluctuations over the last two decades, 16% of Americans now say they have no religious identity or have an otherwise undesignated response. (CONT.) |
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