An analysis of a newly released survey data by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University shows that Americans are increasingly losing their belief in religion.
The number of Americans who believe in religion is at its lowest since 1930. In a recently conducted survey by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University, one in every five Americans said they didn't believe in any religion, which is double the number than was reported in 1990.
According to the survey, researchers reported that 20 percent of a nationally representative group didn't believe in any religion. This percentage was twice as much as what was reported in 1990.
"This continues a trend of Americans disavowing a specific religious affiliation that has accelerated greatly since 1990," UC Berkeley sociologists Mike Hout, lead author of the study, said.
Hout and Mark Chaves of Duke University are authors of the survey, which is titled "General Social Survey". When conducted in 2002, it was the first study of its kind that reported an increase in number of "unchurched" people. The authors made a clear distinction between people of "no religion," which means individuals who are not part of an organized religion and "atheists," who do not believe in God.
Apart from belief in religion, the survey was conducted on various other aspects including attitudes about gun ownership and how tax dollars should be spent. The survey was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.
"What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?" was the question asked in the survey.
Further analysis led to the following conclusions:
* Liberals were more likely than conservatives to say "no religion" (40 percent to 9 percent).
* Men are more likely than women to claim "no religion" (24 percent to 16 percent of women).
* More whites claimed "no religion" (21 percent) compared to African Americans (17 percent) and Mexican Americans (14 percent).
* More than one-third of 18-to-24-year-olds claimed "no religion" compared to just 7 percent of those 75 and older.
* Residents of the Midwestern and Southern states were least likely to claim "no religion" compared to respondents in the Western, Mountain and Northeastern states. But Midwesterners and Southerners are catching up, Hout said.
* Educational differences among those claiming "no religion" are small compared to other demographic differences.
* About one-third of Americans identify with a conservative Protestant denomination, one-quarter are Catholics (although 35 percent were raised Catholic) and 1.5 percent are Jewish.
