More Americans are ditching religion, citing anti-LGBTQ bigotry and clergy sex abuse

"No religion" continues to be the fastest growing "religion" in the country

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In news that will surprise none of you, religiously unaffiliated Americans are the fastest growing “religious” group in America—now comprising 26% of the population—and their reasons for leaving organized religion include anti-LGBTQ bigotry, clergy sex abuse scandals, and the toll it takes on their mental health.

A teenager walks away from a Christian cross (Image via Shutterstock)

Those are some of the big takeaways from a recent survey published by PRRI.

The focus of the survey is on religious change, and on that front, the Unaffiliated are clearly the beneficiaries of Americans’ frustrations with faith. (Indeed, only 9% of Secular Americans said they’re “looking for a religion that’s right for me.” Most are perfectly happy without any religious faith in their lives.)

For example, when people were asked about their childhood faith and their current faith, there were significant drops among white non-evangelical Protestants (-4.4%), white Catholics (-6%), and Hispanic Catholics (-3.4%).

The biggest gain? Unaffiliated, with 15.6%.

In fact, while 18.1% of Americans say they became non-religious after growing up in a religious faith, only 2.5% of Americans went in the other direction.

Retention rates among the religiously unaffiliated also increased from 66% in 2016 to 76% in 2023. In total, 26% of Americans identify as religiously unaffiliated in 2023 — the only religious category that has gained large numbers of members in the religious marketplace in the past decade.

Those numbers are truly incredible. To put them another way, for every 1 person who becomes Catholic (at least a white Catholic), nearly 7 people leave the Church.

But for every 1 non-religious American who finds God, more than 7 people ditch organized religion entirely.

Those numbers are even more skewed than they were in a 2014 Pew Research Center study:

That means it’s easier than ever to raise kids without religion (which may be the biggest weapon some religious institutions have over their members). We’re going to see more first, second, and third-generation “Nones.” It’s also more likely that people will get married to someone outside their childhood faith, making religion even less of a factor in their adult lives.

The survey also noted that it’s not like people are switching from one religion to another as much as they’re just ditching religious labels entirely.

So why is this happening? Why are so many religious people leaving the religion as they get older? The obvious answer is that they come to their senses and just stop believing all that nonsense. Indeed, 63% of the “Nones” said exactly that, more than any other individual answer. But people leave religion for many reasons, and the other top responses are worth looking at.

47% of the Unaffiliated cited anti-LGBTQ teachings, a huge jump from just seven years ago.

32% said it was bad for their mental health.

31% mentioned clergy sex abuse scandals, which have become major problems in the Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and damn near everywhere else.

20% said their churches had become too political, and I predict that number will only get larger in the years to come.

Another important reason why religiously unaffiliated Americans report that they no longer identify with their childhood religion is due to that religion’s teachings about LGBTQ people (47%). There are strong party distinctions on this front. The majority of religiously unaffiliated Democrats (61%) and 43% of independents report this as a reason for leaving the church, compared with only 18% of unaffiliated Republicans.

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Slightly more than three in ten religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion due to clergy sexual abuse scandals (31%). Former Catholics are more likely than former non-Catholics to say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because of church sex scandals (45% vs. 24%).

It’s fascinating how those reasons for ditching faith shift depending on the group you’re looking at. Among Democrats who are unaffiliated, the “I just don’t believe this shit anymore” (my words) reason is more popular than anything else (75%) while anti-LGBTQ teachings come in second (61%).

Among younger Americans ages 18-29, many more of them (60%) cite anti-LGBTQ bigotry than their oldest counterparts (35%).

"Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church," [Melissa Deckman, PRRI's chief executive officer,] says. "We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans."

The trend lines are clear. They’ve been going in this direction for well over a decade now.

People are walking away from organized religion and they’re not trying to replace it with a different form of superstition. They’re not all atheists, but it would be disingenuous for religious institutions to claim them as members.

It’s not like anti-LGBTQ hate is going away either. White evangelicals and the Catholic Church have shown no real interest in shifting their positions, which will only push out more people who care about decency over dogma. As white evangelicals become further intertwined with Donald Trump and the Republican Party, those who care about democracy, civil rights, science, and social justice will realize that there’s no place for them in their churches.

And what will religious institutions do to keep people in the fold? There are very few pages left in their playbooks. At some point, especially as more ex-believers go public about their experiences on social media and popular docuseries, all the bells and whistles churches tend to pull out to attract new members become subjects of parody. People are aware of their tactics. They know what to look out for. No amount of Youth Pastor Voice is going to override the harm of Purity Culture. The overreach of high school football coaches and government officials who treat their secular positions as platforms to evangelize is more of a turn-off than ever before.

As more kids distance themselves from faith, the pressure on their friends to convert to fit in also diminishes. It can’t happen quickly enough.

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