Survey: White Christianity is declining while the religiously unaffiliated keep growing

PRRI's Census of American Religion reveals huge shifts in how people self-identify their faith

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The non-profit research group PRRI has just released its findings from a massive survey they call the “Census of American Religion.” It gives us a snapshot of what people believe and where they live across the nation; unlike surveys from other groups, this one gets granular, giving us county-level information on religious diversity. PRRI says this report offers the “most comprehensive resource available on religious diversity in America.”

So what are the major takeaways? You can read the full report here but here’s what stood out to me:

• The religiously “unaffiliated” now outnumber white Protestants, and we’re gaining at the expense of white Christians overall.

This is pretty damn amazing. The percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans is, for the first time, larger than the percentage of white Protestants (both evangelical and mainline). In 2020, the numbers were 23% and 30%, respectively. So not only are we growing, we’re growing at their expense. White Christians overall now stand at 41%, a drop from 44% from a few years ago.

This chart better depicts that massive decline of white Christians and the rise of the “Nones” after a temporary dip in 2020:

In case you’re wondering, that 27% “Unaffiliated” consists of atheists (5%), agnostics (5%), and “nothing in particular” (17%).

Keep in mind, however, that these results are self-reported. People told the researchers they were evangelical, Muslim, not affiliated with any organized religion, etc. I would suspect, then, that the non-religious numbers are under-reported because a lot of Americans still feel a stigma when it comes to admitting they have no religious faith.

• The religiously “unaffiliated” are growing in every age bracket.

You might suspect that the shift away from organized religion is based largely on young people wanting nothing to do with it, but that’s not the case. The survey found that more people were ditching religion in every age group compared to a decade ago. The growth was sharpest among people 30-49. While PRRI doesn’t get into the “whys,” remember that this is the cohort most impacted by Republicans taking away their reproductive rights, the ones who have suffered the greatest whiplash when it comes to seeing civil rights progress acquired and later rescinded, and the people who came of age at a time when religion (specifically conservative Christianity) has only ever been a tool of oppression.

Also interesting: Even though younger Americans are less religious than any other age group, they’re also more religiously diverse:

One color isn’t dominating that far-left column. There are more Christians of every stripe and more religious people from non-tradition backgrounds. That could have massive political repercussions down the line because the Republican Party has a bad habit of speaking to Americans as if they’re almost all Christians of the same stripe. They are very clearly not, which suggests those arguments aren’t going to have as much sway as they used to. Speaking of which…

• Democrats look like the future of America when it comes to religion

When it comes to the religious breakdown of the two major political parties, the Democrats are simply more religiously diverse:

It’s not hard to see that the nation’s future, reflected by people ages 18-29, looks much closer to the makeup of the Democratic base. Which is to say the party is increasingly non-religious and less Christian as a whole, yet inclusive of a wider variety of Christians.

Or, as PRRI puts it, “The religious makeup of Democrats generally resembles that of younger Americans ages 18–29… The Republican religious breakdown is more akin to the religious makeup of senior Americans over 65.”

They add: “Notably, no age group is as white and Christian as Republicans.”

That might work for Republicans for now, but it’s not going to last. All the more reason for Democrats to stop pandering to Christians, much less one type of them. Candidates should be pushing for religious freedom for all and church/state separation rather than using the language of Christianity as the default option.

These results, broken down by age, should terrify pastors. The future does not look good for organized religion, especially white evangelicals, as younger Americans who grew up surrounded by racist, misogynistic, anti-science, pro-MAGA, pro-cruelty Republicans decide they want nothing to do with a religion that finds Trumpism acceptable. More than a third of Americans under 50 are fed up with organized religion and even more don’t want to be part of any club that latches their faith onto Trumpism. What do you think happens when those groups get even older? There’s no reason to suspect they’ll become more Christian later in life.

• Secular Americans are all over the country.

While non-religious Americans remain concentrated in the west and northeast parts of the country, there are plenty of blue spots in red states. That said, there are some counties (with populations larger than 10,000) with eye-popping percentages of non-religious people:

San Juan County, Washington (62%) 
Gunnison County, Colorado (61%) 
Falls Church County, Virginia (59%) 
Glacier County, Montana (54%) 
Humboldt County, Nevada (54%) 
Los Alamos County, New Mexico (53%) 
Jefferson County, Washington (51%) 
Caledonia County, Vermont (51%) 
Addison County, Vermont (51%) 
Windham County, Vermont (51%)

Those are huge leaps from 2020, when the most non-religious county in the country wouldn’t have even cracked the top 10 list today. Back then, San Juan County, Washington was only 49% religiously unaffiliated.

That map also coincides with the one for religious diversity in the country. In other words, the areas with the most religious diversity also happen to be the areas where you’ll find the highest concentrations of non-religious Americans.

In the map below, the whiter areas represent the most homogenous religious places (i.e. everyone’s a white evangelical) whereas the darkest areas have the most differences. It says a lot that even in places you’d expect to see more non-religious people, what you actually find is more religious diversity.

On that map, Montgomery County, Maryland ranks the highest in religious diversity while three different counties in Mississippi—Holmes County, Chickasaw County, and Simpson County—round out the very bottom of the list.

You might have predicted some of this data, but it’s always helpful to have concrete numbers. It shows us that the nation is becoming more religiously diverse and less religious overall. We’re currently in a time when white Christian Nationalists threaten to control our lives, using Project 2025 as their playbook. That’s not because most Americans want that. It’s because more Americans are rejecting that way of life, and the white Christians who are used to privilege and power are refusing to cede any of it away.

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