Christianity set to become MINORITY faith as soon as 2060 – Daily Mail

America’s majority faith has an uncertain future — the share of Christians is set to fall to as low as 35 percent by 2070 as millions become agnostic, atheist or unaffiliated, a study of religious trends shows.

Pew Research Center says the number of U.S. adults identifying as Christian has dropped from 90 percent in the 1990s to 64 percent now, and will likely trend downwards into a minority faith over the coming decades.

The decline is due to Christians switching to ‘nones’ — a secular mishmash of atheists, agnostics and those with no religious identity — which is set to grow from about 30 percent nowadays to as much as 52 percent by 2070.

Adherents of other faiths, including Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, which currently are about 6 percent of the population, are set to double in share, though mostly driven by immigration rather than conversions, says Pew.

The drift away from Christianity is a trend across much of the developed world, hastened by a slew of damaging sex abuse scandals and cover-ups in the Catholic, Southern Baptist, Mormon and other churches.

Others are turning away from a faith that has become linked with America’s political right, with evangelicals and other Christians often among the most outspoken critics of progressive policies on abortion and gay marriage.

Experts on religion expressed dismay at Pew’s findings, saying the drift away from Christianity was part of a profound social change that was reshaping the nation of some 330 million people.

Bob Smietana, the author of Reorganized Religion, said Christianity’s decline may imperil ‘faith-based institutions that play a central part in community life’, which, he added, could be ‘weakened or disappear’.

They would include the ‘food pantries at churches, the shelters, or robust faith-based disaster relief’ efforts that assist the needy in the U.S. and abroad, Smietana posted on social media.

Such Christian charities as Catholic Relief Services and the Salvation Army assist millions in the U.S. and beyond, arranging everything from food parcels to adoption schemes.   

Amy Sullivan, a Chicago-based writer on religion and politics, said she ‘grieves these Pew findings’ on the decline and took aim at Christian leaders — slamming on Twitter the ‘fools’ who ‘have been the face of the faith for decades’.

Waning respect for Christianity was on display this month at Tennessee Tech University, where a theatrical troupe staged a Christianity-themed drag show with the star dressed as a Catholic monk who stripped down to a corset and stockings.

In the study, Pew researchers projected possible religious scenarios for the U.S. using everything from birthrates, to migration patterns and demographics like age and sex, and the current religious landscape.

They also assessed how faiths are passed from parents to their children and how frequently people switch religions — in particular, the growing number of Christians who turn away from the faith and become ‘nones’.

Each new generation sees 31 percent of those raised Christian become religiously unaffiliated by the time they reach 30, Pew says, while 21 percent of those raised with no religion become Christian.

‘If switching among young Americans continued at recent rates, Christians would decline as a share of the population by a few percentage points per decade, dipping below 50 percent by 2060,’ said the study.

‘At the same time, the unaffiliated are projected to grow under all four scenarios,’ it added. 

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