In most countries, religion plays an important role in making decisions, lifestyles, and even in politics, and most countries have their own statistics about how many percent of their population believes in which religion or how many percent of the population is not associated with any religion.
Religion was always something that changed in time with political ideologies and the situation of the world in general, and we can see this happening in our lifetime again thanks to all these statistics.
The US is no exception to these statistics, and we can see how the United States population’s religious beliefs are changing in time. We will take a look at US religion statistics in 2023.
How Many People in the US Are Believers?
The United States is a major country with its size and its population, and it hosts people from every part of the world.
This kind of diversification brings out many different religious beliefs with it, and that is why the United States has an extreme diversity when it comes to believers.
According to Wikipedia, the biggest religious belief in the United States is Protestantism with 42%.
Overall, about 23% of the population of the United States has no affiliation with a religion or atheist, meaning that they have no religious beliefs in general.
When you compare it to other countries, the United States has a big chunk of people who do not believe in a religion.
Read: US Population Statistics
Also Read US Bureau Of Labor Statistics
Why Is There a Rise In Change Of Belief?
Over time, there were major changes in beliefs in the United States. When we look at the statistics, we see that the belief in Protestantism decreased from around 90% in 1900 to 42% in 2020.
We also see an increase in people who has no affiliation with a religion starting from around 2000.
It was close to 0% before 2000 but starting from 2000; we see an increase of around 20%, sitting at 23% in 2020.
These statistics clearly show that people’s beliefs towards religion are changing rapidly, and the reason behind that might be a lot of different things happening in the world and in the political scene of the United States, considering that the world and the USA have gone through many different things from wars to economic crises in the last century.
However, this might also be because of the immigration that the United States has been receiving over the years.
We also see an increase in beliefs in other religions like Buddhism or Islam.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 also affected people’s beliefs about religion, especially among churchgoers.
US Religion Statistics By Year
| Year | Christian | Non-Christian | Unaffiliated/No Religion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 76% | 3.9% | 15% |
| 2014 | 70.60% | 5.9% | 22.8% |
| 2020 | 69.7% | 7% | 23.3% |
The Verdict
To conclude, the USA has extremely diversified religious beliefs thanks to its massive size population and diversified population from every part of the world.
However, in time, we see massive changes in religious beliefs where the belief towards any religion is slowly deteriorating, and the increases in other religious beliefs are happening because of immigration.
One of the biggest decreases in religious belief is Protestantism. It decreased to 42% from 90% in around 100 years, which might seem like a long time, but for beliefs to change, this is actually rather a short time period.
Read: US Diabetes Statistics
Source
Shefali Jain is a Content Writer & Editor at USWorkforce.org
After completing her graduation in hospitality, Shefali decided to follow her passion and started writing. Shefali has been writing for two years now and contributes to our website as a skilled editor and content writer with strong research skills. Writing product and service reviews, biographies, and book reviews are some of her key areas, among many others in which she specializes. In her time at the organization, she has written and edited content on a range of topics, including employment law, human resources, and business management.